At a Vistage session this week, Severin Sorensen named the role he thinks every company will need: the forward deployed engineer. Part business advisor, part builder. Someone who learns how your business actually runs, then turns it into AI workflows your team can repeat.

That person probably isn’t on your payroll. And for a 50 or 500 person company, they don’t need to be.

Two more things he said that every leader should hear going into 2027:

→ Breaking into a company now costs an attacker about $5. Cleaning it up costs around $500K. Plan your security budget with that math in mind.

→ The more you hand AI without structure, the more “assumptioneering” you get instead of engineering. Output that looks good isn’t the same as output that’s right.

That’s the work our experts do. Scope it right, build it with guardrails, and lock it down.

Thanks to Severin for a session full of things we’ll be using at Hivemindd