One engineer. One business.
Until the AI works.
Not a consultant. Not a contractor. Not a salesperson. An Anaboo engineer who lives inside your business for 3–6 months, builds the AI, trains your team, and leaves you running.
The role Palantir invented. The role frontier labs are now scaling. The role SMEs have never had access to, until now.
A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)is a software engineer who embeds inside a customer's business to make a complex product actually work in production. Not demo it. Not hand it off. Not write a deck. Stay until it's shipped and the team can run it.
Palantir invented the role. OpenAI, Anthropic, Scale AI, Databricks and Palantir now compete to hire them at $180k, $600k. Job postings grew 1,165% year on year in 2025. a16z called it “the hottest job in startups.”
Every public FDE programme is built for Fortune 500 customers paying seven-figure contracts. Anaboo runs the same motion for established SMEs of 20–200 staff, because AIOS does the heavy lifting an Anaboo FDE would otherwise have to build from scratch.
of enterprise AI pilots fail to create measurable value (MIT, 2025). Almost always because nobody embedded long enough to make them stick.
year-on-year growth in FDE job postings in 2025, the market has woken up to what the role actually delivers.
standard Anaboo FDE engagement. Full-time dedicated. Monthly retainer. Hand-over baked in from week one.
What your FDE actually does.
Three streams of work running in parallel for the length of the engagement. None of them are optional, drop any one and adoption fails.
On-site and with your team
Your FDE sits with the people doing the work, front desk, ops, finance, sales. They map workflows by watching them happen, not by reading a PDF. Adoption starts here.
Building, shipping, fixing
They write the agents, wire the integrations, configure AIOS to your business, and fix things at the desk when they break. Production code, not slide decks. Engineering-level work, owned end to end.
Hand-over and drift
Every week of the engagement is also a week of teaching. Your team learns the workflows. Documentation is left behind. When the FDE leaves, your AI keeps running, and Anaboo's drift maintenance keeps it running as the models change underneath it.
Why an embedded engineer beats the alternatives.
Most ways to buy AI implementation lead straight into the 95% failure rate. The FDE motion is the way out.
vs hiring an in-house AI engineer
A senior AI engineer costs $200k+ and takes 6+ months to ramp inside a small business. Your FDE arrives ramped, runs the engagement, hands over to your team, and leaves. You get the outcome without taking on the org chart.
vs a big consulting firm
Accenture, Deloitte, PwC bring twelve people to read your business back to you in a deck. We bring one engineer who builds the thing. MIT found 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail to create value, almost always because nobody embedded long enough to make them stick.
vs a freelance AI engineer
Freelancers are cheap until they aren't. No system to leverage, no team behind them, nothing to escalate to. Your Anaboo FDE arrives with AIOS in their pocket and the rest of the Anaboo team a Slack message away.
vs an agency drop-and-go
Most agencies ship a chatbot and leave. Anaboo's FDE rewires the workflow the chatbot sits inside, trains your team to run it, and stays until your team owns it. Done-with-you, not done-and-leave.
Why Anaboo can do this at SME scale.
Palantir charges seven figures because their FDE builds from scratch every engagement. Anaboo doesn't. Your FDE arrives with AIOSalready deployable in week one, and customises from there. That's the structural mechanism, and it's the reason this works for a 30-person business, not just a 30,000-person one.
Pre-built skills, agents and dashboards
AIOS ships with the AI plumbing already done, agents, dashboards, integrations, governance, reporting. Your FDE plugs your business into that, instead of building from zero. That's why one Anaboo engineer can do what twelve consultants quote for.
Vertical editions for the seat you sit in
Wealth AIOS for wealth managers. Broker AIOS for mortgage brokers. Founders AIOS for owner-operators. Your FDE walks in with industry-specific skills already built, not six weeks of discovery before anything ships.
Drift maintenance after we leave
Most agencies disappear at go-live. Anaboo's optional drift maintenance keeps your deployment alive as Claude, GPT, Gemini and the agent frameworks change underneath it. The warranty most people don't know to ask for.
The whole Anaboo team behind one engineer
Your FDE is one person, but they escalate to the build team, the AIOS engineering team, and the founder. When a problem outgrows one person, the team shows up. You're never paying for the bench, only for who's in your business.
When your FDE leaves, your AI keeps running.
The whole job is to work themselves out of a job. From week one, every workflow is documented, every system is taught, every dashboard is handed over. The leave-behind is the deliverable.
- →AIOS configured to your business, owned by you
- →Documented workflows your team can run without us
- →A team that's been trained on the systems they're using, not handed a manual
- →An optional drift maintenance retainer to keep things alive as the models change
- →A direct line back to your FDE if you want them again for the next workflow
Four steps. Weeks, not months.
Free AI audit
We sit with you, walk through the business, and find the workflow where an embedded engineer creates the most leverage. Output: a scoped engagement brief you keep, whether you proceed or not.
Match
We assign the FDE whose background fits, vertical, stack, communication style. You meet them briefed on your business before kick-off.
Embed
3–6 months. Your FDE is dedicated to you for the engagement. Weekly outcome reporting. On-site cadence shaped per engagement, your office, our office, hybrid.
Hand-over
We hand over to your team and leave them running. Optional drift maintenance keeps the deployment alive. Optional follow-on engagement if there's a next workflow to ship.
