A forward deployed engineer internship in India is rare under that exact title, but it exists in four places: IT-services FDE academies, Indian AI startups, a few global firms that hire interns into deployment teams, and training institutes that run live-product internships. This guide covers where to look, what interns do, how to apply and how to convert to full-time.
Key takeaways
- Only 12% of FDE postings accept 0 to 2 years of experience, so internships are the main way a student gets the customer-facing exposure the role demands.
- Four sources of FDE internships: Palantir’s US intern and new-grad programs, global firms such as IBM, Indian AI startups, and IT-services academies at EPAM, TCS, Accenture and Coforge.
- FDE Masters runs an internship on live Brolly Software Solutions products such as the RAG Chatbot and Brolly VoxFlow; duration, stipend and selection details are listed on the internship page.
- Interns ship integration code, run evals, prepare demos and write status notes. They do not lead customer calls alone.
- Conversion depends on one deployed deliverable with numbers and one artefact a customer actually used.
Do forward deployed engineer internships exist in India?
A forward deployed engineer (FDE) is an engineer who builds and deploys software, mostly AI systems now, inside a customer’s environment and owns the outcome. Because the job is half customer work, companies hesitate to hand it to students. The Bloomberry analysis of 1,000 FDE postings found only 12% open to 0 to 2 years of experience, and 55% list customer-facing work before any technology.
That is exactly why an internship matters. It is the one way a student gets a real customer deployment on their resume before graduation. If the role is new to you, read what a forward deployed engineer is before you apply anywhere.
Search for the exact title and you will find a handful of listings. Search for “AI engineer intern”, “solutions engineer intern”, “implementation intern” and “GenAI intern” at companies that employ FDEs, and the list grows to dozens. The work is the same; the title is applied later.
Where do FDE internships exist?
Palantir intern and new-grad programs (US)
Palantir created the FDE role and still hires students into it through US internship and new-grad Forward Deployed Software Engineer (FDSE) programs. New-grad FDSE pay is $135K to 145K. These are US-based and extremely competitive; Indian students on US campuses or with work authorisation are the realistic applicants. [PLACEHOLDER: verify whether Palantir runs any India-based intern hiring.]
Global firms with deployment teams (IBM and others)
IBM and similar global technology firms run large India intern programs, and some place interns in client-facing AI delivery or consulting teams that do FDE-style work. Titles vary: “Client Engineering intern”, “AI Solutions intern”, “Consulting by Degrees”. [PLACEHOLDER: verify IBM India FDE or client-engineering internship listings and locations.] Hyderabad and Bengaluru campuses are the usual hosts.
Indian AI startups
Startups that hire FDEs also take interns, usually posted on their own careers pages rather than job boards. Sarvam AI in Bengaluru publishes FDE tracks from 1 to 3 years; Hyderabad-based Turing, Pulsora and Sutherland have posted FDE roles. Cartesia, MongoDB and Coralogix hire FDEs in Bengaluru and Gurgaon. [PLACEHOLDER: verify which of these currently list internships.]
IT-services FDE academies
The largest volume of entry-level forward-deployed AI roles in India is at IT-services firms. EPAM runs a Hyderabad academy with over 3,000 India hires planned in 2026, TCS targets 5,900 to 8,900 forward-deployed AI engineers, Accenture uses the FDE title and launched a ServiceNow FDE program in May 2026, and Coforge has a Momentuum AI FDE unit. Their pre-final-year internships feed these practices, and conversion rates are the highest of any route.
FDE Masters internship on live Brolly products
FDE Masters offers an FDE internship where students work on live products built by Brolly Software Solutions Pvt Ltd, the Hyderabad software company where our lead trainer Lokesh spent a year as an FDE. Interns contribute to products such as the RAG Chatbot (a document-grounded assistant), Brolly VoxFlow (spreadsheet-to-voice outbound call automation with RAG), the Brolly Attendance portal and the Resume Generator.
