Salesforce architects are moving into FDE roles, helped by a six-week bootcamp, as the company lists 68 open FDE positions

Salesforce Ben reports that forward deployed engineering has become one of the fastest-growing roles at Salesforce, with 68 open FDE positions on the company's careers site when the piece was written. Some of the new FDEs are boomerang hires returning to the company, and many come from inside, especially from architect roles.

The article profiles Dhruv Thakkar, a former Senior Solution Architect now a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, and Sarah Khalid, a former Senior Success Architect now a Director of Forward Deployed Engineering. Thakkar says working alongside FDEs on an Agentforce proof of concept pushed him to switch, and that the move ran through a six-week bootcamp, including two weeks in person, ending with a capstone where trainees build an AI agent for a realistic customer scenario and present it to experts.

The biggest change he describes is pace: architects can spend weeks on discovery and backlog work before building, while FDEs usually focus on a few high-impact use cases and start building in the first week. Salesforce's FDE job ads ask candidates to own components from architecture choice through production deployment and monitoring.

For engineers weighing the move, this is a concrete picture of an internal path into FDE work at a large vendor: architecture and delivery experience transfers, but the job expects hands-on building from day one.