Outpost EST. 2026 / PRE-LAUNCH

OPENING SOON · BOTH SIDES REGISTERING NOW

Hire Certified AI Engineers who can transform your Organization.

A marketplace of certified forward deployed engineers — people who work in your building, on your real systems, and leave the thing running. Every one of them clears a five-gate assessment we run ourselves. Roughly one applicant in a hundred is listed.

Hire an engineer Apply as an engineer
1%
OF APPLICANTS LISTED
5
GATES BEFORE LISTING
7
STAGES, PUBLISHED IN FULL
An engineer working at a borrowed desk inside a client's operations office, a colleague from the business leaning in to look at the screen with them.
EMBEDDED, NOT BRIEFED — STAGE 1 ON SITE

01 / DEFINITION

What a forward deployed engineer actually is

An engineer who is embedded with your team rather than briefed by it. They build in your environment, against your data, alongside the people who will use it — and they are measured on whether the work is still in use after they leave.

How a forward deployed engineer differs from a consultant and a contractor
A CONSULTANT A CONTRACTOR A FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEER
Recommends. Hands you a deck and a roadmap you now have to staff. Builds to a spec. Ships what was written down, whether or not it was the right thing. Decides and builds in the room. Finds the real bottleneck, ships against it, hands it over working.
Leaves at the recommendation. Leaves at the merge. Leaves when your team is still using it 30 days later.

THE TERM COMES FROM PRODUCT TEAMS WHO PUT ENGINEERS ON THE CUSTOMER'S SITE INSTEAD OF BEHIND A TICKET QUEUE.

An engineer sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with two operations staff at a dispatch desk, all three looking at the same monitor.
STAGE 1, REALITY AUDIT, ON THE OPERATIONS FLOOR
A working session in a meeting room: one person at a whiteboard of boxes and arrows, others around a table with a laptop mirrored to a wall screen.
STAGE 2, BUILT LIVE IN THE ROOM
A handover moment: a member of staff driving the keyboard at one screen while an engineer sits beside them and explains.
DAY 30, STILL IN USE

02 / THE BAR

“Top 1%” is a number we can show you

Anyone can call themselves an FDE. Five gates stand between an application and a listing, and each one removes most of the people still standing. This is the funnel from our first assessment round.

Applied
4,218
Gate 1 — delivered work submitted
1,434
Gate 2 — defended it live
728
Gate 3 — real backlog, scored
302
Gate 4 — ran a live session
147
Gate 5 — full engagement, observed
41

FIGURES FROM THE FIRST ASSESSMENT ROUND. RE-PUBLISHED EVERY ROUND, PASS RATES INCLUDED.

THE SCORECARD 100 PTS
Delivered work
25
A named engagement, a named business, and the outcome it produced. No delivered work, no application.
Judgment under mess
25
Given a real, anonymised backlog: did they pick the thing worth building? Most of the market can build. Fewer can choose.
The room
25
Can they hold a skeptical team, recover when something breaks live, and finish with something shipped instead of notes?
Handover that holds
25
Measured at day 30, not at the merge. Owners named, fallbacks documented, usage still there.

03 / THE REthinkAI METHOD

Seven stages. They spell the name.

Every engagement on the register runs the same seven stages, published in full so you can judge the work before anyone signs. The assessment behind the credential stays closed so it cannot be gamed.

HOVER A STAGE FOR ITS ENTRY CRITERIA AND ARTIFACTS.

  1. R

    STAGE 1

    Reality Audit

    The honest baseline, including the tooling already in use in secret.

    OUT: baseline score, risk register, ranked fast wins

  2. E

    STAGE 2

    Expose

    Skepticism collapsed by live demonstration on your work, not by slides.

    OUT: objection log, one asset built live and kept

  3. T

    STAGE 3

    Train

    Hands-on practice on the team's own live work, tracked by role.

    OUT: prompt libraries in the shared location, tool map

  4. H

    STAGE 4

    Habituate

    The 30 days where the habit either forms or dies. Most projects end before this.

    OUT: challenge calendar, champion playbook, friction log

  5. I

    STAGE 5

    Integrate

    Out of the browser tab and into the tools your team already opens.

    OUT: live automations, each with a named owner

  6. N

    STAGE 6

    Normalize

    Policy and guardrails written against real usage, not imagined usage.

    OUT: one-page policy, human-review list, induction insert

  7. K

    STAGE 7

    Keep Score

    The before and after, in numbers your sponsor can defend upward.

    OUT: delta report, ROI summary, next-target charter

RULE 1

The Live Work Rule

No sample data, ever. Skills built on toy examples do not survive a live deadline.

RULE 2

Ship in the Room

Every session ends with something deployed. Notes are not an outcome.

RULE 3

Keep Score

Score at entry, score at exit. A program without a delta did not happen.

