Forward Deployed Engineer

A forward deployed engineer for AI teams that need shipping, not slideware

Your AI demo works. Making it hold up for real customers is a different job: integrations, evals, auth, and the failure modes nobody hit in the demo. A forward deployed engineer (FDE) embeds with your product team and ships that work. One senior engineer on your critical path, with no account manager and no junior rotation.
Embedded retainer: $9,000/month, month to month. Remote-first from Lakeland, FL, and on site anywhere in the U.S. when being in the room helps.

What I ship inside your team

The work sits next to your product engineers — same repos, same standups, same bar for production.
01

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.

02

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.

03

Demo → production hardening

The prototype worked on one laptop. I add observability, rate limits, secrets hygiene, and the boring reliability work AI demos skip.

04

Customer-facing AI features

Ship the surfaces users touch — assistants, workflows, document pipelines — with UX that fails gracefully when the model is wrong.

05

Architecture that a hire can own

Clear modules, docs, and boundaries so your next full-time engineer isn't reverse-engineering a prompt graveyard.

06

Honest scope cuts

If the fastest path is buying a vendor or deleting a feature, I 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 me 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 / agencyFractional CTORed Leg FDE
Primary outputTickets / body countStrategy & oversightShipped product paths
Who you work withPM + juniorsPart-time exec cadenceOne senior engineer
Best whenParallel workstreams, procurementYou need leadership without a full-time hireAI product needs embedded shipping now
Code ownershipVariesYour team owns the codeYour repos; I leave them readable

Need leadership more than an embed? Fractional CTO services. AI prototype falling over? Vibe coding rescue. Selected work.

How engagements start

Free strategy call → honest scope → the Embedded retainer at $9,000/month, month to month, or a fixed-price build phase. We agree on what ships, how I plug into your team, and what "done" looks like. See both tiers.

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, I can scope that honestly — see also my 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, I'll say so.

How do engagements work?

The Embedded retainer is $9,000/month, month to month: weekly working sessions, your Slack, and hands-on review in your repos. Larger build work gets its own fixed-price quote once we know what it is. Never an open-ended hourly clock. Both tiers are on the AI advisory pricing page.

Do you work with existing in-house engineers?

Yes. The useful pattern is pairing with your team: you keep ownership of product and codebase; I accelerate the hard paths and leave the work maintainable for the next hire.

Need an FDE on the critical path?

Tell me what you're shipping. I'll tell you if an embed is the right move — or if you need something else.
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