A couple of months back, the global tech industry was shaken when Microsoft offered voluntary retirement to about 9,000 longtime employees, closely following 15,000 forced job cuts last year. Just a week later, the same company announced it was hiring 6,000 new employees into its newly minted AI consulting arm, Microsoft Frontier Company. The role? Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs). \| Photo: iStock/ Getty Images

Published - July 22, 2026 03:56 pm IST