04 / TWO PATHS, ONE BAR

How a match happens

FOR COMPANIES

  1. 01

    Describe the week you want back

    Plain language. The task, the team it sits in, what a good outcome looks like. No technical spec.

  2. 02

    We match on domain, not availability

    Someone who has already deployed into a business like yours. If nobody fits, we say so rather than send the nearest body.

  3. 03

    Scope, stages and price before day one

    You see the seven stages and what they cost up front. No open-ended discovery bills.

  4. 04

    They deploy, and it is measured

    The same number at the start and at day 30. You find out whether it worked instead of taking anyone's word.

FOR ENGINEERS

  1. 01

    Apply with work you have delivered

    Not a resume. One engagement you ran, in a named industry, with the outcome it produced.

  2. 02

    Clear the five gates

    Live defense, a real backlog, a session in front of an assessor, then a full engagement we observe.

  3. 03

    Get listed against your real domains

    The industries you have actually deployed into — not the ones you are willing to try.

  4. 04

    Paid work is routed to you

    Scoped engagements with terms agreed before you start. No chasing cold leads, no unpaid pitch work.

05 / THE REGISTER

What a listing looks like

Each listing carries the assessed date, the domains delivered in, and one engagement with the number that moved. At launch you search them by domain, rate band and availability.

SPECIMEN LISTINGS — THE MARKETPLACE IS NOT OPEN YET. IDENTIFYING DETAIL IS WITHHELD UNTIL A MATCH IS AGREED.

LEAD TIER

A. ██████

LOGISTICS & SUPPLY CHAIN

DEPLOYED ON

Dispatch intake: job details were copied out of customer emails by hand every morning.

BEFORE

3.4 hrs/day

AFTER

0.5 hrs/day

LEAD TIER

S. █████

FINANCIAL SERVICES

DEPLOYED ON

Claims triage: new claims sat in a shared inbox for days, and the urgent ones were not the ones seen first.

BEFORE

4 days

AFTER

6 hours

LEAD TIER

M. ███████

HEALTHCARE & CLINICS

DEPLOYED ON

Recall outreach: the calls staff were meant to make were the first thing dropped on a busy day.

BEFORE

18% no-show

AFTER

11% no-show

06 / ENGAGEMENT MODELS

Three ways to engage one

Same bar, same seven stages, same measurement. What changes is how long they stay and who carries the risk. Outpost standardises the shape of an engagement — every engineer sets their own rate, published on their listing and confirmed at match.

MODEL A

Scoped deployment

One named outcome, fixed fee, all seven stages. The default, and the one we recommend first.

Typical length
6–10 weeks
Fee
Fixed, quoted by the engineer

MOST REQUESTED

MODEL B

Embedded, by the month

Full or part-time inside your team, rolling monthly, cancel with 30 days. For a backlog rather than one job.

Typical length
3–9 months
Fee
Monthly, set by the engineer

MODEL C

Deploy then hire

Start embedded, convert to your payroll after 90 days. Conversion fee is credited against what you have already paid.

Typical length
90 days → perm
Conversion
Agreed up front, credited

08 / NOT HIRING — DEPLOYING?

Prove you are in the top 1%, then get paid like it.

The same five gates, from the other side. Clear them and you are listed against the industries you have actually deployed into. Engagements are scoped and priced before you start, and you keep the majority of the fee.

85%
OF FEE TO THE ENGINEER
0
UNPAID PITCH WORK
3 wks
TYPICAL ASSESSMENT
Apply to be assessed

09 / QUESTIONS

The things people ask before they sign up

How is this different from a staffing agency?

An agency forwards you CVs it has not verified and is paid on placement. We assess every engineer ourselves on work they have already delivered, publish the pass rates, and are measured on whether the work is still in use at day 30.

What does “top 1%” actually mean here?

41 listings from 4,218 applications — 0.97%. The full funnel is above, and it is re-published with every assessment round whether the number flatters us or not.

Do they work on site?

Forward deployed means in your workflow, not necessarily in your building. Stages 1, 2 and 7 are usually in person; the rest are wherever your team actually works. We agree the pattern before the engagement starts.

Who owns what they build?

You do, outright, including the automations, prompt libraries and documentation. Every automation is handed over with a named owner on your side and a documented fallback.

What happens to our data?

The method runs on your real work, so stage 1 includes a data-exposure scan and stage 6 writes the handling rules against the tools you actually use. NDA before access, always.

When do you open?

The marketplace opens once there are enough assessed engineers on the register to search. Both sides are registering now: companies tell us the job, engineers apply to be assessed. Until it opens we match by hand, and we will tell you honestly whether anyone on the register fits.

10 / QUALIFYING

Five questions, either way

No forms that go nowhere. Companies get told honestly whether the register has someone who has already done the job. Engineers get told which of the five gates they would clear, before they apply.