Martech contracting - Martech Therapy: CDP strategy and agentic AI

What is a forward deployed engineer, and who is paying for the one in your team?

Vendors are embedding their own engineers to build your stack. One Martech company's accounts show the implementation running at a gross margin of 0.08%.

At the Martech World Forum in London this month, Nate Wardwell from Hightouch talked about forward-deployed engineers and described them as a service Hightouch provides that is helping its customers. I wrote it up in my recap and left that question hanging.

Isn't that what independent consultants do?

I went and looked properly.

What I found wasn't really about job titles.

What a forward-deployed engineer actually is

In short, someone the vendor employs, who sits inside your team and builds the thing. Not a trainer, not a support contact, not a consultant who writes a plan

Is Martech work slowing down?

Five conversations, one pattern. What actually slowed martech contract work, what AI changed, and the review problem nobody has priced.

I recently returned from my holiday without some magical Martech insight. What I did pick up was a plethora of LinkedIn posts and private messages from people who have been let go from their positions, or who are sharing their experiences of a perceived drop in Martech-related contract work.

And an announcement from my friend Daniel Heer. More about that later.

In total, a handful of conversations over the last few months, from three different parts of this industry, all describing the same thing.

I will try to tell the story, using some light-hearted references to one of

Posts tagged with Martech contracting

What a forward-deployed engineer actually is