The job title “forward-deployed engineer” — someone who works with customers to set up technology, gather feedback and iron out problems — has been around for more than a decade.
But lately, as companies need fewer people to write code, and more people to schlep to client offices to help them integrate new artificial intelligence tools, use of the descriptor for tech roles of all kinds is exploding.
On LinkedIn, job listings for forward-deployed engineers have increased twelvefold in the past year, a company spokeswoman said. And new job titles like forward-deployed product manager, forward-deployed strategist and forward-deployed architect have appeared on the platform, too.
On the job site Indeed, listings seeking forward-deployed engineers jumped 730 percent over the past year. Such openings are rising at a significantly higher rate than other tech jobs, said Sneha Puri, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab — though the raw numbers for these types of listings are still fairly low, in the thousands. The need for this type of support staff, she said, has risen partly because “enterprises are buying A.I. systems, but they don’t necessarily know how to set it up in the best way.”
In a rapidly shifting job landscape, forward-deployed roles are, at least for now, a relatively safe bet, said Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist. A.I. is getting good at many day-to-day work tasks. But forward-deployed workers are responsible for a function that A.I. cannot replace: hands-on client support.
The appeal of this job title — first made popular by Palantir — reflects both reality and hype, Mr. Bloom said. To be sure, someone who can coach a client on integrating a new tool is quite useful right now. But a major factor behind its spread, he noted, is also simply that “it sounds cool.” The title conjures military might — not conference rooms and slide decks.
Companies have an easier time recruiting people into roles that impress their friends and parents, and “forward-deployed engineer sounds to many people a lot better than customer-based engineer,” Mr. Bloom reflected. Versions of these jobs — often with less jazzy titles, like “consultant” — have existed for years. “You are upselling through a title,” he said.
It appears to be working. Not only are people seeking out this role but some are even revising their past job descriptions on LinkedIn, said Mr. Bloom, whose team has been collecting data on how workers edit their job history on that site. Their data shows a sharp uptick this year in changes of titles like software engineer, data engineer and solutions architect to “forward-deployed engineer” (though the overall number of people who have done this is still small, in the hundreds).
The job’s buzz also captures Silicon Valley’s recent embrace, and glorification, of military culture. “Tech companies would probably try to call people ‘Special Ops’ or ‘Delta Force’ if they could get away with it,” Mr. Bloom suggested. Lately, he said, it feels as if companies are copying-and-pasting cool titles from action movies onto job postings. “It’s the ‘Top Gun: Silicon Valley’ generation.”
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