A forward deployed engineer is a senior software engineer who works inside the customer's business rather than behind a vendor's ticket queue: sitting with the people who feel the problem, owning the outcome end to end, and shipping to production from the first week. The term comes from enterprise software companies that send engineers to customer sites. At Streaver it means a senior engineer deployed into your company who is accountable for the result, not the hours.
Can you take over and rescue a software project another team built?
Yes. Software project rescue and codebase takeover are two of the three jobs we deploy engineers for; the third is a first ship. A named senior engineer reads the code and the deploy history before touching anything, and leaves the first week with a written plan: what is broken, what is at risk, what ships first. Then we restore before we redesign. When Arkeo AI's CTO and backend engineer left, three production AI agents went dark; all three were running again by week four, and the platform was documented, hardened and handed back in three months. When Wingtap had lost control of its donation platform to a former vendor, we moved it onto AWS that Wingtap owns.
How is forward deployed engineering different from staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation adds capacity to your queue: you assign the tickets, the contractor works them. A forward deployed engineer is handed an outcome — restore the platform, ship the Android app, replace the team that left — and owns the plan, the trade-offs, the documentation and the hand-back. Team Expansion is the right lane when you have the technical leadership and need hands. Forward Deployed Engineering is the lane when you need someone to take the wheel.
How fast can a forward deployed engineer ship in a codebase they have never seen?
Days, not weeks. Inheriting undocumented code is our normal case, not the exception. At Arkeo two of the three production agents were back within two weeks of the CTO's departure. At Propelicy the engineers were shipping to production in the first sprint, mid-restructuring, in a codebase they had never opened. At Sessionz an iOS-only app inherited with heavy tech debt shipped cross-platform without a gap for existing users.
What happens when the engagement ends?
You keep everything. Every credential, repository, decision record and runbook lives in your accounts from the first commit, so the engagement can end cleanly — Arkeo's was scoped to end, and did — or continue as a long-term partnership, as Propelicy's has. Either way you are never dependent on us to operate what we built.
02What we deliver
The shape of the work.
Capabilities
Rescue & takeover of undocumented systems when the team that built them is gone
Outcome ownership: a named senior engineer accountable for the result, not the ticket
Inherited codebases understood in days and shipping to production in the first two weeks
Documentation, runbooks and a clean hand-back built in from the first commit
How it goes
1
Week 1Deploy & read
A named senior engineer is in your Slack, your repos and your standup. We read the code and the deploy history before touching anything, and leave the week with a written plan: what is broken, what is at risk, what ships first.
2
Weeks 2–4First outcomes in production
The first fixes or features land behind your review. Restore before redesign; the smallest reversible step first.
3
Weeks 5–12Own the outcome
Stabilize, ship, document. Weekly written status, decisions recorded as they are made, runbooks written for the people who stay.
4
Week 12+Hand back or stay
A clean hand-back with full IP and credentials, or an ongoing partnership. Your call — the engagement is built so it can end.
After launch
The outcome shipped. The hand-back is the last deliverable.
Cadence
Weekly written status while the engagement runs; decisions logged as they are made, in your workspace.
Commercial shape
Fixed-fee milestones scoped to end — Arkeo's were restored, documented, hardened — or a continuing partnership on a monthly retainer when you want the engineer to stay.
Reviews
A checkpoint at every milestone and a final review at hand-back: what was restored, what was documented, what the next hire inherits.
Hand-off
Full IP, every credential and every runbook in your workspace. Arkeo's exit was clean by design — that is what makes a rescue partner different from a custodian.
“The team is highly talented. When they joined us, our working speed dramatically increased — they successfully replaced a former team, and we consider them all-star power hitters.”
