Amazon’s AWS commits $1 billion toward new unit for embedded AI engineers
Signage for Amazon Web Services (AWS) during the London Tech Week at Olympia, in London, Britain, June 8, 2026. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
Read a summary of this article on FAST.
Get bite-sized news via a new
cards interface. Give it a try.
Click here to return to FAST
Tap here to return to FAST
FAST
SAN FRANCISCO, June 30 : Amazon said on Tuesday 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 $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.
Guess Word
Crack the word, one row at a time
Buzzword
Create words using the given letters
Mini Sudoku
Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser
Mini Crossword
Small grid, big challenge
Word Search
Spot as many words as you can
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.
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.
Source: Reuters
Sign up for our newsletters
Get the CNA app
Stay updated with notifications for breaking news and our best stories
Get WhatsApp alerts
Join our channel for the top reads for the day on your preferred chat app
Get bite-sized news via a new
cards interface. Give it a try.
Click here to return to FAST
Tap here to return to FAST
FAST
About The Author
