When your biggest customer is on the line, you need Forward Deployed Engineers who get them to production in months, not years
We've been doing FDE work for 10+ years. The industry just gave it a name.
AI-first engineers fluent in the full stack, from agentic frameworks and LLM integrations to the legacy system plumbing, auth flows, and data residency requirements where enterprise deployments actually break. Self-managed, autonomous, and productive without hand-holding.
Embedded with Cohere, Tenstorrent, and Saris AI, working directly with their enterprise customers across financial services, healthcare, and SaaS. Our FDEs act in your customer's interest because that's how you build relationships that last.
Whether you're founding your FDE function or scaling an existing team, our engineers integrate from day one. Independent, collaborative, and wired to treat your customers' problems as their own.
Trusted by the teams we embed with
"Lights On team has bailed me out several times by being able to hop in and augment our teams with some really solid technical contributions around infrastructure, build environments, projects where we prototyped some AI training frameworks. ... we've had great success with getting skilled folks joining and being productive from day one. "
"Dimitri and the team from LightsOn were fantastic partners for Clubhouse from the early days and helped us with a lot of scaling and tooling challenges. We couldn't recommend them more highly!"
"Nice job on TS! The best software Nasdaq has now."
"An impressive commitment to good, durable software design."
"They have consistently exceeded our expectations."
"Their dedication, patience and expertise are invaluable."
FDEs your customers will love
Self-managed engineers who don't need oversight. They use AI-first development workflows (Cursor, Claude, Copilot) to move faster than traditional teams. They have the engineering depth of a staff-level IC and the presence to hold their own in a room with your customer's CTO. Independent enough to run autonomously, collaborative enough to feel like your best full-time hire. They don't file tickets. They fix things.
Meet our team
Tianjing Li
Forward Deployed Engineer
Years with Lights On: 3 years
Years of industry experience: 8+ years
James Osgood
Forward Deployed Engineer
Years with Lights On: 3 years
Years of industry experience: 10+ years
How We Deliver
Week 1: Where Does Work Actually Break?
Your customer says "we need AI." Our FDEs dig deeper. They observe actual workflows, not documented procedures, and questioning every requirement. They find the highest-leverage intervention: the most visible difference to the most people in the shortest time. Then they present a clear, shippable plan to any audience from engineers to C-suite.
Build Fast, Validate with Real Users
Start with the smallest working demo, then expand. Our engineers build prototypes that prove value quickly, validating with actual users and making smart tradeoffs between scope, speed, and quality. The goal: compress implementation timelines from 15 months to 5.
Ship to Production, Stay for the Long Term
Our FDEs don't leave after the prototype. They harden code to production-grade, own deployments, and stay embedded as the bridge between your customers and your product team, surfacing field insights that shape your roadmap while driving the adoption that grows revenue.