Concepts and technologies are disclosed herein for an application deployment engine. A processor that executes an application deployment engine can receive an application request. The processor can obtain network topology data that indicates availability of resources of a data center, an application template associated with the application, and a running time during which an application placement plan is to be identified out of a large number of placement scenarios within the running time. The application template can describe an application flow path associated with the application. The processor can identify the application placement plan, where the application placement plan can include an optimal placement of the application at the data center, before a given running time expires by pruning the large search space. The processor can generate a command to effect deployment of the application in accordance with the application placement plan.