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How AI Is Changing the Work Behind the Work

When nominations for EPAM Systems’ special pay program reach Larry Solomon’s desk, the case for each name tends to sound the same: this person holds the certifications, that one finished the training.Solomon, the SVP and chief people officer at EPAM Systems, answers with a question of his own. “Okay, how many hours have they billed to a client?” His question captures how AI is changing EPAM, a company many know for IT outsourcing. EPAM, a software engineering and IT services firm, employs more than 60,000 people, and its clients now ask for more than code. They want process redesign, with AI embedded in how their people work and learn.“AI is not only about technology,” Solomon said. “You can’t just open up an AI box, and everything works.” Solomon discussed how those changes are affecting everything from recruiting and pricing to the future of HR itself during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Philadelphia conference, in conversation with Joseph DiStefano, a staff writer covering business news at the Philadelphia Inquirer.The Forward-Deployed Engineer BoomFew job titles in technology are growing faster than the forward-deployed engineer. Postings for the role rose by more than 1,000% between January and August 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to data from Lightcast, as reported by Fortune.Solomon describes the position as, in most cases, a senior engineer embedded in the customer’s processes, someone who understands technology, knows the client’s industry in depth, has solid change management and strong relationship skills, and “understands how to accelerate transformational solutions for their client to deliver transformational outcomes.” “It’s a hybrid role,” he said.“You’re really describing people who are pretty close to managers,” DiStefano added. Solomon agreed. EPAM competes with Microsoft, Anthropic, and Google for them, he says, and candidates generally want pay packages well above the norm. The company pairs recruiting with upskilling because “there’s no better source of talent than taking your own raw material and trying to upskill the people that we have.”Titles inflate easily, however. The real test, he says, is time spent working with clients. “If they’re not actively working with a client, delivering value on a day-to-day basis, then to me that’s not a real forward-deployed engineer. That could be a forward-deployed engineer in the making.”The standard flows from a principle EPAM calls client centricity. “When you wake up in the morning, you need to focus on your client,” he said. The client may be a paying customer or, for a recruiter, the hiring manager. Solomon wants HR built the same way, with forward-deployed HR leaders who understand technology and the industry they serve.From Hourly Billing to Shared OutcomesAI is changing how EPAM charges its clients, and whom it hires. Solomon pointed to “tokenomics,” a term he says is spreading quickly. “What it refers to is keeping track of and accounting for the cost of the tokens that run the LLMs and the AI technology, and those costs are starting to become a big, big issue with companies,” he said.Larry Solomon, SVP & Chief People Officer at EPAM Systems, spoke during the fireside chat in PhiladelphiaEPAM built much of its business on staff augmentation, billing on a time-and-materials basis. It is now moving toward different pricing models: fixed price, fixed price with an incentive, or a shared return.In a hypothetical Solomon offered, the client pays a third to cover EPAM’s fixed costs, a third on milestones, and a final third tied to results that may take one to three years to materialize. “That’s a type of gain sharing, which is the proverbial win-win because we’re able to cover our fixed costs, and then we’re delivering based on outcomes,” he said.The same arithmetic applies inside the company. “AI allows an organization to scale without increasing the expenses at the same rate of growth,” Solomon added. As EPAM begins budgeting for next year, he’s challenging its leaders to support the company’s growth while keeping costs flat or near flat.No Opting Out for HRSolomon, who is responsible for about 3,000 people, put his global people team through an AI boot camp that he has also completed. Using these AI tools is “not optional,” he said. “AI is not an add-on. It doesn’t mean doing your normal work the way you were doing it years ago, and then doing an hour or two at the end of the day of training or experimentation or something like that.”Solomon says he is not a technical person, yet he prepared for his fireside chat with DiStefano with EPAM’s Copilot and Claude, which produced outlines and topics “in 10 minutes instead of 10 hours.”When he asked who was losing sleep over AI replacing HR jobs, a few hands in the audience went up. “I do not think AI will replace HR roles,” he asserted. However, he sees the risk for those who refuse to experiment with artificial intelligence. AI is a threat only “if you’re not willing to embrace it and you’re not willing to work some extra hours and learn it, and play with it in a little sandbox and experiment and fail and force yourself to get out of your comfort zone.”The reward is time. For decades, HR teams have asked to do less operational work and more business partnering. Solomon says AI tools finally make it possible, taking over routine tasks to “allow HR professionals to spend more time with their people doing those more value-added, personalized experiences” in recruiting, compensation, performance management, and succession planning.Training as a Permanent FunctionWhen asked by DiStefano whether the surge in training is temporary, Solomon says he expects the function to keep growing. He defines the company by that habit more than by its services.“I refer to it as a learning organization because that’s what it’s all about. It’s about learning. It’s about sponging up everything you possibly can,” Solomon said. “And at the end of the day, if you can take away one thing that you’ve learned, or at the end of the week, then you’ve been successful in your role.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)