Ram Prasad

@ASSYSTInc | Business Solutions Leader + Customer Success Advocate + Capture and Growth Accelerator

[Gartner @Gartner_inc]

Gartner’s latest predictions reveal what’s ahead for cybersecurity 🔮

Learn which trends matter most, how past predictions played out, and what every CISO needs to know: https://t.co/86Drth4iFi

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

One of the new, buzzy jobs in Silicon Valley is the AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), an engineer who is embedded within a client organization to help customize solutions, such as building and tuning agentic workflows that suit the client’s particular needs. I’ve heard from people who are wondering anew about the FDE career path since OpenAI and Anthropic started building new teams to place FDEs within client organizations.

The rise of FDEs for AI workloads is one way AI is creating new jobs (and why the jobpolcalypse narrative of upcoming job market collapse is false -- there will be many AI and non-AI jobs). However, I believe there will be far more AI Engineer jobs than FDEs, as I explain below.

The FDE role was pioneered about two decades ago by Palantir, which sent engineers to government locations to work on secure, air-gapped networks. In addition to having good technical skills, FDEs need communication skills and sometimes business skills. For example, they may need to speak with clients to understand their needs, formulate a strategy to prioritize projects, explain complex technology, and respectfully push back if a client asks for something unrealistic. They’re enjoying a resurgence because of the amount of work involved in taking an off-the-shelf LLM and building it into a custom agentic workflow that fits particular business needs.

However, I believe the number of AI Engineer jobs will be far larger. A company might accept a few FDEs to be embedded within its organization. But most companies will want far more of their own employees working on their projects. While my organizations do hire FDEs, we hire far more AI Engineers! Also, a common client concern is that it is hard to find vendor-neutral FDEs — they are, after all, there to deeply integrate a particular vendor’s product into a company. In this moment when it’s hard to predict which AI service will be the best one in a year’s time, optionality (the ability to pick whatever vendor turns out to fit best in the future) is very valuable. In contrast, letting FDEs tightly bind a company’s processes significantly reduces optionality.

Right now, I see surging demand for AI Engineers who can build software applications using AI software components (like LLM prompting, agentic frameworks, evals, etc.) and effectively use AI coding agents (like Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity CLI, and OpenCode). As the AI Engineer role matures, I expect it to fragment into more specialized roles, like the generic Software Engineer role from decades ago fragmented into frontend, backend, mobile, data engineering, devops, and so on.

What will be the future, specialized AI engineering roles? I don’t know. Perhaps there will be AI FDEs, LLMOps Engineers, Evals Engineers, AI Data Engineers, Harness Engineers, and other roles we don’t have names for yet. But for now, I see a lot of AI engineers who are generalists create a lot of value. Skilled AI Engineers are in very high demand! As our field continues to mature over the coming decade, I look forward to new specializations within AI Engineering that create even more job opportunities.

[Original text: The Batch newsletter]

[ASSYST, Inc. @ASSYSTInc]

Today we remember and honor those who gave everything in service.

#memorialday2026

[ASSYST, Inc. @ASSYSTInc]

https://t.co/0rfx8irctW | Booth #130 meet ASSYST at AFCEA Belvoir Industry Days, May 5-7, 2026, Hilton Alexandria, Mark Center, Virginia - #ABID2026 #AFCEA

[Montgomery County MD Office of Procurement @MoCoProcure]

Registration is OPEN for our annual Vendor Connection Summit on April 22 in Silver Spring! Meet with County departments, Prime Contractors, local procurement offices and more! https://t.co/WUoQLz829O @MontgomeryCoMD @MoCoCouncilMD

[MeriTalk @MeriTalk]

NEW: #ATO delays aren’t just technical – they’re cultural, federal cybersecurity leaders from OMB, @NIST, and @USDA say, pointing to risk aversion and slow decision-making.

https://t.co/AwMh8i4l51

[Naval @naval]

It’s not about junior vs senior, it’s about “good with AI” vs “not good with AI.”

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

https://t.co/grMHvDb7JK

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

https://t.co/TNWCy9PJrQ

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

https://t.co/4UpyG3MGL4 | Phoenix – AI Software Factory to Build What's Next AI powered Software Engineering for Rapid , Secure and Mission solutions

@ASSYSTInc #ai #vibecoding

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

Win with ASSYST - https://t.co/1RFXAQH1o4 | Together, we create opportunities that drive mission success, unlock growth, and build lasting impact.

#GovTech #ai

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

https://t.co/zb1iiBdkqZ #ai

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

#2026

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

ASSYST Tech Radar for 2026
https://t.co/lYHXhkses1

@ASSYSTInc

[MeriTalk @MeriTalk]

As agencies enter 2026, executives from some of the federal government’s top IT and service vendors predict that federal #technology success will hinge less on adopting new tools and more on operational foundations.👀
https://t.co/xPPjz5ZCEt

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

https://t.co/3lZ3KSpDPK

[ASSYST, Inc. @ASSYSTInc]

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at ASSYST!
#thanksgiving2025

[MeriTalk @MeriTalk]

NEW: The @DHSgov and its @CISAgov component announced the official beginning of #Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025.
https://t.co/g1jbzUGqYk

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

Very inspiring, team @ASSYSTInc is helping agencies to get #AgenticAI right...

[ASSYST, Inc. @ASSYSTInc]

https://t.co/FsNuymeQQP - Pathways for Deployable Agentic AI Solutions
#agenticai #aiFirst #aiml #cybersecurity #finance #healthIT

[Ram Prasad @Ram_Prasad]

https://t.co/o3p6ij1mIL #AgenticAutomation #AgenticAI #MCP