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Service

Team
Extension

Senior engineers who join your team and work as if they were always there. Same tools, same standups, same standards — just more capacity and expertise exactly when you need it.

What you get

Senior engineers,
not capacity units.

Vetted before they arrive

Every candidate goes through a rigorous technical assessment and culture-fit interview. You meet them before they start — and you approve the match.

Embedded, not outsourced

They join your Slack, push to your repo, attend your retros. There's no "Edgeware process" layered on top of yours — they adapt to how you work.

Aligned incentives

Engineers are rewarded for long-term relationships, not placement volume. They care about the product you're building, not the hours on a timesheet.

Timezone overlap

We work with your hours. Whether you're in New York, San Francisco, or London — we schedule for real collaboration, not just async handoffs.

Rapid onboarding

Most engineers are productive in their first sprint. We handle the ramp-up scaffolding so you don't lose two weeks to setup and orientation.

Flexible scale

Start with one engineer, grow to a squad. Reduce back down when the sprint is done. No long-term headcount obligations or HR overhead.

Process

From brief to
first commit — fast.

I

Discovery call

We learn your stack, your team structure, and the skills gap you're trying to fill. Usually 30 minutes.

II

Candidate shortlist

Within 3–5 days we send you 2–3 matched profiles. You interview, you decide.

III

Contract & onboarding

Simple MSA, no lock-in. Your new engineer is set up in your tooling the same week.

IV

Delivering in sprint 1

No six-week ramp. Most engineers are shipping meaningful work within the first sprint.

Engineer at work
"We needed someone who could own the backend architecture — not someone we'd need to manage. Edgeware sent us exactly that person."

Most of our clients stop thinking of extended team members as external within the first month. The goal is always that the seam becomes invisible.

Forward deployed engineering

Forward deployed engineers,
for the last mile.

A forward deployed engineer (FDE) is a senior engineer who embeds inside your environment and owns an outcome end to end — framing the problem with the people who actually do the work, writing production code inside your systems, wiring it into your real data and legacy tooling, and staying until it is in daily use.

The role was popularized at Palantir and has since become standard practice at AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and AWS. The reason is simple: on an enterprise AI rollout the hard part is rarely the model. It is the messy data, the integration nobody documented, the workflow that exists only in someone's head, and the compliance rule that invalidates the happy path. That work cannot be specified in advance from the outside — someone has to be inside it.

We place forward deployed engineers on the same commercial terms as the rest of our team extension work: you interview and approve the match, you own the IP, and you scale the engagement with 30 days' notice.

Team extension, forward deployed, or a project team?

All three put senior engineers on your problem. They differ in who is accountable when the code reaches production and nobody uses it.

Model What you get Measured by Right when
Team extension Senior capacity inside your team, which you direct Work shipped against the plan you set You know what to build and need more hands to build it
Forward deployed engineer A senior owner embedded with your users and your data Whether the system works in live use Requirements are ambiguous, the work crosses departments, or adoption is the risk
Project team A scoped build delivered as a package Delivering the agreed specification Scope is fixed, understood and stable up front

When to ask for an FDE

  • You have an AI feature that works in the demo and breaks on your production data.
  • A platform you bought or built is live but nobody outside the pilot team uses it.
  • The requirements only become clear once someone sits with the people doing the work.
  • The project touches three teams and none of them owns it end to end.
  • Your own engineers keep getting pulled off the roadmap to unblock one integration.
  • You are shipping your product into an enterprise customer and the customer's environment is the obstacle.

What ours actually do

  • Map your architecture, data and workflows in the first week, and say out loud what is really in the way.
  • Write production code in your repo — integrations, pipelines, agent orchestration, the unglamorous glue.
  • Sit in on the calls with the people who will use the thing, not just the ones who commissioned it.
  • Set milestones at the outcome level and report blockers as product problems, not tickets.
  • Leave documentation, tests and a handover your own team can carry — the engagement is meant to end.

Forward deployed engineering costs more per person than straight staff augmentation, and it concentrates knowledge in one or two people. When the risk is adoption rather than capacity, it is usually the cheaper mistake to avoid. If you are not sure which model fits, we will tell you honestly — often the answer is a standard team extension engineer and a clearer brief.

Talk to us about an FDE

Leadership

CTO-level direction,
without the full-time hire.

Some companies need senior technical leadership before they're ready for a full-time executive. Our Fractional CTO service puts experienced technology leadership in your corner — for as many hours as you actually need.

Talk to us about this ↓

Technology strategy

Architecture decisions, stack choices, build-vs-buy trade-offs. Senior technical direction without the executive overhead.

AI-native leadership

Our CTOs work hands-on with modern AI models, APIs, and tooling. We help you build with AI where it genuinely adds value — not just where it's trendy.

Team & process

Engineering hiring, onboarding standards, code review culture. We help you build the team that outlasts the engagement.

Investor & board communication

Translating technical roadmap into business language. A credible technical voice in the room when it matters.

Expertise

Common stacks we extend.

Backend

Node.jsPythonGoRustJava / Spring.NET / C#PostgreSQLMongoDBRedis

Frontend

ReactNext.jsTypeScriptVueSvelte

AI / ML

Python / PyTorchOpenAI APILangChainVector DBsRAG pipelines

Infrastructure

AWSAzureGCPKubernetesTerraformDocker

Common questions

What clients usually ask first.

How quickly can you start?
We typically have a shortlist ready within 3–5 business days of your brief. Once you select a candidate, onboarding takes 3–5 more days. Most clients have their engineer in a sprint within two weeks of the first call.
What if the engineer isn't the right fit?
We have a structured replacement guarantee. If within the first 30 days you feel the match isn't right, we replace immediately at no cost. This has happened twice in eight years — but the policy matters.
How does billing work?
Monthly retainer based on the hourly rate agreed upfront. No hidden fees. Transparent time logging. You scale up or down with 30 days notice.
What is a forward deployed engineer?
A forward deployed engineer (FDE) is a senior engineer who embeds inside a customer's environment and owns an outcome end to end: framing the problem with the people who do the work, writing production code inside the customer's systems, wiring it into real data and legacy tooling, and staying until it is in daily use. The role was popularized at Palantir and is now standard practice at AI companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and AWS, where the hard part is rarely the model — it is the messy data, the integrations and the compliance rules on the customer's side.
How is a forward deployed engineer different from staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation gives you senior capacity that you direct: you set the plan, the tickets and the definition of done. A forward deployed engineer owns the outcome instead of the task list — they work directly with your users, propose the milestones, and are measured on whether the system works in live use rather than on tickets closed. An FDE costs more per person than straight augmentation and is worth it when requirements are ambiguous, the work crosses several departments, or an AI feature has to survive contact with real data.
Do your forward deployed engineers work on site?
Usually not. Embedded means embedded in your systems and your working week — your Slack, your repo, your standups and the calls with the people who will use what gets built — with a genuine timezone overlap. Where an engagement really needs physical presence, such as a regulated environment or a kick-off workshop week, we arrange travel case by case.
Who owns the IP?
You do. Full IP assignment is standard in our MSA. The code your extended team writes is yours, completely and unconditionally.

Ready to extend your team
with the right people?

Start a conversation