Bengaluru accounts for 34% of India's Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) talent, making it the country's largest hub, according to a report by FDE Academy. Hyderabad follows with 14%, while Delhi NCR accounts for 13%.
The findings highlight the concentration of India's AI deployment workforce in established technology centres, alongside growing demand for professionals who combine engineering expertise, customer engagement, and enterprise problem-solving.
The report also examines hiring requirements and salary benchmarks across FDE roles.
“AI deployment requires a combination of engineering depth, business understanding and the ability to take ownership of outcomes in a customer’s environment,” said Raghav Gupta, Founder and CEO of FDE Academy. “As organisations move beyond pilots, access to this combination of skills will become increasingly important.”
Together, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi NCR account for 61% of India's FDE talent. Pune and Mumbai contribute 12% and 11%, respectively, while Chennai and other cities account for 8% each.
This concentration highlights the importance of established technology centres in meeting demand for professionals who can move AI solutions from experimentation to production.
The report found that 38% of FDE professionals work in Big Tech companies, while product companies and IT services and consulting firms each account for 24%.
AI-first startups make up the remaining 14% of the talent pool. Around 70% of FDE professionals have eight years of experience or less, highlighting the need to develop deeper pools of experienced talent as enterprise AI adoption expands.
Customer and consulting capabilities feature in 98% of FDE job postings analysed, followed by core engineering skills at 94% and cloud and AI operations at 84%. Employers are also moving beyond conventional coding assessments, using deployment case studies, system design interviews, client simulations and portfolio reviews to evaluate candidates.
The report places indicative median annual salaries for field-deployed AI builders between Rs 32 lakh for professionals with zero to three years of experience and Rs 1.55 crore for those with more than 15 years of experience.
It also found that transformation, governance and risk roles are the highest hiring priority for 28% of employer respondents, although only 18% of professionals expressed a preference for this career path.
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