Forward deployed engineers, or equivalent, are about to become one of the most in-demand jobs in tech. And one of the most important functions for AI rollouts. Deploying agents is far more technical of a task than most people realize, often far more involved than deploying software. Software generally works the same way every time, and generally for the past few decades has been updated versions of an existing technology or concept (which basically means easier for the enterprise to update their workflows on a newer system). With agents, you’re actually deploying the equivalent of work output within the enterprise. The customer is effectively using you as a professional services provider for a task, which they expect to get solved nearly end-to-end now. This means you need to actually deeply understand the business process as a vendor, and get the customer from the current to the end state seamlessly. Companies need help figuring out which models will work best for their workflows, they need extensive evals setup often, they need change management support for workflows, they need to get their data setup for the agents, and constant tuning of the agentic system for their process. Massive role in tech now. And another example of the kind of highly technical work that AI is creating.
