About me

“Forward Deployed Engineer” has been a job title you can advertise since 2025. Before that it just meant I drive out there. I sat inside the client’s building, looked at how the work actually happens, and then wrote the software that changes it. For decades, under changing labels; documented without gaps from 2013, commercially from 2014.

The difference from consulting was the same then as it is now: by the end of the week something runs, or nothing runs.

That large vendors are discovering the role right now changes nothing about the work. It only changes how many people will shortly explain to you that they do this too. The distinction stays the same: who writes the code that ends up running?

On file means the part documented without gaps, everything from 2013: around 37,500 commits and around a million hand-written lines across nineteen industries. A line count is not a measure of quality.

In the largest ongoing engagement the work reaches from the computer inside the device, through the drivers for third-party hardware and the cloud, to the test bench at the end of the production line. A system of that span breaks at the transitions, almost never where you look first.

The cases in full — anonymised, with the attribution of which part was mine, and with rounded figures from the source archives — are under References.

Alone

There is no team behind me that takes over once you have met me. Whoever sits in the first conversation is also the one who picks up during the early shift.

On site where it has to be on site

The survey only works in the building. From a distance I cannot see the note stuck beside the screen, or the route an order takes when it is urgent. The rebuild runs mostly remotely, with agreed days at your place.

At fixed prices

I carry the cost risk. Billed by time, the provider earns more the longer it takes.

Only as much as I can do myself

A rebuild needs attention, not a place in a queue. If nothing is free, I say so and name a date.

Not an agency

No partner list, no resources I add on, no junior team that takes over after signature.

Not a reseller

No commission from any vendor. What you buy, you buy directly.

Not a data supplier

What is measured at your place stays at your place. Your data trains nothing that belongs to somebody else.

Not hunting for references

No client name goes on this website without written release.