The FDE Collective, an initiative by Lyzr
One million forward-deployed engineers needed by 2030.
AI is cutting jobs in one column and creating them in another. The column that is growing belongs to the people who take agents into production. Get trained to be one of them.
A movement built in the field, for the engineers enterprises are already hiring.
Built around the tools behind the stack
Anthropic
OpenAI
Lyzr
Neo4j
Qdrant
Braintrust
Okta
AWS
Databricks
Salesforce
Accenture
DeloitteAnthropicOpenAILyzrNeo4jQdrantBraintrustOktaAWSDatabricksSalesforceAccentureDeloitteAnthropicOpenAILyzrNeo4jQdrantBraintrustOktaAWSDatabricksSalesforceAccentureDeloitteThe movement
A million of these jobs are coming. Almost nobody is training for them.
The constraint was never the model. It is the number of people who can carry a system from the client room to production.
01
The role exists. The bench does not.
Every serious enterprise AI programme now needs someone who can sit with the client, scope the real problem and ship the system. Almost nobody is training for that job.
02
The job crosses the whole stack.
The work spans models, retrieval, orchestration, security, governance, deployment and handover. The curriculum maps the production tools used at every gate.
03
It has to happen in the open.
A certification you take online, and chapters you can walk into in your own city. Same material, two doors, no gatekeeping.
The role
What is an FDE?
Whoever takes an agentic system from idea to production inside a real enterprise, integrations, retrieval, orchestration, security review, handover.
Builds the integrations, retrieval layer, multi-agent system, and the guardrails around it.
01
A credential mapped to the tools enterprise teams already run, not a bootcamp badge.
02
The role systems integrators are rebuilding their delivery model around.
03
Shipped capstones as proof, work you can show, not lessons you completed.
Backend engineer vs FDE
The job starts where your current stack ends.
A forward-deployed engineer brings the backend foundation, then carries the agent, enterprise, and delivery skills needed to reach production.
Forward-deployed engineerFDE
Backend depth, plus the production agent layer.Drag left to reveal the skills that turn a strong software engineer into the person who can scope, build, harden, deploy, and own an enterprise agent system.
Who is hiring
The companies winning at enterprise AI are hiring FDEs first.
Given the probabilistic nature of generative AI, every production agentic system needs far more testing, fine-tuning, and intelligent orchestration to become production-grade. The people who do that work are Forward-Deployed Engineers.
600%
Palantir stock growth
in the last two years, driven by its forward-deployed delivery model.
$550M
Wonderful raised
at a $5B valuation, an FDE company built to deliver complex agent systems.
Vertical AI
Harvey and Sierra
rely on FDEs to ship domain-specific agents inside enterprise accounts.
Accenture
Heavy investment
is pouring resources into building the largest FDE capability in services.
But most enterprise developers do not cut as FDEs.
Having shipped 1,000+ production-grade agents in the last 12 months at Fortune 500s, at Lyzr AI we are seeing this firsthand.
We built an internal, hands-on training curriculum that has helped us maintain zero churn and, more importantly, ship production-grade agents in under 8 weeks.
Now we are bringing that curriculum, expanded into 100 mapped competencies across 50+ production tools, to the Indian IT industry.
Modules covering every gate a production deployment clears
Competencies mapped across the full FDE skill stack
Tools and platforms used across the curriculum
Why us
We are in live deployments with these enterprises.
Lyzr ships production-grade agents inside these estates every week. The curriculum is the training we run on ourselves.
USA GovAccentureDeloitte
WTW
Publicis
Verifone
Crown Castle
KPMG
ProphetBuilt around the working stack
Learn the tools behind production agents, not a vendor slideshow.
Five tools mapped to every module, the capability and where it sits in the system.
Agent Foundations
Knowledge & Retrieval
Agent Architecture
Multi-Agent & Integration
Evaluation & Quality
Safety & Security
Data & Governance
Deployment & Operations
Enterprise Systems & Economics
Discovery, Delivery & Ownership
The path
From where you are to the person who ships it.
- Today
Strong engineer, stalled demos
You can build an agent. It never clears integration and review.
- Enroll
10 modules, 100 competencies
The gates a production deployment actually has to pass.
- Build
A real system, reviewed
Every module ends in shipped work, not a quiz.
- Certify
Graded capstone
One full engagement, scope to handover, assessed end to end.
- Deployed
The person they trust
You own agent systems inside the customer estate.
Two ways in
One initiative, two tracks.
Track 01
The AI FDE Course
10 modules, 100 competencies, 50+ tools. Ship a production agent system, graded at the end.
$999 · full programme access
Track 02
City Chapters
The same material, offline. One hour on the role, an agent built live in the room, a local champion who keeps it running.
10 cities in India · Dubai, Johannesburg and Toronto next
On the ground
We are taking this city by city.
Ten chapters across India so far, with Dubai, Johannesburg and Toronto next. Each one is a working session, not a keynote.
01
One hour on the role
A condensed version of the Academy: what an FDE does, where enterprise agent projects break, and what the job actually pays off.
02
A live build
The team builds an agent in the room, on real data, with the security and integration constraints called out as they hit them.
03
Champion-led community
Every city has a local champion who keeps the chapter running between visits, with support and material from Lyzr.
Bengaluru
India · Agent build workshop
Hyderabad
India · FDE field session
Mumbai
India · Enterprise delivery clinic
Delhi NCR
India · Agent build workshop
Pune
India · FDE field session
Chennai
India · Retrieval and graph lab
Ahmedabad
India · Agent build workshop
Kochi
India · FDE field session
Kolkata
India · Agent build workshop
Jaipur
India · Community chapter launch
Dubai
UAE · Next wave
Johannesburg
South Africa · Next wave
Toronto
Canada · Next wave
Your city
Anywhere · Champion applications open
Champion applications are open for every unlisted city.
Join the FDE Collective.
Take the certification online, or walk into a workshop in your city.