‘What we are really seeking to do here is build the bench of frontier deployed engineers in these customers and partners,’ says Anthropic’s Shambhavi.
Anthropic is investing $100 million into a Claude Frontier Academy program to train people at solution providers and customer organizations on the artificial intelligence product, with a goal of training 10,000 engineers by the end of 2027 through a 12-week residency program.
That program, the Frontier Deployed Engineer (FDE) Residency, is only the first for the San Francisco-based AI vendor’s academy. Anthropic already has engineers from solution providers Accenture, Bain & Co., Capgemini and Deloitte among its participants. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Morgan Stanley and Novo Nordisk have engineers in the program as well.
However, the program is meant for solution providers of various sizes, including boutiques, not just global systems integrators, Shambhavi (pictured), Anthropic’s head of go-to-market strategy and operations for partnerships, told CRN in an interview. The vendor also seeks partners with a variety of industry expertise.
“What we are really seeking to do here is build the bench of frontier deployed engineers in these customers and partners so that they can drive the outcomes and really put themselves to work on frontier work,” Shambhavi said.
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The residency, now in early access, has cohorts in San Franciso, New York and London, according to the vendor. Organizations interested in receiving a nomination to participate should check eligibility with their Anthropic account team.
Ram Ramalingam, the lead for software and platform engineering at Accenture—No. 1 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500—said in a statement that the residency mirrors Anthropic’s own definition of the FDE role, where the engineer is assessed based on simulated enterprise deployment, not siloed technical skills.
“At Accenture, forward deployed engineers translate AI ambition into enterprise-wide impact, working inside client workflows as part of multidisciplinary teams that engineer AI concepts into production-ready, governed solutions built to scale,” Ramalingam said. “Joining the early access program will deepen our engineers’ Claude expertise and accelerate the value we deliver for our clients.”
What Is Anthropic’s Claude Frontier Academy?
The Claude Frontier Academy aims to train enterprises and consulting partners in hands-on Claude skills, with solution providers a continued important partnership for Anthropic because they know end users’ systems, data and constraints, according to Anthropic.
Academy programs are built on Anthropic’s own work deploying Claude with customers. And participants take a practical assessment at the end of the program.
The academy reflects AI reaching a level of maturity where organizations can redesign business processes around the technology instead of simply leveraging Claude to improve existing ways of working, according to the vendor.
Anthropic also expects the academy to expand over time to roles beyond engineering, including executives and knowledge workers, according to the vendor.
How Anthropic’s Frontier Deployed Engineer Residency Works
The FDE Residency’s goal is to train engineers on taking Claude use cases from ideas to agentic systems that run in production inside the organization, according to Anthropic.
The residency program takes inspiration from the medical field, with FDE residents learning from practitioners, practicing on realistic cases and receiving credentials after they pass assessments, according to the vendor. Engineers in the program will learn to lead Claude use cases at their organizations from start to finish, including building on company data and going through security reviews.
Participating organizations will nominate hands-on senior software engineers, with residents picked based on engineering fundamentals understanding, communication skills, experience with building through LLMs, experience with helping others adopt AI and other criteria.
The residents don’t need prior experience building AI agents, but each nominee needs a named Claude project to lead once they are back at the organization, according to Anthropic.
“One of the signals or pieces of feedback that we’ve consistently gotten as we’ve tried to build this has been that applying [Claude to actual work projects] is what makes this real,” Shambhavi said. “That’s really what’s at the heart of it.”
The residency breaks down into three days in person with Anthropic engineers and licensed instructors. Participants work through simulated enterprise deployments, with the fourth day dedicated to completing a graded practical on a new scenario and participants receiving Claude FDE Resident status.
In the 12-week residency, participants work on real Claude use cases, leading the work at their organizations with cohort-based Anthropic engineer support, according to the vendor. At the end of the residency, participants can earn Claude Frontier Deployed Engineer badges if they pass an assessment. The first badges should come in early 2027.
Anthropic Certifications Top 175,000 As Ecosystem Expands
Alongside the new training opportunities, Anthropic revealed updated milestones in its ecosystem.
The vendor has now reached more than 175,000 Claude certifications issued to professionals across 46,000 companies. About 4,000 people have completed Anthropic’s Basecamp immersive program aimed at training participants on curriculum used by Anthropic applied AI workers.
The Claude Academy online learning platform Anthropic launched last month has drawn about 8 million visitors. The platform has 27 courses and 426 lessons so far.
In August, Anthropic had about 85,000 total certifications issued across nearly 2,000 partner companies.
The vendor also had at the time about 75,000 certified consultants in its ecosystem, a major jump from the 36,000 across 1,300 organizations disclosed in July and the 10,000 reported in June.
