Do You Need Forward Deployed Engineers? 5 Signals from New Relic Now
Blog post from New Relic
Forward deployed engineers (FDEs) are emerging as key partners for enterprises adopting AI, combining deep platform expertise with customer business knowledge to translate advanced technology into measurable outcomes. The article argues that effective AI agents require the same contextual access and onboarding as human employees, including connections to operational telemetry and systems of record, while continuous evaluations should be built around each agent’s intended business goal and updated as models, applications, and connectors change. It presents AI adoption as an ongoing organizational evolution involving people, processes, and autonomous systems rather than a one-time technology decision. Citing increased AI-generated code and production incidents, the piece emphasizes observability as essential for ensuring agents are accurate, reliable, cost-efficient, and aligned with business policies. New Relic positions its AI observability offerings, including evaluations, prompt operations, Ground Truth, and Autopilot SRE agents, as tools for monitoring agent behavior, identifying regressions, maintaining human oversight, and demonstrating value after FDE engagements conclude.
| Trend | Post Mentions | Total Month Mentions | Posts | Companies | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observability | 9 | 3,060 | 732 | 183 | +11% |
| AI Agents | 4 | 6,921 | 1,636 | 267 | +23% |
| MCP | 2 | 11,794 | 1,209 | 231 | +11% |
| AI Coding Assistant | 1 | 1,951 | 537 | 146 | +22% |
| Developer Experience | 1 | 486 | 263 | 70 | -24% |
| OpenTelemetry | 1 | 846 | 169 | 64 | +19% |
| Vector Search | 1 | 1,956 | 410 | 132 | +17% |
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