Forward deployed engineers · California
Senior engineers who embed with your customers, build the integrations your deployments stall on, and ship against real data — working your full Pacific business day. Top 5% of more than a thousand applicants per cycle, evidence-checked before you meet them.
20 minutes
To meet an available pre-vetted engineer, subject to availability
About 14 days
For a deliberate best-fit placement
Week two
Target for the first pull request
The role
A forward deployed engineer (FDE) is a senior software engineer who works embedded with a customer rather than behind a ticket queue. They sit in the customer's workflows, integrate with real systems and data, write production code on site or over the customer's own hours, and stay accountable for the outcome until the software works in the customer's environment.
The role was popularised by Palantir and is now common at AI and enterprise-software companies, where the gap between a demo and a working deployment is the hardest part of the sale.
An FDE is part software engineer, part solutions architect and part customer-facing problem solver. The mix is unusual, which is why the role is hard to hire for — and why we screen for communication and judgement as deliberately as we screen for code.
Background reading: Palantir on a day in the life of a forward deployed software engineer.
| Forward deployed engineer | In-house staff engineer | Outsourced contractor | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the work happens | Inside the customer's environment, systems and data | Inside your own product team and backlog | In a separate scope, delivered back to you |
| Main measure of success | The deployment works for the customer | Roadmap tickets ship | The agreed scope is delivered |
| Customer contact | Direct and constant | Occasional, through product | Usually none |
| Typical seniority | Senior, able to make calls without escalation | Mid to senior | Varies by scope |
| Feedback into product | Carries field learnings back to engineering | Built into the team already | Rarely |
Deployment ownership
One customer-facing engineer can follow a deployment from the first systems map to a production release—without turning every integration decision into a handoff.
01 · AI & LLM systems
Build retrieval pipelines and agent workflows, connect model APIs, and add evaluations, guardrails, cost and latency budgets before release.
02 · Enterprise integration
Own authentication, APIs, connectors and data pipelines across the customer’s actual tools instead of stopping at a sandbox demo.
03 · Production operations
Validate performance and security, instrument the system, deploy it into production and help diagnose incidents with the customer team.
Signals you need one
The model fits AI product companies, enterprise software teams and platform teams when customer-specific deployment work keeps pulling the core roadmap off course.
Your product demos well, then dies in a two-month integration. An FDE lives inside that integration until the pilot converts.
Models behave differently on a customer's data than on yours. An FDE tunes pipelines, evaluations and prompts against the real thing.
Each customer needs different connectors, auth and data shapes. An FDE builds those without pulling your core team off the roadmap.
When the answer to an objection is a working feature, you need someone who can write and deploy it in the room.
Responsibilities
01
Join their standups, channels and tooling, and learn the domain well enough to propose solutions rather than wait for specs.
02
Connectors, authentication, data ingestion and the plumbing between your product and whatever the customer already runs.
03
Write production code against the customer's actual systems, not a sanitised sandbox, and handle what that exposes.
04
Diagnose live issues calmly with stakeholders watching, and explain the fix in language the buyer understands.
05
Turn recurring field workarounds into product requirements so the next deployment is faster than the last.
06
Stay accountable until the deployment is in production and the customer's team can run it.
California
Engineers placed with California companies work your Pacific business day — your standups, your incident windows, your customer calls. No overnight handoffs.
Our forward deployed engineers work remotely and embed through your tools: Slack, Zoom, Linear or Jira, your repositories and your customer calls. We do not send engineers to client sites.
We support remote teams in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, San Diego and elsewhere in the state while keeping the working relationship inside your existing tools.
We sign the custom NDA approved by your lawyer for every assigned engineer before they receive access, and contract through Riseup Asia LLC in the United States.
Your team · Pacific time
09:00 – 17:00 PT
Your engineer · working from Asia
Same hours, shifted locally
How we filter
Designed by engineers with twenty years of leadership behind them. Most people fail at stage two.
01
1,000+ reached
Targeted campaigns across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, India and Bangladesh.
02
20 / 1,000
An alertness, adaptiveness and aptitude screen. Twenty of every thousand get through.
03
3–5 layers
Three to five graded modules: memory training, structured note-taking, professional working habits.
04
20–25 hrs
A real two-to-three month build compressed into 20–25 hours, written by twenty-year engineering leaders.
05
2 modes
Tasks modelled on your stack, split into AI-assisted and AI-free halves. We test research ability too.
06
1 hr, no AI
One hour of live coding. No internet. No AI. A proctor present. Then negotiation and onboarding.
Only the top 5% of an assignment-stage cohort reach your shortlist.
Relevant work
Alim’s past work, not with Riseup Asia.
AI testing platform
No-code AI testing for financial services.
Alim’s past work, not with Riseup Asia.
On-device AI chat
100% private, offline AI chat.
Transcription app
Built for long conversations. No limits.
People behind the work
Python Researcher
Applied researcher working across data science, machine learning and computer-vision experiments.
Engineering leader connecting technical discovery, team direction and dependable product delivery.
Verified recommendations
Claudio C.
Engineering Leader · AI platforms serving 10M+ users
“Oversee and collaborate with multiple teams across high-complexity projects at intense pace with tight deadlines. A skillful professional bringing great results and kind communicator.”
Gabor Szekeres
Engineering Manager at Instructure
“One of the most committed members of my unit test automation team. Single-handedly drove the C# division, managing both engineering work and the developer bootcamp in parallel. I strongly recommend him.”
Alexander Netrebskii
CTO · Solutions Architect · Principal Engineer
“His way of organizing the knowledge base, architecture decisions, and innovation mindset were reasons of success. Alim always went out of his way to help the team.”
Gennady N.
CTO · Senior Software Architect · Cloud Native · AI
“I strongly recommend Alim as a deep-thinking and problem-oriented professional, which can bring great innovation ideas to any team.”
Field-to-production playbook
01 · Scope
Start with a 30-minute call about the deployment, the systems involved, customer constraints and the seniority you need.
02 · Map
The engineer identifies integrations, authentication, data boundaries, production risks and the customer-facing decisions that cannot wait for a ticket queue.
03 · Build
They join your tools and Pacific hours, build against real systems and keep your customer and core product team aligned as the deployment takes shape.
04 · Validate
The deployment clears automated tests, performance budgets, security checks and a written QA pass, with the first pull request targeted for week two.
05 · Return
Recurring customer workarounds become product requirements, while release notes and the shared delivery rhythm keep ownership visible.
Engagement safeguards
The engagement starts inside your operating model—not in a parallel delivery bubble.
The role
Engagement
Security & quality
Commercial
Reviewed by
This page is maintained by our engineering leadership, who designed the six-stage vetting funnel every engineer on this page has cleared. Meet the wider team on our leadership page or read the full vetting process.
Senior engineers who embed with your customers and ship against real data — working your full Pacific business day.
