11/04/2026
Top Forward Deployed Engineers can now earn up to $1.5 million a year, according to The Wall Street Journal. That’s a hard hire for most companies.
Meanwhile, Big Tech is offering its own. Microsoft is investing $2.5 billion to place 6,000 industry and engineering experts inside client companies. AWS is putting $1 billion into its own Forward Deployed Engineering unit.
Platform engineers know their tools better than anyone. But before you bring one in, ask: whose goals does this engineer serve?
An FDE from a platform company is also there to grow use of that platform. That’s their job. It just means their goals and yours may not always match.
Three questions to ask any FDE, from any company, including us:
Who owns the code and the project when they leave?
Are they measured on your results, or on how much you use a platform?
Will your team be able to run it without them?
At TriSeed, our Forward Deployed Engineers work inside your team, and the project stays yours.
See how FDEs compare with staff augmentation: https://www.triseed.co/forward-deployed-engineers