Vendors bet on forward-deployed engineers to justify trillion-dollar AI spend

AWS has committed $1 billion to a Forward Deployed Engineering unit and Anthropic $100 million to train FDEs, with SAP, Salesforce and Workday also investing heavily. US median FDE pay is $216,250, but Gartner warns of vendor lock-in and IP leakage risks for customers.

• AWS committed $1 billion to a Forward Deployed Engineering unit
• Anthropic is spending $100 million to train FDEs
• US median FDE total compensation is $216,250 a year
• Gartner warns of lock-in and customer IP leakage risks