Infinum’s new Forward Deployed Engineering Academy doesn’t train students to code better. It trains them to be the person clients can’t do without as AI reshapes how business gets done – a profile increasingly in demand and almost nowhere structured to build. For the best candidates, it doesn’t stop at the internship.
The entry-level hiring freeze in tech is real. Companies across the industry have pulled back from juniors at exactly the moment the job description fundamentally changed.
Code generation tools have advanced fast enough to reset what “junior developer” means, and the skills that now matter most – communicating under ambiguity, thinking architecturally, understanding business context, working AI-natively – aren’t taught in most programs or picked up on a typical internship.
The result is a paradox that’s both obvious and largely ignored: technically capable graduates can’t find work, and companies can’t find the people they actually need.
We think that gap can be closed. It just takes the right structure.
We’ve launched a new format of the Infinum Academy: the Forward Deployed Engineering Academy. The paid 12-week internship is created to build the kind of engineer the market increasingly can’t find – because almost no one is set up to develop this kind of talent.
Training for the role, not the title
The new Academy format is built around a specific profile: the Forward Deployed Engineer. It’s a role that’s been growing in demand at leading tech companies, particularly those working with large organizations on AI implementation.
An FDE isn’t someone who waits for a spec. They understand the technology and the business context well enough to show a client what’s possible – sometimes before the client has articulated what they need.
The profile demands solid engineering foundations, above-average communication skills, and a pragmatic problem-solving instinct. At Infinum, our view is that these qualities can be developed faster than most people think – if the environment is designed for it. The Academy is.
Clients increasingly come to us asking how to integrate AI into their operations. The right answer to that question is often not just technical, but strategic. They need a partner who understands their business well enough to help them frame the right question and then define the solution. That’s exactly the profile we’re building.
NIKOLA KAPRALJEVIĆ
CEO, INFINUM
Built by people who went through it themselves
Participants rotate through three technical teams – frontend, backend, design – over 12 weeks. The curriculum combines hands-on project work with a dedicated AI-native development track to learn Infinum’s way of working from day one: how to think, collaborate, and build in an environment where AI is assumed.
“Some of the mentors running the program are Infinum Academy alumni, which is one of the most important things we can tell you about this program,” says Matej Špoler, CTO and co-founder of Infinum.
We’re not investing in this because it’s the trend right now – we’ve been doing this for a decade. We see from our own experience that connecting technology and business understanding will become the most valuable skill in our industry. We want to deliberately invest in rare, high-potential talent and build them into exceptional engineers over the long term – the way we’ve done many times before.
MATEJ ŠPOLER
CTO, INFINUM
The ambition behind the program is real. So are the expectations – and so are the opportunities that follow for those who meet them.
A real chance to stay
The program runs in Infinum’s Zagreb office, with breaks built in around exam periods. The internship is paid. That’s a deliberate signal: if we’re asking someone to commit a minimum of 30 hours a week, serious investment goes in both directions.
Top performers at the end of the program get the opportunity to join Infinum, making the internship an audition for a role that actually exists – at a company that is actively building its AI transformation consulting practice and is part of the OpenAI Partner Network.
Interested? Applications for the first cohort are open until September 10. Full details and application requirements are available at the link.