Today, AI makes this model dramatically more relevant. Because modern AI systems are not static products. They are evolving operational systems tightly connected to: business processes , human workflows , internal knowledge infrastructure constraints , organizational behavior, data quality , trust and adoption. The challenge is no longer just building software. It is integrating intelligence into messy real-world environments. That requires engineers who can move across abstraction layers: technical implementation , product reasoning , operational understanding , workflow design , systems thinking , customer context. This is exactly the terrain where Forward Deployed Engineers operate