Who designs
Consultants
Our signature engagement
Forward deployed engineering
Senior engineers embedded with your team, owning the outcome.
Overview
A forward deployed engineer works where the problem lives. We join your team, sit with the people who do the work, and turn loosely defined problems into software that runs in production.
It's part consulting and part engineering, but unlike either, we stay accountable for the outcome.
01
How it works
Embed
We join your team and learn the workflow first hand, including the workarounds nobody wrote down.
Narrow
Short discovery workshops and a quick prototype on sample data, then a proposal for the slice that unlocks everything else. Often that slice is smaller than the original ask, and more valuable.
Ship
We build to production standard alongside your engineers: code, infrastructure, evaluation and monitoring. Releases are small and frequent.
Measure
We compare results with the baseline we agreed at the start, and iterate on what the numbers say.
Hand over
Your team runs it. We leave behind the templates, scaffolding and pipelines that make the next problem faster.
02
Good fit when
- The problem matters, but it's loosely defined.
- The work crosses business, data and engineering boundaries.
- You need a working result in weeks, not a plan in months.
- You want your own team stronger at the end, not dependent on us.
- Previous attempts produced a deck or a demo, but nothing in production.
03
How it compares
Traditional consulting
Who builds
Someone else, later
Who owns the outcome
You
Where we sit
Workshops and reports
How it ends
A recommendation
Resource augmentation
Who designs
Your team
Who builds
We do, to your spec
Who owns the outcome
You
Where we sit
In your backlog
How it ends
When the contract ends
Forward deployed engineering
Who designs
We do, with you
Who builds
We do, with you
Who owns the outcome
Shared, and measured
Where we sit
With your users and engineers
How it ends
A hand-over, with your team running it
Forward deployed engineering
Compared with traditional consulting and resource augmentation.
Who designs
We do, with you
- Consulting
- Consultants
- Augmentation
- Your team
Who builds
We do, with you
- Consulting
- Someone else, later
- Augmentation
- We do, to your spec
Who owns the outcome
Shared, and measured
- Consulting
- You
- Augmentation
- You
Where we sit
With your users and engineers
- Consulting
- Workshops and reports
- Augmentation
- In your backlog
How it ends
A hand-over, with your team running it
- Consulting
- A recommendation
- Augmentation
- When the contract ends
04
What you get
- Production software that changes a real workflow
- Outcomes measured against an agreed baseline
- Reusable assets: templates, scaffolding, pipelines and evaluation suites
- Documentation, runbooks and a team that can carry on without us
05
Typical engagement
Typical engagement
8 to 12 week phases, renewed on results
Commercials
Time and materials or capped fee per phase
Practices and technology
Have a problem worth solving properly?
Tell us what you're working on. We'll reply within two business days with honest thoughts on whether, and how, we can help.