Forward Deployed Engineering, as a service
Embed a senior AI engineer in your team. Ship production AI in weeks.
ArcusForward places a forward deployed engineer inside your company to design, build, and hand off custom AI solutions — with the delivery rigor, compliance, and security enterprises require.
The problem
Most enterprise AI never makes it to production.
The gap is rarely the model. It is the distance between a promising prototype and a secure, integrated, maintainable system your team can run.
Pilots that stall
Impressive demos that never survive contact with real data, real users, or a real security review.
Consultants who leave a deck
Strategy without shipped software — and no one on your team who can maintain what was built.
Hiring that takes 6 months
The senior AI talent to do this in-house is scarce, expensive, and slow to recruit.
The model
A forward deployed engineer, embedded in your team
Not an agency. Not a staffing firm. A senior engineer who sits inside your company, owns a hard problem end to end, and is accountable for getting it into production.
- A senior engineer embedded in your team — in your standups, your repos, your Slack.
- Outcome-accountable engagements gated by milestones, not billable hours.
- Security & compliance by design — we work inside your controls from day one.
- No lock-in. You own the code, the docs, and the knowledge transfer.
- Weeks to production, not quarters of slideware.
- Honest scoping — we will tell you when AI is the wrong tool.
What "forward deployed" means
The engineer works from inside your environment — your codebase, your data, your constraints. They learn your domain, build with your team, and transfer the capability before they leave.
You get the speed of a specialist and the continuity of an in-house hire, without the recruiting cycle or the long-term headcount.
What we deliver
From use-case to production system
AI Solution Discovery
We map your highest-leverage use cases, quantify the ROI, and tell you which ones are actually worth building.
Custom AI Builds
Production agents, copilots, RAG systems, and automation built into your stack — not a demo, a system your team owns.
Systems Integration
We wire AI into the tools, data, and workflows you already run, with the access controls your security team requires.
Team Enablement
Your engineers ship alongside ours. When we leave, the capability stays — documented, tested, and owned.
How we work
A delivery framework built for accountability
Every engagement runs through five gated phases. You approve each gate before we move forward — no surprises, no open-ended billing.
- 01
Discovery & Fit
Define the problem, success metric, and security constraints. Signed engagement charter.
- 02
Embed & Architect
The FDE embeds in your team, runs technical discovery, and gets the architecture approved.
- 03
Build
Working software every sprint, demoed and accepted against explicit acceptance criteria.
- 04
Harden & Secure
Security review, compliance validation, evals, and a passed production-readiness checklist.
- 05
Deploy & Hand Off
Production launch, monitoring, documentation, and full knowledge transfer to your team.
Outcomes
Built to be measured
Weeks
from kickoff to a working production increment — not quarters.
100%
of code, documentation, and IP owned by you. No lock-in.
Gated
milestones with explicit acceptance criteria and sign-off.
“Placeholder — replace with a real client quote once you have your first engagement. Speak to the outcome shipped and the rigor of the process.”
Put a forward deployed AI engineer on your hardest problem.
Book a 30-minute discovery call. We will pressure-test your use case, outline a path to production, and tell you honestly whether an embedded engagement is the right fit.