Bengaluru holds 34% of India's forward deployed engineering talent, report finds

A new report titled The Forward Deployed Engineer Talent Landscape in India, published by training provider FDE Academy and reported by PTI via Mint on November 3, maps where India's forward deployed engineers work. Bengaluru leads with 34% of the talent pool, followed by Hyderabad (14%), Delhi-NCR (13%), Pune (12%) and Mumbai (11%), with Chennai and other cities at 8% each.

By employer type, Big Tech companies employ 38% of FDE professionals, product companies and IT services or consulting firms account for 24% each, and AI-first startups make up the remaining 14%. The report flags Hyderabad as an emerging FDE hub on the back of growing enterprise technology investment.

It also finds that around 70% of FDE professionals have eight years of experience or less, which the authors read as a need to build deeper pools of senior talent. FDE Academy founder and CEO Raghav Gupta said AI deployment needs engineering depth, business understanding and ownership of outcomes in a customer's environment.

For engineers weighing an FDE move in India, the numbers point to Bengaluru and Hyderabad as the densest markets, and to a relatively junior field where experienced deployers are scarce. Note that the source is a training vendor, so treat the figures as one survey rather than official data.