Google, Box CEOs say this is the “most in-demand” job in tech

In 2011, Palantir created a combined role for their solutions engineers and integration engineers. The company called this new role “forward-deployed engineers,” or FDEs, for short. An Andreessen Horowitz blog post dubbed the recasting “title arbitrage,” arguing that Palantir had created this new title to signify the important, new capabilities and powers evolving at the company. Put simply: FDEs are people who can sell AI products to businesses while also teaching AI models how to work for said businesses. More than a decade after Palantir popularized the title, tech CEOs are betting that FDEs are the next big thing in the industry. “Forward deployed engineers, or equivalent, are about to become one of the most in-demand jobs in tech. And one of the most important functions for AI rollouts,” Box CEO Aaron Levie wrote in an X post. He added that FDEs are a “massive role in tech now” and “another example of the kind of highly technical work that AI is creating.” On Tuesday, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the company was investing in hiring more FDEs. According to The Information, a person familiar with the matter said Google would hire hundreds of these engineers to help customers adopt its business-centered AI products. “As part of this expansion, we are investing in hiring additional Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) to help us scale customer AI transformation,” Kurian said in a LinkedIn post. “While having FDEs is not new for Google Cloud, the demand from customers and partners for Google enterprise AI products and Google engineers to help them embrace agent development is growing very rapidly.” Several AI companies have also expanded their use for FDEs. This week, OpenAI launched an “OpenAI Deployment Company” with consulting and investment firms to deploy its tech to businesses—and FDEs are at the front of this initiative. “The OpenAI Deployment Company will extend OpenAI’s ability to embed engineers specialized in frontier AI deployment, known as Forward D