Top 4% accepted The marketplace for Forward Deployed Engineers

Hire Forward Deployed Engineers who ship production AI.

Vetted FDEs who embed with your team and put RAG, agents, and LLM systems into production — first commit in days, not quarters.

Popular:
22vetted FDEs
9 daysavg. time to first commit
120k+engineer-hours shipped
4.8★avg. client rating
Forward-deployed at teams building real AI

Browse Forward Deployed Engineers

How OpenFDE works

From search to shipped, in days.

  1. 01

    Search the network

    Filter 22+ vetted FDEs by skill, stack, seniority, rate, and availability. Every profile is reference-checked and proven in production.

  2. 02

    Request an intro

    Shortlist the engineers who fit and request an intro. We confirm scope and availability — most calls happen within 48 hours.

  3. 03

    Start in days

    Your FDE embeds with your team and ships the first production increment in days. Scale up, pause, or convert to full-time anytime.

Describe your need

Tell us what you're shipping.

Give us the shape of the problem and we'll come back with a curated shortlist of Forward Deployed Engineers who've done it before.

  • Reference-checked, production-proven engineers
  • Matched to your stack and timeline
  • No retainer — pay for the engagement, not the search
"We had a RAG prototype stuck at 'almost.' Our OpenFDE engineer embedded on a Monday and we were in production with paying customers three weeks later. It felt like hiring a founding engineer for a month."
Jordan LeeVP Engineering, Series B fintech

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