A demo works on clean data. A deployment has to work on the customer's data, systems and politics. We recruit the engineers who close that gap and bring what they learn back to your product.
Start a searchStrong forward deployed engineers often carry other titles: solutions engineer, implementation engineer, customer engineer, technical consultant, or a product engineer at a startup who spent most days with customers. Some are former founders. We map candidates by what they have deployed for real customers, then reach them with a specific reason to talk.
Interviewing for this role? Use our AI engineer interview questions that test judgment.
We turn the hiring manager's real bar into a behavioural scorecard: what great looks like in the first 90 days, which trade-offs matter, and which signals on a CV are noise.
AI tooling maps the market, including engineers who are not on job boards and people whose titles do not match what they actually build.
Every candidate who is advanced or rejected is reviewed by a person. Shortlists come with written reasoning you can audit, not a black-box score.
Structured interviews and behavioural assessment test judgment, ownership and how someone ships under ambiguity, which is what separates strong AI engineers from strong interviewers.
A forward deployed engineer, or FDE, is a software engineer who works directly with customers to deploy and adapt a product in their environment. At AI companies the work usually means connecting models to customer data and systems, building evaluations for the customer's use case, and getting a pilot into production.
A solutions engineer usually supports the sale with demos and proofs of concept. A forward deployed engineer usually owns delivery after the deal, writing production code with the customer. The titles overlap and companies use them differently, so we calibrate on the work rather than the label.
Usually when customers need hands-on work to reach production, and founders or core engineers are spending too much of their time on it. Before you hire, decide who owns the customer relationship and how field learning reaches the product team.
We ask candidates to walk through a real deployment: what broke, what they scoped out, how they handled the customer, and what changed in the product as a result. Structured interviews and behavioural assessment test judgment, ownership and communication under ambiguity. A human reviews every candidate decision.
We run forward deployed engineer searches in San Francisco, New York, Austin and London, and for remote and hybrid teams across the US and UK.
Tell us the role and where the pipeline is stuck. You'll hear back within one business day with a scope, a timeline, and a fee.
Start a search