What's a forward-deployed engineer, and why does it pay so much? Every enterprise AI product has the same gap: the demo works great, then it meets the customer's real world. The forward-deployed engineer lives inside that gap. You write real production code, but inside the customer's environment, wiring an AI product into their systems until it actually delivers value.
It's a hybrid role: part engineer, part consultant, part product owner. One day it's a data pipeline, the next you're explaining to executives what AI can and can't do, then debugging in production while the client watches.
It's stressful, which is exactly why it's hard to fill and pays so well.
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