A demo that never met real data
It worked on a clean sample. Your real records have gaps, duplicates and twenty years of exceptions nobody wrote down.
A forward deployed AI engineer who takes your pilot to production
One senior engineer in your team, with a hundred AI agents behind them. As a forward deployed engineer (FDE) from Diffco, they work in your repos and systems and ship AI agents and features to production, backed by a senior architect and a company that has shipped software since 2008.
You talk to the engineer doing the work. No vendor pushing its own product. One engineer accountable for the result.
Products we developed are used by
Awards and client reviews
- Top AI Development Company
- Top 10 Software Developers
- Top AI Developers
in California
- Top Staff Augmentation Company
Diffco took on a complex financial system build for us — the kind of work that touches fund accounting and compliance, where there’s no margin for error — and they delivered. They helped us shape our AI product strategy rather than just executing tickets. Real ownership of the outcome.
Adam HooksCEO at Vero K12
When you need one
The pilot worked.
Production is a different problem.
An AI demo takes a week. Running it on your real data, inside your security rules, for real people every day, takes an engineer inside the business who can finish the job.
Systems nobody fully documented
The ERP, the CRM and a few in-house tools hold the work. Connecting an agent to them safely takes someone who reads the code and talks to the people who use them.
An engineering team with a full roadmap
Your engineers are shipping the product and keeping the lights on. AI keeps getting pushed to next quarter.
Vendor engineers deploy their product, not yours
An AI vendor’s forward deployed team is there to get its platform adopted. Your problem may need a different model, or no new platform at all.
Security review at the last step
In a regulated business, a project that meets security, legal and audit for the first time a week before launch doesn’t launch.
Hiring an FDE takes months
Engineers who combine AI, production engineering and business judgment are some of the hardest people to hire. And one hire with no team behind them is a single point of failure.
The honest version
Some problems don’t need an embedded engineer. They need a short scoping sprint, a feature your vendor already ships, or a clear no, and we’ll say so on the first call. An FDE is the right fit when there’s a real workflow to automate, real systems to connect, and a team that needs someone inside it to get it done.
How an FDE engagement runs
Scope it in weeks. Ship it to production.
Leave your team able to run it.
Scoping sprint: we arrive with a first draft
1–2 weeks. Under NDA, before the engineer’s first day, our agents read the code, docs, process maps and sample data you share. A senior architect turns them into a first draft: the initial use case, the systems it touches, the rules that must never be broken, and how security will review it.
Best for:Every engagement starts here.
Embed
The engineer joins your standups, chat, repos and ticketing, works in your environment under your access controls, and reports to the person you name.
Best for:Teams that want AI built inside their process, not next to it.
Ship the first use case
The first agent or AI feature goes to production with evaluations, monitoring, a fallback for when the model isn’t sure, and a person on your side who watches it work and signs off.
Best for:Proving value on one real workflow before scaling.
Scale
Take the next use cases from the backlog. When the work grows, add a second engineer or a small Diffco team on the same plan and decision log, with no re-onboarding.
Best for:Companies with more AI work than one person can absorb.
Hand over
Your team owns the result: runbooks, the decision log, evaluations, and engineers who know how to run it. The FDE then moves off the project, or stays on for support and the next phase.
Best for:The end state every embedded engagement should plan for.
What comes with the engineer
One seat in your team.
A firm’s worth of capability behind it.
A senior AI engineer, full time in your team
Builds agents, integrations and AI features in your codebase and your cloud. Senior only: someone who has shipped AI to production before.
100+ AI agents per engineer
Your engineer works through Diffco’s AI development platform, where AI agents do the build work inside a written plan, with automatic checks on every change.
An architect and a bench behind them
A senior architect reviews every decision that’s expensive to reverse. Data, security, mobile and QA specialists join when the work needs them.
Production discipline from day one
Evaluations, monitoring, audit trail, human sign-off and rollback. These decide whether security says yes, and whether the agent still works in month six.
Choosing the model
Staff augmentation, a vendor’s FDE,
or a Diffco forward deployed engineer?
Typical staff augmentationAI vendor’s FDEDiffco forward deployed engineer
Works inside your team and systems
Around their platformYour team, your stack, your controls
Around their platformYour team, your stack, your controlsOwns the outcomeTakes ticketsAdoption of their productThe use case in production, measured
The use case in production, measuredNeutral on models and vendorsConflict of interestModel and platform follow your data, cost and risk
Conflict of interestModel and platform follow your data, cost and riskTeam and platform behind themOne personTheir product teamAn architect, specialists and Diffco’s AI platform
An architect, specialists and Diffco’s AI platformLeaves capability behindRarelyTheir platformRunbooks, decision log, a team that can run it
Runbooks, decision log, a team that can run itBest whenYou need hands on a known backlogTheir platform already covers the use caseYou need AI in production on the systems you run
You need AI in production on the systems you runWhat we plug into
Your systems stay.
The agent layer goes on top.
AI models
Claude
OpenAI
Gemini
Where they run
AWS Bedrock
Your own cloud
Agent tooling
Claude Code
OpenAI Codex
Systems we connect to
HubSpot
Zendesk
Jira
Postgres
Our platform
The plan
Rules and constraints agents read before starting
Automatic checks on every change
The decision log
Acceptance standards and live sign-off
Delivery
GitHub
GitHub Actions
Sentry
How we build
One engineer, more than a hundred agents, and every decision on record.
Diffco engineers decide what to build and let AI agents do the building. Your forward deployed engineer brings Diffco’s AI development platform into your team, so one senior engineer delivers far more without lowering your standards or skipping compliance.
