I’m a KPMG forward-deployed engineer. AI has moved my job beyond writing code.

KPMG's Justin Johnsen has been an FDE at the firm for over a year now.

KPMG Justin Johnsen started at KPMG in 2020 as a federal Salesforce developer, writing code by hand.

Over the past year, he switched into a new role as a forward-deployed engineer at KPMG.

His work involves giving AI applications the right context and coaching clients on how to use them.

This is a conversation with Justin Johnsen, the lead technical architect at KPMG.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I joined KPMG six years ago, and I've been a forward-deployed engineer for about a year, working across different clients.

When I started with KPMG as a software engineer , all the code was written by hand.

I studied computer science.

I built my career in architecture and later got into consulting and client work.

A forward-deployed engineer works directly with a client and stays with the problem from understanding the business need through delivering a working solution.

We work directly with client teams, often on-site.

A lot of what I do now is AI.

AI is incredibly capable, but it's really only as good as its context.