Amazon’s AWS commits US$1 billion toward new unit for embedded AI engineers

[SAN FRANCISCO] Amazon said on Tuesday (Jun 30) it is creating a new division under its Amazon Web Services cloud unit employing so-called forward-deployed engineers who embed with customers to help them more quickly and efficiently adopt artificial intelligence software.

The company is committing an initial US$1 billion to the initiative with the goal of sending five to six pods of engineers to customers for 45-day periods, said Francessca Vasquez, AWS vice-president of frontier AI engineering and services.

“We have a ton of demand for customers who are asking for our help to really drive agentic AI patterns in their workflows,” said Vasquez, in an interview prior to the announcement.

Forward-deployed engineers are versatile workers who embed directly alongside clients, navigate internal politics and write production-grade code to help make models deliver results.

Amazon is a bit late to the party. Palantir Technologies has had its own forward-deployed engineering unit for well over a decade and others such as Salesforce, Anthropic and Google Cloud also offer their own versions of the service.

Forward-deployed engineering is a rare bright spot among tech companies that have been cutting jobs amid the rapid expansion of AI.

Box CEO Aaron Levie said in a LinkedIn post in May that forward-deployed engineers are “about to become one of the most in-demand jobs in tech.” And from 2023 to 2025, demand for forward-deployed engineers and similar roles grew 42-fold, according to a LinkedIn report earlier this year.

AWS said it planned to have “thousands” of employees in the new unit, without offering specifics, and would hire from outside the company to fill some roles as well as move others internally. Amazon has cut over 30,000 corporate jobs since October.

Amazon announced the new unit as part of a two-day customer event in Washington, where it is expected to make additional announcements around government cloud offerings.

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Success for the new unit would be measured in how quickly customers can develop a new product or learn new skills with the help of Amazon’s forward-deployed engineers, said Vasquez. “We want to make sure that these customers get value in faster durations than what they’ve traditionally seen in project-based activity,” she said.

Amazon said initial customers include the National Basketball Association and Ricoh, an electronics company. REUTERS