Forward Deployed Engineers
Senior engineers embedded directly inside your organisation. They learn your codebase, understand your domain, and ship production code alongside your team. Not contractors. Not staff aug. Engineers who own outcomes.
Forward Deployed Engineers across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
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What Forward Deployed Engineers Do
FDEs are not here to take instructions. They are here to understand your business and ship the right thing, fast.
Embed in Your Team
They join your standups, your Slack channels, your code reviews. They are part of your team, not an outside vendor sending updates once a week.
Ship Production Code
FDEs write real code that goes to production. They work in your repo, follow your conventions, and push features that your users actually see.
Bridge Strategy and Execution
They can sit in a product meeting, understand the business context, and then go build it. No translation layer needed between your stakeholders and the code.
Deep Domain Knowledge
FDEs invest in understanding your industry, your customers, and your competitive landscape. That context makes them dramatically more effective than a generic developer.
Own Outcomes, Not Tickets
They do not wait to be told what to build. They identify what needs to happen, propose solutions, and drive them to completion. Ownership, not task completion.
Accelerate Your Roadmap
An FDE can compress months of work into weeks. They bring patterns, tools, and velocity from dozens of prior engagements to your specific problem.
Why Forward Deployed Engineers
The FDE model was pioneered by Palantir. It works because the best engineering happens when the person writing the code deeply understands the problem.
Context is everything
Most engineering fails because the person building has no idea how the business actually works. FDEs fix that. They sit inside your organisation, attend your meetings, and understand your customers. The code they write is better because they know why it matters.
Ownership, not task completion
An FDE does not wait to be told what to build. They see a problem, propose a solution, and drive it to production. They challenge bad ideas and push for better ones. You get a senior engineer who thinks like a co-founder, not someone who clocks in and out.
Speed without the ramp-up
Hiring a senior engineer takes months. Onboarding them takes more months. An FDE is productive in days because this is what they do — drop into a new codebase, understand the domain fast, and start shipping. You get senior-level output from week one.
They make your team better
FDEs raise the bar for everyone around them. They introduce better patterns, review code properly, and mentor your existing developers. When the engagement ends, your team is stronger than when it started.
Where Forward Deployed Engineers Came From
Palantir invented the FDE role in the early 2010s. They called them "Deltas" internally, and until 2016, Palantir actually had more FDEs than regular software engineers. That ratio says a lot about how the company thought about building software.
The reason was practical. Palantir's earliest customers were intelligence agencies. These organisations could not write a requirements document or explain what they needed in a product meeting. The problems were too complex and too classified. So Palantir put engineers directly inside those environments. The engineers watched how people worked, figured out where the gaps were, and built solutions on the spot.
It worked. Really well. The engineers who sat with end users built better software than the ones who worked from specs. They caught problems that never would have made it into a ticket. They shipped things that users actually needed instead of what someone guessed they might need.
After Palantir proved the model, other companies picked it up. OpenAI, Stripe, Datadog, Rippling, Intercom, Salesforce — they all run FDE teams now. The pattern is the same every time: put a real engineer (not a solutions consultant, not a pre-sales person) inside the customer's world and let them build.
FDEs in the Real World
What it actually looks like when an engineer embeds inside a business.
On the final assembly line
Former Palantir FDE Anjor Kanekar was embedded on Airbus's final assembly line — the place where commercial aircraft are literally put together. Not in an office. On the factory floor. He built software while watching how the manufacturing process actually worked, catching problems that no one sitting in a conference room 500km away would have ever found.
Farmers in Iowa needed it before planting season
OpenAI's FDE team worked with John Deere to help farmers get personalised recommendations on weed control. The old approach — manually calling each farmer — did not scale. The FDE team went to Iowa, worked directly with farmers, and shipped the integration before the next planting season. Hard deadline. Real consequences if they missed it. They didn't miss it.
Half the week on-site, half the week coding
A Palantir FDE based in Abu Dhabi split his week between the customer's premises and his own desk. A few days meeting stakeholders and debugging live deployments. The rest reviewing code and coordinating with remote teams. Some weeks it was mostly code. Other weeks it was mostly conversations. That flexibility is the point — you do whatever the problem needs that week.
The voice model wasn't good enough, so they fixed it
An OpenAI FDE team was working on call centre automation and realised the voice model was not performing well enough for production. Instead of filing a bug report and waiting, they built evaluation tools that pinpointed exactly where the model fell short, then worked directly with OpenAI's research team to improve it. The customer became the first production deployment of the improved model.
Why Team 400
We're not AI consultants who started yesterday and can't code. We're top engineers who've been building business software & AI systems for 25+ years.
Top Engineers
Top 5% talent. 10+ years experience each. Principal-level engineers and solution architects. We've built the integrations your AI needs to actually work.
