A forward deployed engineer for AI teams that need shipping, not slideware
AI companies are hiring forward deployed engineers (FDEs) — seniors who embed with product and eng to turn demos into systems customers can trust. That's the seat we fill: one senior engineer on your critical path. No account manager. No junior rotation.
Remote-first. Based in Lakeland, FL — available across the U.S. when the work benefits from being in the room.
What we ship inside your team
The work sits next to your product engineers — same repos, same standups, same bar for production.
Agents and tool integrations
Wire models to real systems — APIs, CRMs, data stores, internal tools — with auth, retries, and failure modes that don't embarrass you in a customer call.
Eval and quality loops
Stop guessing. Build evaluation harnesses, regression sets, and feedback paths so you know when a prompt or model change actually helped.
Demo → production hardening
The prototype worked on one laptop. We add observability, rate limits, secrets hygiene, and the boring reliability work AI demos skip.
Customer-facing AI features
Ship the surfaces users touch — assistants, workflows, document pipelines — with UX that fails gracefully when the model is wrong.
Architecture that a hire can own
Clear modules, docs, and boundaries so your next full-time engineer isn't reverse-engineering a prompt graveyard.
Honest scope cuts
If the fastest path is buying a vendor or deleting a feature, we say so. Embedded doesn't mean inventing busywork.
For / not for
Good fit
- ✓AI product company with a real roadmap and users (or imminent launch)
- ✓Need senior hands on agents, integrations, or production AI paths
- ✓Willing to give repo + Slack access and treat us like part of the team
- ✓Want code your next hire can maintain
Not a fit
- ×Looking for a multi-person staff-aug squad
- ×Strategy decks only — no shipping expected
- ×Need a full-time CTO seat (see fractional CTO or hire)
- ×Unwilling to fix security/data basics before more AI features
FDE vs. the other options
| Staff aug / agency | Fractional CTO | Red Leg FDE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary output | Tickets / body count | Strategy & oversight | Shipped product paths |
| Who you work with | PM + juniors | Part-time exec cadence | One senior engineer |
| Best when | Parallel workstreams, procurement | You need leadership without a full-time hire | AI product needs embedded shipping now |
| Code ownership | Varies | Your team owns the code | Your repos; we leave them readable |
Need leadership more than an embed? Fractional CTO services. AI prototype falling over? Vibe coding rescue. Selected work.
FAQ
What is a forward deployed engineer (FDE)?
A forward deployed engineer embeds with a product and engineering team to ship real software — not decks. For AI companies, that usually means agents, model/tool integrations, evaluation pipelines, customer-facing AI features, and the production hardening demos skip. At Red Leg Dev, FDE means one senior engineer on your critical path, not a rotating bench.
How is this different from a fractional CTO?
Fractional CTO is part-time technical leadership: strategy, architecture oversight, mentoring, vendor calls. FDE is embedded shipping inside your product org. Many AI teams need the latter first. If you need both, we can scope that honestly — see also our fractional CTO page.
Who is this for?
AI product companies and AI-native startups that already have a product direction and need senior hands to close the demo-to-production gap — integrations, evals, reliability, security, and features customers will actually hit. Remote-first; Central Florida on-site when a whiteboard day helps.
Who is this not for?
Teams looking for a ten-person squad, pure strategy with no shipping, or someone to rubber-stamp an agency roadmap. If the honest answer is buy a SaaS tool or hire a full-time eng lead, we'll say so.
How do engagements work?
Usually a scoped embed or monthly retainer after a free strategy call. We agree on outcomes (what ships), access (repos, Slack, standups), and a fixed price or clear retainer — not an open-ended hourly clock. Book a call and we'll scope it.
Do you work with existing in-house engineers?
Yes. The useful pattern is pairing with your team: you keep ownership of product and codebase; we accelerate the hard paths and leave the work maintainable for the next hire.