The new profession of the future: these engineers have become the most sought-after at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere

Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cohere are actively hiring so-called forward-deployed engineers, FDE — a new key role in generative AI companies. The goal is to accelerate technology adoption and increase revenue by sending engineers directly to business clients to help configure and adapt models for real-world tasks.

Forward-Deployed Engineers, FDE, are engineers who work directly with clients: they not only write code but also help adapt the product to real business challenges, integrate technologies into processes, and bridge the gap between development teams and users.

OpenAI created its FDE team earlier this year and plans to expand it to approximately 50 engineers in 2025. Anthropic stated that it will increase its applied AI team, including FDEs and product engineers, by nearly fivefold to meet growing demand.

In 2025, the number of job openings for such specialists skyrocketed: from January to September, the number of FDE job postings increased by more than 800%. This surge in demand is driven by the fact that companies across various industries — from manufacturing to healthcare — want to leverage AI but often do not know how to do so effectively.

Palantir introduced this role nearly two decades ago, and today FDE engineers make up approximately half of its workforce. Typically, a pair of employees is sent to the client, internally referred to as Echo and Delta: the first identifies the client's needs, while the second possesses the technical skills to implement them.

AI startups are striving to replicate this approach.

Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere
Deploying engineers from the very beginning of the client engagement helps build long-term and reliable relationships. We embed engineers at the initial stage so that clients receive exactly what they need, and then we scale involvement as the company launches.

Although FDEs constitute a small portion of AI company employees, demand for these roles has exceeded expectations. OpenAI used this approach to customize technology for John Deere, an agricultural equipment manufacturer, to create more precise tools. This allowed farmers to reduce chemical usage by 60-70%.

Arno Fournier, Head of FDE at OpenAI
We learn what clients in various industries truly need, experiment together, and implement innovations, and then this data helps improve OpenAI's research and products based on real-world experience.

This article was translated from Financial Times.