Forward Deployed Engineer
The role I have been doing without the title. Embedded in customer systems for years at a time, shipping the working software rather than the advice, and turning what worked into something reusable.
Why Forward Deployed Engineer, why now
12 years building, much of it embedded directly in customers' systems as a freelancer and part-time CTO. Forward Deployed Engineer is the role I have effectively been doing without the title. It is the post-sales half of the work: moving into the customer's environment and making the thing real there.
An FDE lands after the deal is signed and owns the gap between "great product" and "working in production for this customer." That has been my whole career: land in an unfamiliar codebase or business, build the thing that fits it, and stay until it sticks.
An FDE embeds with a customer and turns a product into a production system that sticks. I have spent my career building inside other people's systems, being the person they call, and turning what worked into something the next engagement can reuse.
Years building and operating production software inside other people's systems and constraints - most notably 4 years as part-time CTO at National Auto Service, owning the platform end to end. These were systems I shipped, ran, and kept alive, rather than prototypes handed over a wall.
The deliverable is working software. I build the concrete things a customer needs to adopt a product - internal tools, integrations, and, for an AI product, artifacts like sub-agents and agent skills. I have already published my own delivery method as a Claude Code skill anyone can run, so turning capability into something reusable is how I work.
Self-employed survival ran on being the person the customer could call. I embed with a customer's team, unblock them on their own ground, and work at their pace and in their stack.
When I solve something once for a customer, I look for the reusable pattern. HubSpot FieldsJS started as a fix for a recurring customer-project pain, became an open-source tool, and and HubSpot's own team referenced it in their documentation. That loop, from a customer's problem to a pattern to something the vendor picks up, is the core of the FDE job.
What translates from freelance & agency work
- Embedded in customer systems for years at a time → working inside customer environments to build production applications.
- Delivered tools, integrations and open-source artifacts → shipping technical artifacts (sub-agents, agent skills, internal tools) to meet customer requirements.
- Was the customer's on-call developer as a freelancer → white-glove development support.
- Turned a recurring customer pain into an adopted open-source tool → codifying repeatable deployment patterns and sending insight back to product/eng.
- 90%+ revenue from referrals + repeat business → building long-term relationships and finding new opportunities across the engagement.
This page is curated for the Forward Deployed Engineer role specifically.
Please note, this is only a summarised version of my full CV. For the full picture, the complete CV is one click away.
What I bring → What this role needs
Each line connects something I have done to something this role asks for.
Owned architecture, security and delivery for a platform now used across ~90% of Australia - and stayed to operate it.
Built production operability tools the data and customer-service teams use daily inside a regulated fintech.
A recurring delivery problem turned into a reusable artifact the vendor referenced in their own docs.
Engagements, start to finish
The problem, what I did about it, and what came of it.
National Auto Service
- Problem
- Asset management workflows ran on paper and spreadsheets, forcing manual coordination between the internal team, contractors, and customers - and slowing cashflow.
- Solution
- A purpose-built internal platform with customer + contractor interaction layers, replacing the legacy workflow.
- Build
- Designed, built, and operated the system as part-time CTO since 2022 - full ownership of architecture, security, sprint delivery, and product strategy. Brought in a small temporary dev team for larger features.
- Outcome
- Cashflow improved, in the CEO's words. Customer relationship maintained over the full engagement.
SAVR - Operability Tools
- Problem
- Operability gaps for the data and customer-service teams - no usable internal tooling for managing platform data, leaving non-engineering teams blocked on routine workflows.
- Solution
- Three admin panels, two of them FilamentPHP, for the data service, customer service and analyst teams.
- Build
- Spear-headed admin panel work from a paired exploration in my first month at SAVR into three production tools across the engagement.
- Outcome
- Three production operability tools shipped. Non-engineering teams (data, customer service, analytics) unblocked on workflows that previously required engineering involvement.
HubSpot FieldsJS
- Problem
- Building HubSpot CMS modules required developers to author module field configuration as raw JSON - a slow, error-prone, repetitive process across customer projects.
- Solution
- A JavaScript-authored workflow that compiles to the JSON HubSpot expects, dropping cleanly into existing build pipelines.
- Build
- Co-built and open-sourced as
@iGoMoon/hubspot-fields-js. Refined the developer experience based on actual customer-project usage at iGoMoon. - Outcome
- Adopted by the HubSpot core team and referenced from their official Fields.JS documentation. Cross-vendor / partner-ecosystem credibility - a developer tool inside another vendor's platform that they ended up endorsing.
SAVR - Delta Ingestion System
- Problem
- Every run pulled the whole source and then overwrote the whole database, rewriting every row whether anything about it had changed or not. The run took about three hours.
- Solution
- Keep the pull, cache it, and compare it against what is already stored, so only the writes that are a real change are applied.
- Build
- Designed and built end-to-end as the closing project of my SAVR engagement - owned the architecture call, the implementation, and the cutover.
- Outcome
- The pipeline stopped rewriting rows nothing had changed about, on the platform's key data path.
What carries over from everything else
The half of the job that is not code, and where I learnt it.
- Customer
- Customer-facing and pre-sales
- Architecture
- Owning the architecture
- Enterprise
- Architecture at enterprise scale
- Agentic AI
- Agentic AI in production
- Hands-on
- Hands-on engineering
- Leading
- Leading and coaching engineers
- Customer Service
Under-promise, over-deliver - clear communication and exceeding expectations build lasting customer trust.
- Project Management
Goal-based delivery on time and budget - clear goals, accurate estimates, agile iteration, reusable foundations.
- Ability to Lead
Bridging cross-functional teams and motivating people to do their best work, informed by years of coaching.
- Team Player
Adaptability, trust and shared goals - leading developers while collaborating with sales and design under deadline pressure.
- Sales and Business development
Self-employed mastery of B2B/B2C sales - 90%+ revenue from referrals; scaled to 160+ projects via freelancers.
National Auto Service
An internal asset-management platform for vehicle lifecycle tracking - customer portals, contractor coordination, and cashflow workflow automation. Built with Laravel and VueJS.
HubSpot FieldsJS
Open-source dev tool for HubSpot modules - adopted by the HubSpot core team into their official docs.
SAVR - Operability Tools
Three production admin panels at SAVR (Stockholm fintech), two of them FilamentPHP, for the data service, customer service and analyst teams.
SAVR - Delta Ingestion System
Re-architecture of the ingestion pipeline at SAVR (Stockholm fintech). It had rewritten every row on every run; it now writes only the rows that changed.
Frankenverse: A Self-Hosted Agentic System
A production agentic system I built and run every day. My own knowledge base wired to Claude through a self-hosted MCP server, with custom skills and workflows that do the everyday work and run unattended on a schedule.
AI Skill: Create MVP
Productized my consulting methodology as a Claude Code skill - discovery → planning → implementation, resumable across sessions.
TestDome· Top 10%- TestDome· Top 10%
- TestDome· Top 10%
- TestDome· Top 10%
- TestDome· Top 10%
- TestDome· Top 10%
The technologies this role names
Cut down from the full list to what the job ads for this role ask for.
- Claude
- Laravel
- PHP
- VueJS
- React/JSX
- AstroJS
- TypeScript
- AWS
- Docker
- REST API
- PostgreSQL
- FilamentPHP