Amazon launches $1B AI engineering unit to help customers build agentic AI faster

Amazon is putting $1 billion behind a new AWS engineering organization that will place AI experts directly inside customer teams for weeks at a time, betting that hands-on support will speed up enterprise adoption of agentic AI.

The initiative, announced Tuesday, creates a new division inside Amazon Web Services focused on forward-deployed engineering. The group will send small teams of engineers to work alongside customers for up to 45 days, helping them build AI applications, integrate large language models into existing systems, and move projects from prototypes into production.

The move reflects a growing shift across the AI industry. Selling powerful models is no longer enough. Enterprise customers increasingly want experienced engineers who can help solve technical roadblocks, connect AI tools with existing software, and deliver measurable business results.

“We have a ton of demand for customers who are asking for our help to really drive agentic AI patterns in their workflows,” said Francessca Vasquez, AWS vice president of frontier AI engineering and services, in an interview before the announcement.

Amazon bets on engineers, not just AI models

Amazon plans to launch the effort with five or six engineering pods that will embed directly with customers. Each engagement is expected to last about 45 days, Reuters reported.

Forward-deployed engineers differ from traditional consultants. They write production-grade code, work directly with customer teams, and help organizations overcome technical and organizational hurdles that often slow AI deployments.

Success, Amazon says, will be measured by how quickly customers can launch new products or build internal AI capabilities.

“We want to make sure that these customers get value in faster durations than what they’ve traditionally seen in project-based activity,” Vasquez said.

Initial customers include the National Basketball Association and Ricoh.

AWS joins an increasingly competitive field

Amazon is entering a market that already includes several established players.

Palantir has built much of its enterprise reputation around forward-deployed engineers, using the model for more than a decade to help customers implement complex software in government and commercial environments.

Other AI companies, including Google Cloud, Anthropic, and Salesforce, have introduced similar customer-facing engineering teams as enterprises seek more hands-on guidance with AI deployments.

The shift has picked up speed in recent months. In May, Google expanded its own Forward Deployed Engineer program as part of a newly created AI organization inside Google Cloud’s go-to-market division. The move reflected a growing belief across the industry that enterprise AI adoption depends as much on experienced engineers working alongside customers as it does on the underlying AI models.

The strategy reflects a broader change in enterprise AI spending. Many companies have discovered that buying access to a powerful model is only one part of the challenge. Deploying AI across large organizations often requires engineers who can adapt models to existing workflows, integrate internal data sources, and help teams adopt new ways of working.

One of the hottest jobs in AI

The hiring push comes at a time when many technology companies continue to reduce headcount in other parts of their businesses.

Amazon has eliminated more than 30,000 corporate jobs since October. At the same time, AWS says it expects the new AI engineering organization to grow into the thousands, filling positions through a mix of external hiring and internal transfers.

Demand for forward-deployed engineers has surged across the industry. Box CEO Aaron Levie wrote in a LinkedIn post in May that forward-deployed engineers are “about to become one of the most in-demand jobs in tech.”

LinkedIn reported earlier this year that demand for forward-deployed engineers and similar positions increased 42-fold between 2023 and 2025, highlighting how companies are shifting hiring priorities as AI adoption accelerates.

AWS looks to speed enterprise AI adoption

Amazon unveiled the new organization during a two-day AWS customer event in Washington, where the company is expected to announce additional cloud offerings aimed at government customers.

The $1 billion investment signals that Amazon sees customer execution, not just model performance, as a major competitive advantage in enterprise AI.

As businesses move beyond experimentation and begin deploying AI across core operations, vendors are racing to prove they can deliver working systems instead of software licenses. Amazon is betting that putting engineers inside customer organizations will help close that gap and deepen AWS relationships at a time when competition for enterprise AI workloads continues to intensify.