For founders, heads of engineering, and heads of talent
Some roles ask an engineer to live with a customer, ship real integrations, and still protect your product from becoming a pile of one-offs. Companies call that different names. One common label is forward deployed engineer. This page is for you if you are hiring that seat, or still deciding whether you need one.
First
The title means different things at different companies. Sometimes it is an embedded senior engineer who ships production integrations at the customer site. Sometimes it sits closer to solutions and implementation: discovery, configuration, handoff.
Those are not the same hire. If you mix them up, you interview the wrong people and lose months. Our first conversation should pin down which one you need before anyone sources a resume.
The hard part
This role lives in a tension. The person must make one customer successful. They also work for a product company that cannot absorb every custom request.
Who decides whether custom work goes into the product? Product? Eng? The account owner? If that answer is fuzzy, the hire will invent a policy under pressure, or they will say yes to everything. Fix the decision path before you open the req.
Not a solutions engineer
A solutions engineer mostly helps win the deal. This role owns delivery after the sale and writes production code. Hire a closer when you need demos and proof of concept. Hire a shipper when a signed customer needs something live.
Mis-hire either way and you feel it. Put a closer in a delivery seat and the customer waits while tickets pile up. Put a deep builder in a pre-sales seat and deals stall because the room needed a different skill.
Screening
Can they say no? Can they push back on scope without burning the account? Can they sit in a room with a non-technical executive and a staff engineer and translate both ways?
That judgment is the hardest thing to screen, and a take-home coding test will not catch it. I design interviews around real customer moments: a messy scope request, a timeline fight, a feature that should stay custom. If they cannot show that muscle, keep looking.
Level and pay
Travel and customer load raise expectations. If you price the seat like a services role, you will lose finalists late, after everyone has spent weeks.
Be honest early about level, cash, equity, and travel days. Vague ranges feel safe in a kickoff. They kill offers when a strong engineer has two choices.
Travel and ambiguity
“Some travel” kills offers late. So does “you will figure out the customer as you go.” Strong candidates ask for numbers: days per month on-site, which city, who owns the relationship, what success looks like in ninety days.
I will not pitch a role where those answers stay soft. If you do not know yet, we tighten them before I call anyone.
Ninety days
Which customer? Which deployment? What does “live in production” mean in plain words: data flowing, users on it, billable, something else?
If you cannot name that, the interview loop will reward charm over delivery. Write the ninety-day picture down. Share it with candidates. Hire against it.
Working together
Everything on this page goes into the first session: which shape of role, who owns custom work, level and pay, travel, and the ninety-day picture. I source only after that is written down.
Then a shortlist, a customer-judgment interview step, a written update every Friday, help with the offer, and check-ins at 30 and 90 days after your hire starts. Three candidates worth interviewing within 21 days, or the engagement fee comes back. If your hire leaves in the first 90 days, I search again at no charge.
Straight talk
I have spent six-plus years recruiting ML, backend, and data engineers: for Pinterest and Walmart through Andiamo Partners, for Amazon through Aditi Consulting, and for startups. Across 35-plus ML and backend placements, offer acceptance has run at 90% or better. That is the record I lead with.
How many of these customer-facing seats have I placed? None yet. I am recruiting for them now, and I will not invent a track record I do not have. That is why my pilot comes with a refund.
For engineers
I will give you straight answers on travel, who owns custom work, and pay range. I will not pitch roles where those stay vague.
If that sounds like how you want to work, email me. Tell me what you have shipped with customers and what you refuse to do again.