‘Most likely, one-third of our organization will fit the FDE model in the next year. We want to walk the walk,’ says Caylent CEO Val Henderson.
Caylent is ahead of the game when it comes to forward deployed engineering (FDE), already saving customers millions of dollars thanks to its 125 FDE employees and tight Anthropic and Amazon Web Services partnerships.
“Most likely, one-third of our organization will fit the FDE model in the next year. We want to walk the walk,” said Caylent CEO Val Henderson.
“The easy thing is to just say, ‘OK, we’re going to slap an FDE title on this person.’ The thing that both AWS and Caylent do differently, is really diving deep on what skillset is needed,” Henderson said.
Henderson pictures FDEs like a Venn diagram that drives AI return on investment (ROI).
“So it’s engineering excellence, so a deep understanding of the technical platforms; a high level of AI fluency; and then a very high customer IQ. Those three, in the middle, that’s where an FDE sits,” she said.
Caylent FDEs Save Financial Firm Millions
Financial communications compliance firm Smarsh partnered with Caylent and AWS to transform its software development lifecycle with generative AI.
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Caylent leveraged its FDEs to build an agentic software development lifecycle framework for Smarsh on Amazon Bedrock, embedding Claude Code across the entire delivery lifecycle for code generation, automated testing, documentation synthesis, and security review.
In year one, the framework freed up to $10 million in engineering and product capacity, which was reinvested directly into innovation.
Smarsh’s test coverage increased by upwards of 30 percent, while defect escape rates were cut by 40 percent.
Smarsh product managers can now use AI to help generate and refine requirements, clarify problem statements, and align outcomes with outputs, while the company’s engineers use AI to support specification development, code changes, test generation and long-running autonomous tasks.
“Smarsh had clarity on what they were trying to achieve in both strategy, but also: budget, numbers, PnL (profit and loss),” said Henderson.
“My advice to customers is always take one step back so you can jump three yards ahead. That’s not always comfortable because they’re being told ‘Go faster. Do more things. You’re behind.’ But in order to actually attain the ROI like Smarsh did, saving millions of dollars on their process, you do have to do that,” she said.
How Caylent Is Winning Customers With FDE
Having to rework a client’s workflows and operating model via FDEs takes time but is worth the ROI.
“When our FDEs are embedded, it is a ‘Let’s take it down to the foundation. Let’s understand what the workflows are. Why the workflows are that way. And how do we break that down into pieces and change along the way,’” she said. “If you do not rework the workflows and the operating model, it’s going to take even longer.”
Since Smarsh was willing to disrupt its own business to break itself down to be built back up, the company’s AI ROI reached $10 million in one year.
Another key driving sales and AI win for Caylent is the company’s go-to-market strategy of meeting with all the lines of business.
“Caylent, for many years, sold into the CIO, the CTO, and no one else,” Henderson said. “But now we are working with all parts of the business.”
“So people coming in and understanding the foundation, the infrastructure and what’s needed and that context actually makes us better at being able to drive the AI ROI. When you’re just trying to come in saying, ‘OK, slap on this AI technology, or this platform or a product, on top of what exists’—you’re not going to get the leverage,” the CEO said.
The result for Caylent customers leveraging FDEs is typically faster software delivery, improved engineering efficiency, and stronger collaboration between product and engineering teams.
Caylent’s 125 FDEs And Growing
Irvine, Calif.-based Caylent is an AWS Premier Partner and operates a dedicated Anthropic consulting and engineering business unit.
The company currently has around 125 FDEs but plans to have an additional 200 Caylent architects and engineers transition into FDE roles with the proper training in the near future.
“So as we built our training program and our badge program, that’s how we’re thinking about it: Where are there gaps within the individuals that want to move into that FDE role, and how do we train them and enable them and put them in the right situations to get that skill,” she said.
Henderson said she wants Caylent “to be the place that every technologist and FDE wants to join.”
