Forward Deployed Engineers: senior engineers, embedded in your team, who put AI to work.
A Forward Deployed Engineer from Viaro joins your team, works inside your codebase and your processes, and makes AI part of how your team ships, from coding assistants to automated testing to documentation.
What is a forward deployed engineer?
A forward deployed engineer is a senior software engineer who works embedded in your team, inside your codebase and your processes, rather than from a vendor's office. The title comes from data platform companies that learned production software has to be built where the customer's reality is. At Viaro the mandate is specific: ship like any senior on the team, put AI to work in the daily workflow, and leave your own developers faster than they were.
A senior engineer with a second mandate.
A Forward Deployed Engineer is a senior profile who operates at the intersection of your product and modern AI tooling. They sit inside your team like any augmented engineer, and their mandate goes further: identify where AI accelerates your delivery, implement it in the daily workflow, and transfer the practice to your own developers.
Inside your team, from week one.
Ship in your codebase
Features delivered like any senior engineer on the team, with the same accountability.
Introduce AI tooling
Coding, testing, code review and documentation, configured for how your team actually works.
Build the review standard
Which tasks the team delegates to AI, and how output gets reviewed before it ships.
Raise the team's AI fluency
By working next to your developers on real tickets.
The signals you need one.
Your team ships well without AI
Delivery is solid but AI tooling has not been adopted in a disciplined way.
Assistants gave uneven results
You tried coding assistants and the output varied, with no review standard behind it.
You want leverage without a new headcount
AI practice inside your team without hiring a full-time AI specialist.
Where an FDE ends and a platform begins.
An FDE makes AI part of how your team ships. When the need goes further, to a Company Brain that holds what your company knows or to AI agents operated in production, that is the work of yaab, part of the same group as Viaro. The engineers stay with you either way.
Questions engineering leaders ask.
What is a forward deployed engineer?
A senior software engineer embedded in your team who ships production work in your codebase while installing the AI practices that make the rest of your team faster: tooling configured to your stack, a review standard, a delegation list, and developers who practice it daily.
How is a forward deployed engineer different from staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation adds a senior engineer to your capacity. A forward deployed engineer adds capacity and a second mandate: introduce AI tooling, build the review playbook, and transfer the practice to your developers so the speed remains after the engagement.
How is a forward deployed engineer different from a consultant?
A consultant delivers recommendations and leaves execution to you. A forward deployed engineer executes inside your team, on real tickets, and changes the practice by working next to your developers rather than by writing a document.
What does the first month look like?
Week one, shipping in your codebase like any senior on the team. The following weeks, AI tooling configured to your stack, a baseline of your delivery metrics, the delegation list and review standard built with your team, and pairing on real tickets until the practice holds.
How is the engagement measured?
On the whole team's delivery, before and after: cycle time from ticket to merge, review turnaround, rework rate, and the share of developers working with AI as part of their daily flow.
Do forward deployed engineers work in my time zone?
Yes. Viaro forward deployed engineers work from Latin America on Central Standard Time, 9am to 6pm, one shared working day with US Eastern, Central and Pacific teams.
How do I engage one?
Through the contact form: describe your team and what you want AI to change. We propose the profile and the engagement shape on a discovery call.
Put a Forward Deployed Engineer inside your team.
Tell us how your team ships today. We propose the profile and where they start.