Forward-deployed engineers are all the rage in AI, and Anthropic is going to other companies to train up top talent.
The AI company announced a $100 million investment into an FDE training initiative earlier this month. It’s a quasi-fellowship that engineers from other firms have already begun applying for. They’ll attend four-day on-site intensives and then complete 12-week “residencies” working with Anthropic’s Claude tools at their own companies. The company says it hopes to train 10,000 people through the program by the end of 2027.
As Anthropic approaches its gigantic initial public offering, it’s using the new training model to get more of the corporate world used to AI — and ramp up Claude spending. Job postings for FDEs have boomed over the last couple of years, as more companies buy software from AI firms and need help deploying it.
Two Anthropic executives leading the push told Business Insider that their customers see AI’s advances, notice competitors grabbing market share, and feel pressure to change their own work.
“Everybody understands the model capability is expanding extremely fast,” said Shambhavi Shambhavi, Anthropic’s head of go-to-market strategy and operations for partnerships. “So, what can be done with the technology is greatly appreciated by the customers.”
Enter the FDE — which Anthropic calls “Frontier Deployed Engineers,” rather than the standard “forward-deployed engineer” title that Palantir helped popularize. Both roles essentially mean someone with deep technical expertise in AI and the mandate to create new modes of work at a company.
Shambhavi and Steve Corfield, Anthropic’s head of global business development and partnerships, broke down the FDE role as they see it and how Anthropic hopes to set a “gold standard” with its new skills push.
Anthropic execs say FDEs are curious
Shambhavi said that the best FDEs have four main attributes. They are familiar with agentic AI systems. They’re good problem-solvers. They’re excellent communicators. And they’re experienced, skilled engineers.
Corfield tacked on a point he thinks helps Anthropic thrive: “You’ve got to be super, super curious. If you walk around this organization, everybody talks about curiosity.”
Communication is particularly important, Shambhavi said. She said that as companies try to overhaul entire workflows and approach agentic AI holistically, someone who can navigate the interpersonal dynamics goes a long way.
“Our own Frontier Deployed Engineers work with these kinds of problems day in and day out,” Shambhavi said. “And so we kind of applied the mindset of, we need to take this skill and bring it to our customers and partners and to the top engineers in those organizations, so that they can derive the benefits from Claude.”
Anthropic wants to set the ‘gold standard’ for AI skills
Engineers who can expand their teams’ use of AI have become a hot commodity in Silicon Valley. Salesforce, a major Anthropic partner, announced a plan in May to recruit 1,000 early-career workers into “AI builder” roles. Anthropic’s program, in Corfield’s view, goes a step above other industry attempts to recruit and train FDEs. Combined with other company initiatives to teach people AI, he hopes Anthropic will set “the gold standard for AI skilling.”
The first cohorts have begun in New York and San Francisco, including engineers from Accenture, Bain, Novo Nordisk, and other organizations.
Companies nominate engineers for the training, and Anthropic interviews candidates. If they’re accepted, they work for the four-day residency on a “simulated environment,” an agentic system that they have to learn how to build and deploy. Then they take a practical test, before returning to their companies while staying in touch with Anthropic mentors for 12 more weeks.
Anthropic is still building its assessments throughout the program. Shambhavi said they’ll focus on “what does a great FDE look like” — articulation, problem solving, coding skills.
Corfield said corporate customers wanted a program like this to help them figure out how to deploy Claude more effectively, and the holdup isn’t motivation.
“This is a skills gap problem, and that creates a market problem,” he said.
“What we’re trying to do is fill that gap,” he added.
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