Phani Kolanuvada explains how customer-facing AI engineers turn ambiguous enterprise needs into deployed systems, and how candidates can demonstrate the technical judgment and delivery skills employers seek.
Phani Kolanuvada
Senior Director of Forward Deployed Engineering · Salesforce
6Sep
4:00 PM UTC · 60 min
What you’ll explore
1
Understand the job
Recognize the work involved in deploying AI for enterprise customers.
2
Prepare evidence of capability
Connect engineering depth, customer judgment and execution speed to hiring expectations.
3
Plan a transition
Consider entry routes for graduates and experienced technical professionals.
About this session
Phani Kolanuvada explains how customer-facing AI engineers turn ambiguous enterprise needs into deployed systems, and how candidates can demonstrate the technical judgment and delivery skills employers seek.
Guest speaker
Phani Kolanuvada
Senior Director of Forward Deployed Engineering · Salesforce
Phani helped establish Salesforce's FDE organization and expand its customer-facing engineering practice during the generative AI transition.
The Gen Academy
Hosted by Aishwarya Srinivasan and Arvind Narayanamurthy.
Aishwarya Srinivasan
AI Advisor / AI Educator
Aishwarya Srinivasan is the Co-Founder of The Gen Academy and a Developer Relations Lead at Nebius. Her experience spans Fireworks AI, Microsoft for Startups, Google Cloud and IBM, where she worked with developers and businesses on practical AI and machine-learning solutions. She holds a postgraduate degree in Data Science from Columbia University and teaches AI engineering, applied machine learning, generative AI and LLMOps.
Founder @ The Gen Academy | AI Solutions Architect | Ex - Adobe, Microsoft, IBM
Arvind brings a cross-company perspective on AI at scale, built across Microsoft, IBM, and Adobe, where he led data science teams and developed production-grade machine-learning solutions. He has built and deployed enterprise AI systems and focuses on translating AI concepts into practical, production-ready solutions. He holds a Master's from Carnegie Mellon University.
