Google hires hundreds of forward deployed engineers

Google Cloud is expanding a job category that has become central to the AI sales race: engineers who work directly inside customer deployments. Thomas Kurian, the company’s chief executive, said on May 13 that Google is hiring additional forward-deployed engineers as customers ask for more technical help turning generative AI pilots into production systems. The move follows similar hiring by OpenAI and Anthropic, which have built teams around the same role. Public job postings and company statements show Google is staffing the function across multiple U.S. cities and some international locations. ### What is Google actually hiring for? Google’s job postings describe a forward-deployed engineer as an “embedded builder” who connects frontier AI products to “production-grade reality” inside customer environments. One Google Cloud listing says the role requires experience shipping AI systems, leading discovery sessions with executive and engineering teams, and building full-stack tools that connect with enterprise systems. The posting lists locations including San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Austin, among others. (channeldive.com) Channel Dive reported on May 13 that Google had 59 distinct roles tied to the hiring push in the United States and abroad, including London, Paris and Hong Kong. In New York and Atlanta, the publication said Google posted applied-AI forward-deployed engineering jobs with base salaries of $127,000 to $183,000. ### Why are these engineers showing up between product and sales? (google.com) Thomas Kurian said on LinkedIn, as quoted by Channel Dive, that Google is investing in additional forward-deployed engineers to “scale customer AI transformation.” He said Google Cloud had used FDEs before, but demand from customers and partners for Google’s enterprise AI products and for help with “agent development” was growing “very rapidly.” (channeldive.com) Google told Channel Dive that the expansion is meant to provide “elite, hands-on Google engineers” who can move enterprises “beyond experimentation into full-scale AI operations.” That description places the role between a standard cloud account team and a product engineering team: close enough to the customer to build, but close enough to the platform to feed lessons back into the product. That last point is explicit in OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s own job descriptions. (channeldive.com) ### How do OpenAI and Anthropic define the same job? OpenAI says its forward-deployed engineers lead end-to-end deployments of frontier models with strategic customers, covering discovery, technical scoping, system design, buildout and production rollout. The company says they are measured by production adoption, workflow impact and feedback that changes product and model roadmaps. OpenAI’s New York role requires up to 50% travel. (channeldive.com) Anthropic says its FDEs “embed directly” with strategic customers to drive AI adoption and build production applications with Claude. The company says the engineers create technical artifacts such as MCP servers, sub-agents and agent skills, and may travel to customer sites about 25% of the time. Anthropic also says the team is still shaping its “forward-deployed motion,” suggesting the function is still being formalized across the sector. (openai.com) ### Why has the role become so visible now? Fast Company reported on May 14 that Google and Box executives described forward-deployed engineers as the “most in-demand” job in tech. Box Chief Executive Aaron Levie wrote on X that FDEs, or equivalent roles, are becoming one of the most important functions for AI rollouts. Google’s hiring push also comes a month after its Cloud Next event, where the company emphasized agents, partner enablement and enterprise deployment. (anthropic.com) Channel Dive said Google had already committed $750 million to its partner ecosystem and planned to provide engineering support to major systems integrators. ### What happens next in Google’s hiring push? (fastcompany.com) Google’s current career listings show application windows for some GenAI forward-deployed engineering roles staying open until at least April 23, 2026, while early-career postings surfaced on university career sites show recruiting began on May 7 and runs through May 28. The next visible milestone is whether Google adds more postings or begins filling the roles across the cities already listed in its careers materials. (channeldive.com) (google.com)