Forward deployed engineers
Hire forward deployed engineers for AI projects
Engineers who sit where the problem is. They work inside your business, alongside the people doing the work, to find what’s worth building, build it on your real systems, and get it live — then stay to run it.
In short
A forward deployed engineer from FetchSky is a senior software engineer who works inside your organisation rather than from a brief. They spend their first days with the team doing the work, pick the one or two tasks where AI or automation will pay off fastest, build a working version on your own data and systems in a six-week pilot, and take it into production with the permissions, logging and human review it needs. Every engagement starts with a free consultation, and every client stays on a retainer afterwards for support and improvement.
What they do
What does a forward deployed engineer do for your business?
The job is to close the gap between a good idea and a system people actually use. Most AI and automation projects fail in that gap: a pilot built from a specification works in a demo, then stalls against real data, real access rules and real exceptions nobody documented. A forward deployed engineer sees all of that in the first week, because they are sitting in the room where it happens.
Shadow the team
Map how work really flows, including the month-end exceptions.
Choose what pays off
Pick the use cases with a measurable payoff, and rule out the ones without.
Build on live systems
Against your real systems from the start, not a sandbox.
Iterate with the users
Put the working version in front of the people who do the job, and improve it.
Ship with controls
Scoped permissions, a full log, fallbacks and a person in the loop.
Stay to run it
Run and improve it, with the same engineer on call.
Results
Where has this worked?
Each of these started with a FetchSky engineer embedded with a team doing something by hand.
| Workflow | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| End-of-day trade confirmations at a brokerage | 10 agents, 2 hours a day, reading a PDF ledger and messaging clients | Three AI agents; every confirmation on WhatsApp within minutes; 98% less manual effort, ~20 person-hours saved a day |
| Monthly mutual fund holdings report | Analysts read 34 fund reports by hand; 3–4 days | Three agents; 3 minutes; the firm publishes first |
| Daily market newsletter | A senior analyst’s first 2–3 hours every morning | Drafted from live market data and the day’s top five stories; 80%+ less production time |
| Resume screening and voice pre-screening | Weeks | Hours |
Other published results: AI signature verification, school assessment analysis, portfolio risk monitoring, workforce analytics, POS settlement analytics and blood bank workflow, with time savings between 80% and 95%.
How it works
How does an engagement work?
Step 1 of 4
Free consultation
A conversation with an engineer and a short look at how your teams work. Usually days, not weeks.
What you get
The one or two tasks where AI will pay off fastest, and an honest view of the rest.
- Free consultation: A conversation with an engineer and a short look at how your teams work. Usually days, not weeks. The one or two tasks where AI will pay off fastest, and an honest view of the rest.
- Six-week pilot: The engineer builds a working version on your own data and systems, connected to production or a mirrored environment as your policy requires. A working version. Scope and cost are agreed before work starts, per case.
- Rollout: Scoped with you. Permissions, audit trail, monitoring and human review go in before launch. The system in production, under your controls.
- Run and improve: Every FetchSky client moves onto a retainer for support and improvement once a project is delivered. The engineer who built it stays reachable.
What do you own?
Everything. The deployment, the code, the data and the logs are yours. Your data is not used to train models. You can switch any system off or change it at any time, and so can we when monitoring flags a problem.
Compare
Forward deployed engineer, embedded engineer or project team?
| Resource augmentation | Forward deployed engineer | Project delivery | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who decides what to build | You | The engineer, with you | You, in the brief |
| Where they sit | In your dev team | In your business, with the operations team | With us |
| Best for | Capacity on a known backlog | Finding and shipping AI and automation | A clear scope and date |
| Starts with | A profile and a start date | A free consultation | A proposal |
Most clients combine them over time; there are no contractual constraints on switching.
Who is this for?
Banks, insurers, brokerages, telcos and growing businesses with repetitive, document-heavy or rules-heavy work and a team that already knows where the pain is. Deepest experience is in financial services across Pakistan and the GCC, with clients also in the UK and the US.
Who is this not for?
Teams that already know exactly what to build and only need hands — resource augmentation is cheaper. And organisations looking for a model vendor; we build on leading commercial and open models and do not train our own.
Read next
Frequently asked questions
[1]What is a forward deployed engineer?
[2]How long does a forward deployed engagement take?
[3]How is it priced?
[4]Do we need our own technical team?
[5]Can the engineer work on site?
[6]Who owns what is built?
What would your engineer find in the first week?
Tell us what your team does by hand today. We’ll set up a free consultation and follow up with a detailed proposal.