AI agents build around the clock inside a living plan, with automatic checks on every change. A person reviews the result before it ships, and every decision that matters is recorded in plain files beside your code.
The loop, inside your team
- You say what you want
- We show what it affects
- You approve
- Agents build inside the plan, with automatic checks
- A person reviews the result before it ships
- 1senior engineer, in your team
- 100+AI agents per engineer
- Everyarchitecture decision written down with its alternative
- Yoursthe code, plan and decision log, from week one
Why a forward deployed engineer from Diffco
An engineer inside your team.
A company behind them that has shipped software since 2008.
Production AI, already shipped
Our engineers built the AI Moderator that runs Maze’s user research interviews and VetLeo’s AI pet-care companion, and bring that production experience to your project.
No single point of failure
An architect reviews the work and a bench covers the specialties, so the project never rests on one person.
Neutral on models and platforms
Claude, OpenAI or Gemini, on AWS or your own cloud. We have no third-party platform to sell you.
Built for regulated environments
Least-privilege access, audit trail, human sign-off, and a security review path agreed before the first line of code.
We’ll tell you when an agent is the wrong tool
Sometimes the right answer is a rule, a report or a feature your vendor already ships. We’d rather say so than bill for a build.
Your team gets stronger, not dependent
We set up how your engineers build with AI agents (specifications, automatic checks, agent workspaces) and coach them to run it themselves. We installed the same practice with RedTrack’s engineering team.
AI-native development setup
AI-native engineering for an ad-tracking platform
RedTrack runs performance-marketing analytics for media buyers, e-commerce brands, affiliates and agencies. It already had Claude Code running in CI, and a productivity curve that had flattened anyway. Diffco ran a month of discovery, found the bottleneck was context rather than code generation, and installed the operational and methodological foundations around it.
- 5,000+active media buyers on the platform
- 1B+conversions tracked in 2026
Two ways to engage
Start with a scoping sprint.
Embed an engineer with the plan in hand.
Scoping sprint
1–2 weeks
A senior architect and the engineer who’ll join your team map the first use case: the workflow, its systems and data, the access it needs, and how security will review it. You get a dated plan with acceptance criteria, and an estimate range with the open questions that make it wide.
Fixed scope, agreed up front- The plan is yours in full: use it with any team, including your own
Forward deployed engineer
A senior Diffco AI engineer embedded full time in your team, with an architect, a specialist bench and Diffco’s AI development platform behind them.
- Works in your environment, under your access controls
- Scale up to a small Diffco team, or down to support, as the work changes
Success stories of our clients
Full development + AI agentic product discovery for Happier, a top-rated meditation app
We lead end-to-end development of an AI-enhanced ERP for U.S. K–12 school districts
We built the AI Moderator that runs Maze’s user research interviews
We’re building Raivan, an AI-powered next-gen veterinary PMS for M3 VIA
We built VetLeo, an AI companion pet owners ask anything about their pet
Full development + AI agentic product discovery for Happier, a top-rated meditation app
We lead end-to-end development of an AI-enhanced ERP for U.S. K–12 school districts
Explore our
amazing case studies
Let’s build something
great together.
Frequently Asked Questions
An engineer who works inside a client’s team to take technology from demo to daily use: reading the code, sitting with the people who do the work, connecting systems and shipping to production. Palantir popularized the model; AI vendors now use it to deploy their own products. Diffco’s forward deployed engineers do it for yours.
A typical staff-augmentation developer works tickets from your backlog. A forward deployed engineer owns a use case: scopes it, builds it, gets it through security, ships it and measures it, with an architect, specialists and Diffco’s AI platform behind them. If you need senior hands on a known backlog, our team augmentation service is the better fit.
A vendor’s FDE is there to get its platform adopted. Ours is neutral: the model and platform follow your data, cost and risk, and sometimes the answer is a feature you already pay for.
They work in your tools with overlap to your team’s working hours, and on-site time is agreed in the SOW. They report to the person you name, usually your CTO, VP Engineering or the business owner of the use case, while Diffco’s architect reviews the technical decisions.
The work continues. The plan, the rules agents work inside and the decision log live beside your code, and a Diffco engineer who knows the project steps in, so nothing depends on one person’s memory.
Claude, OpenAI or Gemini, running on AWS or your own cloud. The choice follows your data, cost and risk.
The engineer works under your access controls with the minimum permissions the work needs. Agents act through the same controls a person would, every action is logged, and a person signs off where the stakes are real. Your requirements, whether SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS or your own policies, become rules every agent reads before it starts, enforced by automatic checks on every change. We work to SOC 2-aligned practices with HIPAA- and GDPR-aware delivery.
The scoping sprint is a fixed scope agreed up front. The forward deployed engineer is a monthly engagement, and a larger Diffco team is priced by who’s on it. You see the full picture before anyone joins your team.
You do. Full IP assignment is standard: code, plans, the decision log, evaluations and runbooks are yours from week one, on terms agreed in the SOW.
Yes. We write the role, run the technical interviews and set up the practices your own forward deployed engineers inherit, including how they build with AI agents.
Need other services?
Fractional AI PartnerAI leadership and a senior engineering team in one firm, to get AI into production on the systems you already run.
Claude Code DevelopmentOur AI delivery platform runs on Claude Code. We build with it, and we set your team up on it.
AI Agents DevelopmentCustom agents and multi-agent systems that do real work inside your CRM, EHR, ERP, and internal tools.
AI & ML DevelopmentML, RAG, computer vision, and copilots, engineered to production standards with Production-Ready AI Engineering.
Team AugmentationSenior engineers who join your team, fit your workflow and culture, and start shipping from week one.