Duration, stipend and selection are [PLACEHOLDER: internship duration], [PLACEHOLDER: internship stipend] and [PLACEHOLDER: internship selection process]. The internship is open to students and to learners in the FDE Career Program; the campus is near JNTU Metro in Kukatpally.
| Source | Location | Who it suits | Customer exposure | Conversion to FDE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palantir intern and new-grad FDSE | US | Students with US authorisation | High, on site | Direct to FDSE |
| IBM and global firms | Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune [PLACEHOLDER: verify] | Pre-final-year students | Medium, supervised | Into consulting or client-engineering tracks |
| Indian AI startups | Bengaluru, some Hyderabad | Students with a deployed portfolio | High, fast | Case by case; small headcount |
| IT-services academies | Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai | Any branch, campus hiring | Medium | Highest volume; ₹10 to 18 L practices |
| FDE Masters internship | Hyderabad (Kukatpally) and remote | Students and Career Program learners | Live Brolly products, internal and SME customers | Placement assistance via the program |
What do FDE interns actually do?
Interns do the engineering half of the job under supervision and observe the customer half. A typical week on the Brolly VoxFlow product, for example, might include writing the connector that reads a client’s spreadsheet format, adding ten cases to the eval set for the voice script, and preparing the slides for a demo that a senior engineer presents. [PLACEHOLDER: client name and sector.]
- Integration code: connectors, data cleaning, API wrappers for a customer’s systems.
- Evals: extending golden datasets, running RAGAS or promptfoo, reporting regressions.
- Deployment chores: Dockerfiles, GitHub Actions pipelines, Terraform changes reviewed by a senior.
- Customer artefacts: drafting status notes, demo scripts and UAT checklists that a lead edits and sends.
- Shadowing: sitting in discovery and status calls, taking notes, raising questions afterwards.
What interns do not do: lead a discovery call alone, sign off a security review, or push to a customer’s production environment without a reviewer. If an internship offers those on week one, it is understaffed rather than generous.
Want to become a Forward Deployed Engineer in Hyderabad?
The FDE Career Program ends with a live 2-week forward deployment with a Brolly Group business unit or a Digital Brolly SME client, and learners can apply for the FDE Masters internship on live Brolly products. Classroom near JNTU Metro or live online.
How do you apply for an FDE internship?
Treat the application like a small forward deployment: find the customer, understand their problem, show a working artefact. The steps below are what has worked for students we have placed in internships. [PLACEHOLDER: number of interns placed.]
- Build the list. 20 to 30 companies: 5 IT-services academies, 10 to 15 AI startups, 5 global firms, plus institutes with live-product internships. Use the CIEL HR finding that about half of India’s FDE hiring is in Bengaluru and Hyderabad is in the top three to prioritise cities.
- Ship one project that looks like their work. If the company sells a voice agent, build a small voice agent with evals. If they deploy into banks, build a permission-aware RAG app with an audit log.
- Write a two-paragraph message. First paragraph: what you built and the numbers. Second: one specific thing you noticed about their product and how you would help. Link the repo and a 3-minute demo video.
- Prepare for a take-home. Most startups and institutes send a 48-hour task: a small RAG or integration build. Finish it with tests, a README and a cost estimate.
- Interview as if to a customer. Explain your project to the interviewer as though they were the sponsor paying for it. That single habit separates FDE candidates from general software interns.
- Follow up once. Seven days later, one message with any new progress. Then move on to the next company on the list.
What portfolio gets you shortlisted?
Match the stack hiring managers scan for. In the 1,000-posting study, Python appeared in 66% of FDE job descriptions, TypeScript in 35%, AWS in 32%, AI agents in 35% and LLM in 31%. Three deployed projects covering those terms beat ten notebooks.
- A FastAPI service with OIDC login, running in Docker on AWS, with a public URL.
- A RAG assistant over 100 messy PDFs with a 50-question golden set and published RAGAS or promptfoo scores.
