What do coding interviews miss about real-world Applied AI and Forward Deployed Engineering?

A lot of engineering interview preparation focuses on solving a well-defined problem with clearly specified inputs and outputs.

But customer-facing engineering rarely starts that way.

Imagine receiving a client request like:

“We have thousands of support tickets. Can you use AI to identify the important ones and route them to the right teams?”

Before writing code, I’d want to understand:

The interesting engineering work is often in discovering the requirements, designing evaluations and deciding where automation should stop.

I’m exploring how to turn this kind of ambiguity into a practical engineering exercise.

For engineers who have worked in applied AI, solutions engineering or forward-deployed roles:

Please avoid sharing confidential interview questions or employer information.

I’m researching the problem and may eventually develop an educational product. Nothing is being sold or promoted here.