Guide
An engineer on your floor, who leaves the process yours.
A forward deployed engineer is a software engineer embedded in a client’s team rather than in a vendor’s office. The term came out of Palantir, and the AI labs now hire for it, because a model is only useful once somebody has fitted it to the way one firm actually works, and that fitting cannot be done from a product roadmap.
For an investment firm it means one engineer, one process with real volume, and a scope that ends. They interview the people who do the work, design the process with AI at its centre, and guide your own people through the build, so nothing depends on them after the last day.
The role
what is a forward deployed engineer
Discovery, design, and a build your team writes.
The engagement has three parts and they happen in order, because each one needs the one before it.
- Discovery
- The engineer interviews the people who perform the work and documents the process as it actually operates, which is rarely the process as it is written down. This happens on the client's floor, because understanding a process means watching it done rather than hearing it described on a call.
- Design
- The process is redesigned with AI at its centre: which steps remain necessary when a model does the reading, drafting and reconciling, and which decisions stay with the human in the loop. Where a person reviews, approves or signs is defined here, before anything is built.
- Your team builds from that design
- The engineer guides the development of the skills, agents and workflow, and your own people write it. Because your people built it, the process is theirs to run and change from the first day, and the engineer's departure is the plan rather than a risk.
Against the alternatives
forward deployed engineer vs consultant vs vendor
Three ways to get the same workflow, and what each leaves behind.
A firm with one expensive process has three ways to put AI into it. They differ less in what gets built than in who can run it afterwards.
- A vendor's product
- Fast if the product fits, and the fit is the problem. A product is built for the general case of the process; the firm's value sits in where its process departs from the general case. The firm adapts to the product, and what it cannot adapt, it works around by hand.
- A consulting project
- A team arrives, builds, hands over a document and leaves. The thing built is the consultancy's; the people who run the process did not write it and cannot change it. The first change in the process after the handover is the first support ticket.
- A forward deployed engineer
- One engineer, embedded, scoped to the engagement. The design is done with the people who run the process and the build is done by them. Slower on the first week than a product, and the only one of the three where the firm owns what it has at the end.
When to hire one
should a private equity firm hire a forward deployed engineer
One process with real volume, and the people who run it in the room.
The engagement pays when there is a process that costs the firm real time at real volume, that has reading, assembly or reconciliation at its core, and whose owners will sit in the design. Investor-email triage, covenant monitoring across a credit book, first-pass reading of a deal pipeline, reconciling portfolio company reporting against the model. At The Riverside Company, investor-email triage went from days to under five minutes.
It does not pay as a general AI programme, as a replacement for the firm learning to use the tools, or for a process whose owners are not in the room. In those cases the right first step is a workshop, and we say so.
Where the engineer sits
forward deployed engineer new york financial services
On site in New York most weeks.
Our engineers are placed in New York, on the client’s floor most weeks of the engagement. A second seat sits in Tirana, six hours ahead, for the volume one person cannot hold and for the first hours of the New York day. Both are full-time engineers of the firm, embedded with the client and scoped to the engagement, rather than contractors placed by a staffing agency. Each is a Claude Certified Architect, and the firm is part of the Claude Partner Network, which is Anthropic’s programme for the firms that deploy Claude with clients.
The roles, the hours the two cities share, and what the work asks are on Careers.
Questions
The questions that follow.
What a COO or a head of technology asks once the term is clear.
How is a forward deployed engineer different from a consultant?
A consultant builds the thing and hands it over; a forward deployed engineer designs it with the people who run the process and guides them through building it themselves. The difference shows on the first day after the engagement ends. A consultancy's build is the consultancy's; the engineer's build is the firm's.
How long is a forward deployed engineering engagement?
It is scoped to the process rather than to a calendar. One continuous stretch, ending on the day the scope ends. The discovery phase sets the scope, and the scope is one workflow with real volume rather than an AI programme.
Do we need our own engineers for this to work?
You need people who can build with guidance, which at most investment firms means the technology team or a technically minded operator on the desk. The engineer guides the build and defines where a person reviews, approves or signs. The firm's people write it, which is what makes it theirs.
What does a forward deployed engineer build at an investment firm?
Skills, agents and workflows around one process with reading at its core: investor-email triage, covenant monitoring across a credit book, first-pass reading of a deal pipeline, reconciliation of portfolio reporting against the model. The build runs on Claude: our engineers are Claude Certified Architects and the firm is part of the Claude Partner Network, Anthropic's programme for the firms that deploy Claude with clients.
Is the engineer on site?
In New York, on the client's floor most weeks. Discovery in particular happens by watching the work done. A second engineer in Tirana works the hours New York is not using and travels for the weeks that decide something.
Where does a forward deployed engineer fit with workshops and the retainer?
Last. The workshop teaches the people to use the tools on their own work; the retainer moves the number of people who use them well; the engineer rebuilds one process once the people who run it can judge what the model gives them. A firm that starts with the engineer has bought the last step first.
Bring us one workflow.
One process with real volume, and the people who run it in the room. Tell us what it costs you today and we will tell you whether an embedded engineer is the right way to change it.
Subject line: Embedded engineer