We help companies build Forward Deployed Engineering functions that fit the problem they actually have.
Forward Deployed Engineering is not a standard org chart. Depending on the product and business model, it can be a product-discovery function, a way to deliver complex customer outcomes, or simply the wrong answer.
Platypus helps leaders make that choice, then put the operating model, hiring system and training around it.
Featured in The Pragmatic Engineer
Anjor's account of how Palantir ran Forward Deployed Engineering is featured in The Pragmatic Engineer, read by more than 500,000 engineers.
How we help
Advisory
We assess an existing or proposed FDE function and help leadership define what it should own, how it works with product and sales, and how success is measured.
The usual starting point is a two-week FDE Readiness Assessment. Larger changes move into a fixed operating-model sprint.
Hiring
We design role profiles, interview loops, exercises and calibration for FDE and technical-leadership roles. Our interview bench can also run individual interviews and return written evidence against the agreed hiring bar.
FDE Academy
We design cohort programmes for consulting and technology-services firms building a forward-deployed capability. The Academy uses realistic deployment scenarios, live coaching and application in the field—not classroom training detached from the work.
Selected work
- Comand AI — designed a hiring process for mission-driven, FDE-style engineers. Case study →
- Frontier Health — ongoing advice on product, engineering, hiring and ways of working as the team grows.
- Confido Health — an FDE operating-model discovery spanning its field, product, platform and commercial teams.
- Northslope Technologies — developed its hiring framework and supported product and engineering strategy.
- Prodigal Tech — advising on the structure, hiring and ways of working for a growing FDE organisation.
- Object Edge — FDE hiring and practice strategy.
Current work also includes a custom FDE Academy for a global analytics firm. Some engagements remain confidential; we do not publish internal diagnoses or client-specific details without agreement.
Our perspective
- Is FDE a Bubble? — the title is spreading faster than the reasoning behind it.
- The FDE Fork: Platform or Outcomes — two coherent models, and why companies need to pick deliberately.
- If LEGO Had Forward Deployed Engineers — what distinguishes an FDE from a very good consultant.
The short version of the framework is in the Platypus FDE Blueprint. The practical templates remain available in the open FDE Advisory Materials.
Fractional Technical Leader
For a small number of early-stage companies, we act as the first senior technical presence: building an MVP, hiring the founding team, establishing ways of working and advising the founder as the company grows.
Retainers start at £20,000 a month and are scoped individually.
Get in touch
Email: work@platypustech.xyz
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anjor-kanekar