Embedded engineering

An engineer inside your team, not across a contract.

A forward-deployed engineer sits with your people, learns how your business actually runs, and builds what's needed — week by week, in the room.

Book a consultation See how we work

The problem

We have an expert team of forward-deployed engineers who help existing businesses leverage AI in their operations and become more efficient. This is not a project team that disappears after a handover meeting — it is a senior engineer sitting with your people, watching how work actually happens, and building what's needed in the same motion as discovering it.

Contrast the two usual alternatives. An agency project needs you to already know what you want, works to a fixed scope, and is slow to change when reality doesn't match the spec. A full-time hire is a three-month search, a permanent cost, and hard to reverse if the fit is wrong.

An embedded engineer sits in between: senior enough to find the highest-value AI and automation wins without being told exactly where to look, and present enough — on-site, remote or hybrid — to ship them in the room, reporting to your business lead rather than to a project plan.

What we do

Capability	What you get
Discovery-in-motion	Weeks of direct observation of how your team actually works, not a workshop
Highest-value problem selection	A short, ranked list of the three problems most worth fixing, and one picked to start
Build and deploy in the room	A working fix shipped inside weeks, not a specification document
Team training	Your people trained to run and extend what was built, not left dependent on us
Continuous re-prioritisation	The next highest-value problem picked once the current one ships

How we work

Week 1

Sit, observe, map how the business actually runs day to day

Week 2

Name the three highest-value problems and pick one to start on

Weeks 3-6

Build and deploy the first fix, in the room, with your team watching and using it

Repeat

Move to the next highest-value problem and train your team to run what shipped

Engagement models

Model	Best for	Basis
Embedded — part-time	2 days/week, minimum one month	Monthly
Embedded — full-time	5 days/week, minimum one month	Monthly
On-site sprint	2 or 4 weeks, on your premises	Per sprint
Fractional CTO	4-6 days/month, ongoing technical leadership	Monthly retainer

Priced as a monthly engagement based on days per week committed; on-site sprints are quoted per sprint. Notice period is 30 days on either side, stated in the contract, not a verbal understanding.

What you get

✓ Working software or automation, deployed and in use
✓ Full code, documentation and credentials — yours at all times, not withheld
✓ Your team trained to run and extend what was built
✓ A written log of what was tried, what shipped, and what was ruled out

Tech & tools

PythonPHP/LaravelReactLangChainAI/automation tooling matched to your existing stackAWSLinux

Who this is for

✓ Companies that know something is broken but can't yet write the spec
✓ Businesses past an AI pilot and ready for a real rollout
✓ A business still run on paper and Excel that needs it digitised
✓ A non-technical founder who needs a technical pair of hands
✓ Coverage for a gap while you recruit a permanent hire

Who it's not for

✕ Teams that already have a fully specified project and just need extra hands to execute it unchanged
✕ Anyone unwilling to give an embedded engineer direct access to how the business runs

How we've approached work like this

Anonymised summaries; some are illustrative of our approach.

How we'd approach this — illustrative — manufacturing SME · paper-based inventory

The problem: Stock counts and reorder decisions tracked on paper registers, reconciled by memory at month end.

What we did: An embedded engineer would spend two weeks observing the floor and office process before building a lightweight digital stock ledger the existing team could run.

The result: Illustrative worked example — not a completed engagement — to show how this would be scoped.

Questions, answered

How is this different from staff augmentation?

Staff augmentation fills a role you've already defined; a forward-deployed engineer helps find and define the highest-value problem first, then builds it.

Can they manage our existing vendor?

Yes, where that's the highest-value use of the engagement — this is agreed upfront.

Will they train our team?

Yes — every build ends with your team able to run and extend it, not dependent on us to keep it working.

Can we convert them to a full-time hire?

Sometimes, by mutual agreement; terms are discussed case by case and are not a hidden fee trap.

What if it isn't working in week two?

A 30-day exit, no penalty, on either side. We say this upfront because embedding the wrong fit helps nobody.

Let's talk about forward-deployed engineer.

On a 30-minute call we talk through what's actually broken in your operations and whether an embedded engineer is the right shape of help.

Book a consultation

Tell us what you're trying to do. A 30-minute call, no obligation — we'll say honestly whether we're the right fit.