AWS, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are racing to deploy specialized AI engineers, known as Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs), to help companies realize returns on their AI investments. This comes amid intensifying market concerns that the economics of the AI boom are not sustainable.

Amazon Web Services has committed $1 billion to a forward-deployed engineering initiative. OpenAI has launched a deployment business backed by over $4 billion in initial investment and acquired Tomoro, an applied AI consulting firm. Anthropic is investing $100 million to train 10,000 FDEs by the end of 2027, while Accenture and Google Cloud are building a 1,000-person FDE workforce. Demand for FDEs is surging, with U.S. job postings rising from under 200 in 2023 to over 7,300 in the first nine months of 2026, and median advertised salaries reaching $195,456.