SMB Tech
HomeWorkAboutContactTalk to us

Forward-deployed engineering

On the forefront of engineering.

Fractional CTO and senior bench for a small number of companies each year. We embed in the business, ship the software it needs, and stay long after launch.

5

Engagements / year

100%

Senior engineers

24h

Reply window

2–5y

Typical relationship

How we work

Four phases. One team. No handoffs.

Every engagement follows the same arc — embed, architect, build, refine.

The last one is the one that matters most.

01Weeks 01–02

Embed

We start inside the business, not in the codebase. Two weeks with the people who use the software and the people who depend on it. No code yet.

02Weeks 03–06

Architect

Once we understand the problem, we design the system. Data models, service boundaries, integrations — the decisions the software has to support for years.

03Weeks 07+

Build

Senior engineers only. Production-ready, not prototype-ready. You see progress every week and you talk to the people writing the code.

04Ongoing

Refine

Most engagements run multi-year. We extend the system, refactor what gets brittle, and rebuild parts when something better is possible.

What we build

Four things, done well.

01

Custom software

Web apps, internal tools, customer-facing platforms. Built around how the business actually works — not how the framework wants it to work.

Healthcare platforms · Internal ops tools · SaaS products

02

AI, built in

Voice agents, retrieval, decisioning, language models. Not a chat widget bolted onto the side. AI that does the job of a senior employee, with the observability to prove it.

Voice & phone agents · Call analysis · Document intelligence

03

Workflow re-engineering

Most operations aren’t slowed by missing software, but by the wrong software. We map what’s broken and rebuild it — often with less code, not more.

Ops automation · Process redesign · Data unification

04

Long-term partnership

The maintenance and extension layer most teams skip. We stay on as the senior engineering bench for as long as the system is alive.

Fractional CTO · Senior on-call · Multi-year roadmap

Talk to us

Let's talk.

We take on five to seven engagements a year. If you've got something serious to build, send us a note. We read every one and reply personally.