R&D-Driven
Early adopters of Claude Workspaces, AI Agents, and the latest AI tools. We test what's next so you get what actually works in production.
We Make It Work
We don't walk away until it's successful. No matter what obstacles come up, we find a way. Your AI project will work, that's not negotiable.
Michael Ridland
25+ years developing AI-driven software solutions. Founded and scaled an award-winning AI consultancy from startup to 85 professionals. Microsoft MVP Alumni, international speaker, and creator of influential open-source projects.
Forward Deployed Engineers Across Australia
Embedded engineers in every major Australian city. On-site in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane with remote delivery to Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart, Gold Coast and beyond.
Forward Deployed Engineers Sydney
Sydney's financial services, insurance, and enterprise sector needs engineers who understand regulated environments, complex integrations, and the pace of large organisations. Our FDEs have shipped inside some of Australia's biggest companies.
Financial Services & Banking
FDEs embedded in banking and fintech teams. They understand compliance, security requirements, and the integration complexity that financial services demands.
Enterprise & Corporate
Large organisations with complex internal systems need engineers who can navigate legacy codebases and deliver modern solutions without breaking what works.
Government & Defence
Secure environments with strict compliance requirements. Our FDEs understand clearance processes, air-gapped systems, and government procurement realities.
Forward Deployed Engineers Melbourne
Melbourne's manufacturing, healthtech, and scale-up ecosystem needs engineers who can move fast without compromising quality. Our FDEs bring the velocity of a startup with the rigour of enterprise.
Manufacturing & Industrial
FDEs who understand IoT, real-time data, and the operational demands of manufacturing. Embedded on factory floors and in engineering offices.
Healthtech & Medtech
Building health platforms that need to scale, comply with regulations, and actually work for clinicians. Our FDEs have shipped health apps used by thousands.
Startups & Scale-ups
When you are scaling fast and cannot afford to hire wrong, an FDE gives you a senior engineer who is productive in days, not months. No recruitment risk.
Forward Deployed Engineers Brisbane
Queensland's mining, resources, and government sectors need engineers who can build for harsh conditions, remote environments, and complex compliance requirements. Our FDEs deliver field-ready solutions.
Mining & Resources
FDEs embedded in mining and resources companies. Building offline-first apps, asset tracking systems, and safety platforms for remote sites.
Field Services
Technician apps, job management systems, and field platforms built by engineers who understand what it means to work where there is no Wi-Fi.
Government & Public Sector
Queensland government agencies need engineers who understand procurement, security frameworks, and the pace of public sector delivery.
Forward Deployed Engineers Across All of Australia
We deploy FDEs to companies in every state and territory. Most remote engagements are delivered via video and async collaboration with periodic on-site visits. You get the same senior engineers regardless of where you are based.
Forward Deployed Engineers available Australia-wide. Same senior team, same quality, wherever you are.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) is a senior engineer who embeds directly inside your organisation. They work alongside your team, learn your codebase, understand your domain, and ship production code. The concept originated at Palantir and has become the gold standard for companies that need high-calibre engineering talent without the overhead of traditional consulting.
Contractors fill a seat. FDEs own outcomes. A contractor follows your instructions and bills hours. An FDE understands your business deeply enough to make decisions, challenge assumptions, and drive results. They bridge the gap between strategy and execution — they can talk to your CTO and your junior devs in the same afternoon.
Most FDE engagements run between 3 and 12 months, depending on the complexity of what you are building. Some clients keep FDEs embedded long-term as a permanent extension of their engineering team. We structure engagements around outcomes, not arbitrary timelines.
Our FDEs are senior .NET and React engineers with deep experience across ASP.NET Core, C#, React, TypeScript, Azure, and AI/ML. They also bring experience with mobile (.NET MAUI), cloud infrastructure, and modern DevOps practices. We match the right engineer to your stack.
Both. We have FDEs working on-site in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, and others working remotely with regular check-ins. The model depends on what your team needs. Many clients start on-site for the first few weeks to build trust, then shift to a hybrid model.
We can typically have an FDE embedded and productive within 1-2 weeks. We spend the first few days understanding your codebase, architecture, and team dynamics before we start shipping. There is no months-long ramp-up.
Yes. We work with companies across all of Australia including Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart, and regional areas. Most of our remote FDE engagements are delivered via video and async collaboration, so location is not a barrier.
FDE engagements are priced based on duration, seniority, and scope. We quote per engagement with clear deliverables so you know what you are getting. No open-ended time-and-materials billing. Contact us for a specific quote based on your needs.
Ready to Embed an Engineer in Your Team?
Tell us about your team and what you are building. We will match you with an FDE who fits your stack, your domain, and your pace.
More Services
Forward Deployed Engineers are one way we work. We also build AI agents, consult on AI strategy, and develop custom software across Australia.