Hire a Forward-Deployed Engineer

Embeds with your team and your customers, translates messy real-world requirements into working AI product, and owns the last mile where most AI projects die. The role is accountable for concrete production deliverables, including customer-embedded discovery, end-to-end feature ownership, rapid production prototypes. The trial scope names the output, reviewer, and acceptance evidence before work starts.

This role is usually the right hire when your AI pilots demo well but never reach production users; requirements change faster than your vendor's sprint cycle; you need one accountable engineer, not a delivery committee. On the matching call, an engineering lead checks the boundary against adjacent roles so you do not hire an impressive title for the wrong bottleneck.

Profiles show relevant work history, technical interview evidence, role-specific capabilities, and meaningful certifications where they exist. We then help you interview against your own architecture and failure cases. The final check is a paid one-week trial in your repo or approved data environment, not a generic coding puzzle.

The trial is scoped around committed work your team already needs. For this role, a useful first week can include embedded in your standups, repo, and comms; shadowed real users and mapped the actual workflow; shipped a first working slice to a staging environment; wrote down the risks nobody had said out loud. You keep the work whether or not the engagement continues.

Published dedicated rates start at $3,200 per month, or $20 per hour for Time & Material work. Senior rates are $4,800 per month or $30 per hour. The trial is paid at the same published rate, with no deposit or conversion fee.

You can stop after the paid trial or request a free replacement during the engagement. Work continues month to month with no long-term lock-in. NDA and IP assignment are completed before onboarding, access is scoped to the work, and everything produced belongs to you.