According to Salesforce, we are in the midst of an Agentic Enterprise. Agentic artificial intelligence is here, and it has already disrupted the entire technology sector, with ambitions to do much more.
Before this point, the concern of AI taking away tech jobs had been growing. But now, the first new jobs of the AI era have emerged. In the Salesforce ecosystem, one of these roles is the Forward Deployed Engineer. So, what do they do, and how can you become one?
What is a Forward Deployed Engineer?
Appraised by Salesforce as “today’s hottest role”, a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) is a deep technical expert within the Agentforce product suite. They’re AI-savvy and know their way around Agentforce, Data 360, and the other adjoining tools, and are “part personal tech guru, business consultant, and hand-holder” according to the CRM giant.
Although they are considered a rising role within Salesforce’s role hierarchy, FDEs were first made popular by the data company Palantir in the late 2000s. As the AI era develops, they are becoming increasingly more common.
At their core, FDEs work in the intersection of Salesforce’s product teams and services teams, helping customers get their first few agents off the ground.
Jennifer Cramer, the SVP of Forward Deployed Engineering and Customer Success for AI Products at Salesforce, told SF Ben that FDEs are typically “master builders or master fixers”.
“When they come to us, our customers have either tried [building] on their own, and they’re stuck for one reason or another,” she said. “So we help them unblock any barriers that they might have encountered.”
Part of a Feedback Loop
When they’re not helping customers build new agents or fix rogue ones, FDEs also operate as part of a feedback loop between the customers they help and Salesforce’s product teams.
“We know what’s on the product roadmap,” Jennifer explained.“We know what’s top of mind for our product team. We also know what’s top of mind for our customers, what’s working, what’s not, where they wanna take the product next.”
She detailed that through intensive build and repair efforts with customers, it allows FDEs to build up a better understanding of Agentforce and its capabilities, taking feedback right back to the product teams. This is a particularly important part of the role, especially as Agentforce has been generally available for under two years.
This feedback loop also forms part of a wider community effort that is integral to the role. Jennifer explained that it is not always helpful to jump into an org, fix a problem, and then disappear – it’s important that an environment of learning and sharing knowledge is fostered.
“Every time we’re in with a customer, we’re not alone,” she said. “We’re either, you know, shoulder to shoulder with the customer’s developer team themselves. What we want to do is really uplevel the ecosystem.”
How Are FDEs Trained?
Forward Deployed Engineers are a new generation of roles within Salesforce, and with this comes plenty of opportunities and responsibilities. In order to assist customers with their agents, they need to have an appropriate level of training. But how much training can they have if Agentforce is still such a young technology?
Jennifer clarified that choosing the right people for the role and training them up consists of two key focuses.
“Firstly, the profile that we hire for – they must have a growth mindset,” she told me. “We’re hiring people that like to tinker, that like to learn on their own, that like to explore new things.
“So in some cases, we have formal training, and in some cases, we just say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna we’re gonna launch this – go and learn it.’”
She also mentioned that early Agentforce adopters have “co-innovated” with Salesforce and the FDE team, allowing them to learn how to build and break agents together as they were being implemented.
How Do I Become an FDE?
If you have been reading this post and think that maybe becoming an FDE might be for you, then good news! Salesforce is currently hiring for 20 FDE positions at the time of writing, spanning multiple continents.
However, like with many other Salesforce roles, the competition is reportedly fierce. As the CRM giant puts it: “Not only do you need to be a tech whiz, you also have to communicate well and be comfortable in a customer-facing role.”
Some of the core skills you will need to have to become a successful FDE include:
- Problem solving. Forward Deployed Engineers must love solving problems, as the technology is so new that everyone is still trying to figure it out.
- Technical skills. This is a technical role, so FDEs need to be a jack-of-all-trades of tech skills. This means writing agent instructions, working with prompts, and handling tricky integrations.
- Communication skills. FDEs work directly with customers; they need to be able to explain complex, technical processes in easy-to-understand terms.
- Business analysis skills. You’ve got to have a bit of a business analyst mindset to understand what your customers want from AI and how you can deliver it effectively.
- A learning mindset. Once again, a lot of the technology you’ll interact with is very new, so a huge part of the role is learning on the job!
If you think you have these skills, then you’ll be pleased to know that Salesforce is actively putting an effort into hiring FDEs across different seniority levels, meaning that entry-level and senior positions are or will become available soon.
“This role serves the super technical and experienced professional because that’s what our customers need and want,” Jennifer said. “[But we also] hire earlier career individuals from Futureforce and universities, where they could be coders or developers that are learning along the way.”
The FDE team has tripled in the last six months, indicating the scale of this growth and focused effort within Salesforce. So if you want to get stuck in, now might be the time to!
Final Thoughts
As the new era of roles within the Salesforce ecosystem emerges, it’s important to stay on top of them, especially if you’re really eager to work within this space.
What makes the Forward Deployed Engineer role so exciting is that it is one of the first, meaning that if you jump on this role now, you could be one of the first professionals in this new wave of AI employment.
