How Forward Deployed Engineering is done at Decagon — Sunny Rekhi
Jul 28, 2026 · 18:09
Sunny Rekhi, CTO of Forward Deployed Engineering at Decagon, explains that forward deployed engineering is identical to product engineering, with two kinds of work: configuring the AI agent's brain (instructions and handoff rules) and solving customer asks in a way that scales to all customers. Decagon, which builds 24/7 AI customer service agents, grew from 50 to 500 people in a year, breaking the original role into specialized lanes: agent builders who configure within the UI, and agent software engineers who productize customer requests. Rekhi stresses restraint—avoiding one-off patches—and proving value fast in the first weeks of a partnership. A key ethos is that custom work never stays custom: every integration built for one customer gets upstreamed into the platform, becoming self-serve for the next. Forward deployed engineers also act as advisors, using their cross-customer knowledge to guide enterprises on where they will see the highest ROI based on historical data.
