The Rise of the Internal FDE
StackOne x Aura Talks
Over the last 12 months, one of the most talked about roles in AI has been the Forward Deployed Engineer. The idea was: engineers working directly with customers, understanding their problems first hand, and building bespoke AI solutions that create immediate value.
As that conversation has developed, we're starting to see a similar pattern emerging inside companies. Rather than deploying AI for customers, organisations are beginning to hire teams of AI Engineers whose customers are internal. Their job is to work across the business, identify repetitive workflows, operational bottlenecks and opportunities for automation, before building AI agents and internal tooling that fundamentally change how teams work.
To give this a name, we have seen companies refer to this as the Internal FDE.
Unlike traditional software engineering, these engineers spend as much time understanding the business as they do writing code. They work directly with finance, sales, operations, people teams and customer success, identifying high-impact problems before designing and deploying bespoke AI solutions.
With increasingly capable models, MCP, better integration infrastructure and platforms that make enterprise systems significantly easier to connect, the cost of building internal AI products has fallen considerably.
The challenge comes with deciding where these roles can create real value, how these teams should operate, and what great looks like. That's what we'll be discussing in this event.
The Session
This event is hosted in partnership with StackOne, whose platform provides the integration infrastructure that allows AI agents to securely connect with enterprise software and take real actions across business systems.
Rather than individual presentations, this will be a panel discussion bringing together some of the people already building internal AI products inside high-growth technology companies.
The panel will be hosted by Guillaume, Co-Founder & CTO at StackOne.
Guillaume Lebedel - Co-Founder & CTO, StackOne - Host
Guillaume is Co-Founder and CTO of StackOne, building the integration infrastructure that allows AI agents to securely connect with and take action across enterprise software. Having previously built technology at Oracle and Yieldify, he brings a particularly relevant perspective on the infrastructure required to move AI agents from demos into real business workflows.
Filippo Chiari - VP Data & AI, ASOS
Filippo leads Data & AI at ASOS, spanning areas including its Agentic organisation, AI Studio and Applied Science. With more than 20 years' experience across AI, data and technology, he brings the perspective of someone working through how AI is actually deployed and scaled inside a large global organisation.
Huss El-Sheikh - Co-Founder & CTO, 9fin
Huss is Co-Founder and CTO of 9fin, the AI-native debt markets platform that raised a $170m Series C at a $1.3bn valuation earlier this year. Before founding 9fin he worked in trading technology at Deutsche Bank, and has since built and scaled 9fin's technology organisation from an early-stage start-up into a global fintech unicorn - giving him a strong perspective on building AI-native products, teams and ways of working at scale.
Olga Pirog - Founder & CEO, Renaissance AI
Olga is the Founder & CEO of Renaissance AI, building the intelligence layer for AI adoption in enterprise businesses. Prior to this, she was the Head of Data & AI Transformation at IG Group, giving her a unique perspective of being in the role we will be discussing, as well as working with companies to enable AI across their workforce.
Together we'll explore:
- Is the Internal Forward Deployed Engineer becoming a real role?
- How do companies identify the highest leverage AI opportunities internally?
- What makes a great internal AI product?
- How do you balance speed of experimentation with governance and security?
- Where should AI Engineers sit inside an organisation?
- What skills separate the best AI Engineers from great software engineers?
- What does the next generation of AI teams actually look like?
The discussion will be practical rather than theoretical, with speakers sharing real examples of how they've introduced AI into their organisations, what worked, what failed, and what they'd do differently.
The Format
6:00pm – Food & drinks
6:30pm (sharp) – Panel discussion
7:15pm – Audience Q&A
7:30pm onwards – Networking
Who's in the room
CIOs, AI Leaders and Engineering teams building internal AI tools inside London's most ambitious companies.
This is a small, invite-only evening designed for people building the next generation of AI products inside their organisations.
Places are intentionally limited to keep the discussion interactive and high quality.