Forward deployed engineers: AWS's US$1bn play to embed AI experts
AWS says expert engineers will be deployed to co-build AI systems with its customers in days rather than months
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AWS says it has launched a new dedicated forward deployed engineering (FDE) organization, backed by a US$1bn investment. The FDE model is intended to embed artificial intelligence (AI) deployment specialists in AWS customer organizations that want to make AI "core to how they operate".
The experienced engineers, many of whom already build AWS AI services, partner with a customer's business, engineering, and security teams to build and deploy production AI systems with their data, governance, and processes.
Announced at the AWS Summit in Washington DC this week, AWS said the new organization is different "in three key ways". Specifically, it is "agentic-first", it compresses timelines from months to days, and it is designed so customers are self-sufficient when a deployment ends.
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What is a forward deployed engineer?
Described by CX Network Advisory Board member Andrae Kirkland as "a role designed for CX in the age of AI", FDEs partner closely with enterprise customers to plug internal skills gaps and help design, develop, and deploy AI-centric solutions that align to their business priorities.
Kirkland says the skillset combines the customer-facing elements of a traditional business consultant with the technical expertise of a software engineer along with cloud domain knowledge of a solution architect.
The embedded FDEs are not intended to become permanent employees. As outlined, under the AWS model, the FDEs will ensure organizations work towards becoming self-sufficient.
AWS isn't the first organization to launch FDE roles. EY, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google are just some of the other organizations that have developed a specific role designed to support their customers through AI transformation. In fact, job listings for FDEs increased 800 percent between January and September 2025.
How will AWS support customer's AI deployments?
The AWS will embed FDEs in AWS frontier teams, with purpose-built agents and an "AI-Driven Development Lifecycle" to leave organizations self-sufficient after each engagement.
AWS says the experienced engineers, many of whom already build AWS AI services, will partner with a customer's business, engineering, and security teams to build and deploy production AI systems with their data, governance, and processes.
It's a new approach to software development that combines agents with human oversight. But it isn't an AI tool layered onto existing workflows: AWS says agents accelerate "every phase of the lifecycle while human engineers verify and guide".
Unlike traditional consulting, this approach takes a long-term outlook, co-creating new solutions and new engineering capabilities. Along with agentic systems running in their own AWS environment, customers gain lasting AI skills, workflows, and patterns they can use to innovate independently.
To help bring transparency to costs, deployments are structured around shared goals and business results, not billable hours. Allen Institute, Cox Automotive, the NBA, the NFL, and Ricoh are already working with FDE.
How is the role of CX changing?
The available of dedicated experts to support AI deployments within organizations meets the growing demand for technical skills across.
CX Network's annual research into the state of CX in 2026 asked practitioners how they believe generative and agentic AI will change their organizations. At 36 percent, the highest share said it will bring a need for their teams to upskill.
While in-house skills are still critical, the emergence of FDEs allows organizations to accelerate their AI capabilities in collaboration with dedicated specialists.
As Kirkland writes: "There is an industry-agnostic shift taking place where organizations vary on the spectrum of AI adoption, utilization, and expertise to transform business processes. AI and AI-adjacent platforms have created a targeted solution by way of a specialized engineering role to address this knowledge gap – investing in a role that marks the latest example of how CX-forward organizations adapt to the needs of customers in an effort to solve their challenges." awsssss
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