Forward Deployed Engineers Aren't New. So Why Is Big Tech Spending Billions on Them? With Faith Rees | Ep. 18

Between May and July this year, OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS and Microsoft all put billions of dollars behind the same idea: engineers who sit inside the customer's business and build alongside the people who will use the software. The industry has a name for them, the forward deployed engineer, and a lot of Australian IT leaders are hearing it for the first time. Faith Rees has been running a consultancy on that model for more than a decade. Her view is that the role is not new at all. What has changed is that AI made writing code cheap, so the real constraint is now understanding what should be built. About the guest Faith Rees founded SixPivot in 2015 and runs it today. SixPivot builds software for startups, corporates and government, was ranked second in the AFR Most Innovative Companies 2025 technology list, and is a finalist for AI Initiative of the Year in the CRN Australia Channel Awards. Faith is also co-founder and CEO of Cloud Ctrl, a multi-cloud cost management platform, and she wrote the post that prompted this episode: "The Faster We Build Software, the More the Real Delivery Bottleneck Is Exposed." What this episode covers • What a forward deployed engineer actually is, and how the role differs from the vendor account engineer most IT leaders already know. • Why Faith calls the sudden rush of FDE announcements "rubbish", and why she says any company building software should always have worked this way. • How AI made the coding the easy part, and why teams that move faster without understanding the requirement just create problems faster. • Why the hyperscalers and AI labs are building their own FDE armies, and whether partners really lack the skills or are simply being hired away. • How SixPivot now hires developers, what fails a candidate, and the four camps of developer she sees in AI adoption. • The customer that burnt through a year's AI token budget of a million dollars in a month, and why Faith rates her own AI spend a six out of ten while her developers rate it a nine. • Why Faith would hate to be a developer today, and what developers and their leaders should do about it. • A confession about a pizza franchise ordering system that sent Friday night orders from northern New South Wales to Perth. Who this episode is for • CIOs, CTOs and IT directors being pitched forward deployed engineering by AWS, Microsoft or the AI labs, who want to know what they are actually buying. • Heads of engineering and delivery leaders working out how to structure teams when code is cheap and requirements are the constraint. • Consultancy, MSP and partner leaders whose customers are now being offered the same service direct from the vendor. • Developers and technical leads deciding which skills to build next.    **Show notes** This episode is supported by NinjaOne. Follow Naran McClung on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/Naranmcclung/  Follow Jono Staff on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanstaff/  And don't forget to subscribe and rate the show! We love hearing your thoughts and answering questions.  For all enquiries, contact [pru@thingsreasons.show](mailto:pru@thingsreasons.show)