India, May 23 -- As enterprises prepare to deploy AI agents across customer support, operations, finance, logistics and internal workflows, companies are realising that building the AI product is the easy part. The bigger challenge is making these systems work smoothly inside real organisations. This is driving a sharp rise in demand for forward-deployed engineers, or FDEs.

The role itself is not entirely new. Companies like Palantir Technologies popularised forward-deployed teams years ago. But the rise of generative AI and agentic systems has suddenly pushed the function into the mainstream.

Part engineer, part product operator and part customer strategist, FDEs sit directly between AI companies and enterprise clients. They work close...