OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring engineers who can talk to customers and code

Openai

Artificial intelligence companies are hiring like never before, and they are looking for a very specific kind of talent. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere are searching for software engineers who can do more than just write code. These engineers also need to understand customers and help them make the most of AI tools, according to a report by Financial Times.

The role is called a forward-deployed engineer, and it is quickly becoming one of the most in-demand jobs in the AI industry. These engineers work directly with companies to figure out how AI can solve their real-world problems. Instead of just developing technology in a lab, they go into offices, factories, or even farms to see what users actually need.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, created its own team of forward-deployed engineers earlier this year. The company plans to expand that team to about 50 engineers in 2025. Anthropic, which makes the AI assistant Claude, is also scaling up its applied AI team that includes these engineers. It expects the team to grow five times larger by the end of the year.

According to data from the job site Indeed, listings for these kinds of AI roles jumped by more than 800 percent between January and September this year. This shows how strongly companies are pushing to make AI products more practical and useful for businesses.

Many companies are excited about using AI but often struggle to figure out how to apply it to their work. A large bank, for instance, will have very different needs from a small startup. That is where these engineers step in. They help design customized solutions so that AI tools actually deliver value instead of just sounding impressive.

The idea of forward-deployed engineers originally came from Palantir, a data analytics company that has used this model for nearly twenty years. Palantir often sends engineers to work directly with clients on-site, whether in factories, oil refineries, or even military bases. The goal is to create software that truly fits the customer’s needs.

Now AI start-ups are adopting the same approach. Cohere’s CEO Aidan Gomez said that placing engineers at the start of a client’s project helps build trust and ensures the company gets exactly what it needs. Once the systems are set up, the engineers step back and let the clients take over.

OpenAI recently worked with John Deere, the well-known farming equipment maker, to create tools that help farmers use fewer chemicals. The project reportedly reduced spraying by as much as 70 percent.

OpenAI’s Arnaud Fournier said that these collaborations help the company understand what customers in different industries actually want. The lessons learned from these projects then help improve OpenAI’s future products.

As more companies try to bring AI into their daily operations, the demand for forward-deployed engineers is only expected to grow. They are proving that human understanding is just as important as machine intelligence in making AI truly useful.