NAVER Cloud's FDE head says its team grew to dozens in a year, starting work before any RFP exists

NAVER Cloud's head of technical support and forward deployed engineering told Korean outlet Edaily that the company first assumed customers would make good use of AI once it installed infrastructure and models in their data centers. That did not work, he said, and the lesson led NAVER Cloud to build an FDE organization, which has grown to several dozen people over about a year.

He drew a sharp line between FDE work and traditional system integration. In SI, a customer writes an RFP and a vendor builds to fixed requirements. NAVER Cloud's FDEs instead meet CEOs and CTOs before any RFP exists, help define which problems AI should solve, then work on site with real data, sometimes showing a revised prototype the same afternoon. Engagements range from weekly visits to near-permanent residence, and FDEs working in defense go through security clearance to work inside military units on closed networks.

The company currently staffs teams that combine consulting, development and AI specialists rather than relying on one all-round engineer, and recruits mainly from inside NAVER and its affiliates. Asked about compensation, the executive said FDE pay should be improved and that he is discussing it with the CEO. The article notes NAVER Cloud has no formal, quantified case study yet showing time or cost savings from FDE work.

For FDEs, this is another large Asian cloud vendor treating forward deployment as its own career track, with regulated, air-gapped sectors as the main draw and pay openly flagged as unfinished business.