Commercial shape
Monthly retainer · 3–6 month engagements · Scoped per engagement on the discovery call
Run by an operator who's lived the role.
Anaboo's FDE programme is led by Brett Alegre-Wood, a four-time founder across property, finance and AI. Brett ran AI inside his own three businesses (Anaboo, EzyTrac, Darra Tyres) for two years before bringing the model to clients.
Every Anaboo FDE works the same framework Brett used in his own operations, not a textbook curriculum, not a consultant playbook. The work is shaped by what actually shipped, in real businesses, with real teams.
Become an Anaboo Forward Deployed Engineer.
The hottest engineering role in AI, run at SME scale across Singapore, UK and Australia. Ship things that change a business. Repeat four times a year.
Build, don't demo
Production code in real businesses. No quota. No PowerPoint. You ship things that change a business, not things that get reviewed in a stage gate.
Operate like a startup CTO
Three to six months, one business at a time, end-to-end ownership. Strategy at 10am, code at 2pm, fixing a broken integration at 6pm. The role Palantir invented and frontier labs have rebuilt is the closest thing to running your own startup without raising one.
Engineer-level comp, no quota
Paid like an engineer, not a salesperson. Market-competitive base, scoped to regional market and engagement load. We screen for the work, not the title, you get to ship.
AIOS as your edge
You're not solo. AIOS is the leverage layer, pre-built skills, agents, dashboards, and your work feeds back into the product. The next FDE inherits what you shipped. You build a library, not a one-off.
Regional, not transatlantic
Anaboo's footprint is Singapore, UK, Australia and SE Asia. Travel is regional, not perpetual. 3–6 month engagements with a defined arc, not road-warrior burnout.
Career launchpad
FDEs are famously a path into product leadership, founding teams, and senior engineering. You leave with a portfolio of shipped businesses, not a deck of slides.
Who clears the threshold.
- →5+ years shipping production code in real businesses
- →Comfortable in front of a CEO and a junior ops person on the same day
- →Production AI experience, agents, RAG, integrations, the lot
- →Bias for adoption, not just deployment, you measure success in whether the team kept using it
Apply to Anaboo Careers.
One form for every role. Select Forward Deployed Engineerin the role dropdown, we'll take it from there.
Common questions.
What exactly is a Forward Deployed Engineer?+
A software engineer who embeds inside your business for 3–6 months to design, build, deploy and run AI inside your real workflows. They stay until the AI is in production and your team can run it without them. The role was invented at Palantir and is now run by OpenAI, Anthropic, Scale AI, Databricks and Palantir at the top end of the market. Anaboo runs the same playbook, sized for SMEs.
How is this different from hiring a consultant?+
Consultants recommend. FDEs build. Analysis of 1,000 FDE job postings in 2025 found zero with a sales quota, every one was measured on production outcomes. A consultant hands you a deck and disappears. Your FDE hands you a working system and a trained team.
How is this different from hiring an AI engineer full-time?+
A full-time senior AI engineer costs USD $200k+, takes 6+ months to ramp, and can really only do one thing at a time, build, or train, or maintain. An FDE arrives ramped, runs all three for 3–6 months, then leaves you running. You get the outcome without the permanent org chart.
What does it cost?+
Monthly retainer, scoped per engagement. We don't list a number publicly because engagement length, on-site cadence and scope vary widely. We'll put a number in front of you on the discovery call.
How long is a typical engagement?+
Three to six months. Long enough to ship and embed properly. Short enough that your FDE doesn't become a permanent dependency. If a second workflow needs an FDE, we run a new engagement.
Who actually shows up, and do they convert to our payroll?+
A named Anaboo engineer. They stay employed by Anaboo at the end of the engagement, no client conversion. That's deliberate. It keeps the bench deep, keeps the pricing fair, and keeps the engineer connected to the AIOS platform and the rest of the team.
How does this fit with Anaboo's existing consulting engagements?+
Consulting is varied project work, defined scope, defined outcome. An FDE is a full-time dedicated person in the business for an extended period, working with teams from the floor up. The two complement each other. Some clients run both: an FDE embedded, with a consulting workstream alongside.
How much of the work is on-site vs remote?+
Engagement-shaped. We're Singapore, UK and Australia-based, so most engagements are regional. Typical cadence is a week per month on-site plus daily virtual presence, but we tailor this to where you are, where your team is, and what the work needs.
What if we already have IT or developers?+
Even better. The FDE pairs with your existing team and treats them as the long-term owners of what gets built. Adoption is faster, the leave-behind is stronger, and your team grows new capability that stays after we leave.
What happens after the FDE leaves?+
Three options. Your team runs it. Or you take optional drift maintenance, Anaboo keeps the deployment alive as the underlying models change. Or you book a follow-on FDE for the next workflow. None of them are mandatory.
Can you guarantee outcomes?+
No serious AI firm can. What's guaranteed is the methodology, the embedded time, and the team behind your FDE. The 95% of AI projects that fail mostly fail because nobody embedded long enough, Anaboo's whole pitch is to remove that failure mode.
I'm an engineer, how do I apply?+
Scroll to 'Become an Anaboo FDE' lower on the page. Anaboo is hiring senior engineers across Singapore, UK and Australia for the FDE programme. We screen for shipping experience, customer-facing comfort and a bias for adoption.
Engage an FDE
Tell us about the workflow you want shipped. We'll come back within 24 hours.