- An agent with one MCP server against a ServiceNow or Salesforce developer sandbox and a human approval step, traced in Langfuse.
- One customer artefact: a scoping document, a recorded demo to a non-engineer, or a status note from a college project with a real sponsor.
Our guide on how to become a forward deployed engineer after B.Tech lays out the semester-by-semester plan to build these before final-year placements.
Does an FDE internship convert to a full-time job?
Conversion depends less on the company and more on two things you control: one deployed deliverable with numbers, and one artefact a customer actually used. An intern who can say “my connector processed [PLACEHOLDER: volume] records for [PLACEHOLDER: client] with zero manual fixes, and the status note I drafted went to their COO” gets converted or referred.
IT-services academies convert the highest share, into practices paying roughly ₹10 to 18 L. Startups convert fewer because headcount is small, but a startup intern with a real deployment story is well placed for the junior tracks at Sarvam AI and similar firms. CIEL HR counted 52 Indian organisations hiring FDEs in July 2026, up 130% year on year, against a deployable pool of about 1,200, so converted interns are negotiating from a short-supply position.
Pay after conversion varies by employer tier. The Levels.fyi India median is ₹17.7 L across 12 submissions, Glassdoor’s India average is ₹12.9 to 14.2 L, and CIEL HR’s clients pay ₹35 to 45 L at entry, mostly at product companies. Our FDE salary in India guide compares every public source, and the FDE jobs in Hyderabad post tracks local openings, of which Indeed shows around 75 at any time.
How does FDE Masters fit into the internship route?
The FDE Career Program is designed so a student arrives at an internship interview with the portfolio above already built. Over 18 weeks you complete four graded projects on the Deccan Finance case, present in the Friday Customer Engagement Lab every week, pass a security review before each deploy, and finish with a live 2-week forward deployment. Fees are ₹45,000 online or ₹55,000 classroom, EMI options available, with placement assistance until placed.
Career Program learners can also apply for the FDE Masters internship on live Brolly Software Solutions products, which gives a second real deployment on the resume before the first job application. [PLACEHOLDER: student testimonial – name, batch, company.]
Frequently asked questions
Are forward deployed engineer internships paid in India?
Internships at IT-services firms, global companies and funded AI startups are usually paid, with stipends that vary widely by city and company. Institute-run internships differ; the FDE Masters internship stipend is listed on the internship page as [PLACEHOLDER: internship stipend]. Always confirm the stipend, duration and whether a full-time offer is possible before accepting.
Can a second- or third-year student get an FDE internship?
Yes, if they can already ship a small deployed system. Pre-final-year students are the main intake for IT-services academies, and startups care about the portfolio more than the year of study. A second-year student should spend one semester on Python, SQL, Git and one deployed API before applying, otherwise the take-home task will be the filter.
What is the difference between an FDE internship and a software engineering internship?
A software engineering intern works on the company’s own product with an internal team. An FDE intern works on deploying that product for a specific customer, so the tasks include integration with customer systems, evals against the customer’s data, demo preparation and status notes. The customer-facing exposure is the point, and it is what employers look for later.
Which cities in India have the most FDE internships?
Bengaluru has about half of India’s FDE hiring according to CIEL HR, with Hyderabad in the top three. Hyderabad hosts EPAM’s academy and FDE roles at Turing, Sutherland and Pulsora, plus institute internships such as the FDE Masters internship near JNTU Metro. Gurgaon and Pune have smaller pools centred on MongoDB, Coralogix and IT-services firms.
How do I convert an FDE internship into a full-time offer?
Own one deliverable end to end and get it used by a real customer. Keep numbers: records processed, latency, eval scores, hours saved. Draft at least one customer artefact, such as a status note or demo script, that your lead actually sends. Ask for a conversion conversation in the final two weeks with those three items written up on one page.
Want to become a Forward Deployed Engineer in Hyderabad?
Ask about the FDE Masters internship on live Brolly products and the next Career Program batch. Book a free demo class or message us on WhatsApp.
