- AI giants are investing billions to train engineers in a bid to help their customers
- US FDE engineer jobs rose 6x year-over-year, two years in a row
- Consultancies are advertising the most FDE jobs, it seems
US tech giants are now spending billions of dollars deploying specialist engineers to help their customers realize the benefits of AI, with AWS, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google all recently announcing expansions to their forward-deployed engineer (FDE) programs.
We've already surpassed the point that model capabilities were the limit – now, companies are struggling with legacy infrastructure and identifying real-world use cases, so AI developers are getting involved to help them out.
As part of the ongoing shift in how AI is being sold, those developers are no longer just selling their AI to customers – they're also taking responsibility over its deployment.
FDEs are the future of enterprise AI adoption
Already, we've seen OpenAI backing its FDE business with a massive $4 billion investment and AWS footing a $1 billion bill for FDEs, while Anthropic shared plans to train 10,000 specialist engineers by the end of 2027.
Lightcast research even highlights the extensive growth in FDE job roles, with around 200 FDE job ads shared in the US in 2023 and a similar number in 2024. By 2025, this had increased 6x to around 1,200 advertised positions, yet in the first nine months of 2026 the report found 7,300 roles, another 6x increase year-over-year.
"As businesses move from developing AI technology to applying it, they need professionals who can bridge the gap between technical products and operational problems," the report explains.
Interestingly, three of the four top companies advertising roles were consultancies (Deloitte, Accenture and KPMG), with just one of them being a tech firm (Google). Consultancies are positioning themselves as a key part of the chain, and Anthropic's recent announcement to support engineer roles within third-party consultancies aligns with this emerging trend.
Lightcast Head of Global Research Elena Magrini explained in an interview with CNBC that a sharp growth in wages also implies that these companies are fighting over a limited pool of talent.
Looking ahead, the most successful AI companies may no longer be the ones with the most advanced models – rather, they could be the ones using human engineers in the best way to gain more customers.
