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Forward deployed engineers for retail and ecommerce

Industries / Retail

Retailers want AI in search, catalogue, support and merchandising, before the next peak. Forward deployed engineers for retail join your team, ship one of those systems and measure it against revenue, not demos. You tell us who you need, and we send people who fit.

Send your requirement
  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice

Why retailers use FDEs

Every change is an experiment with real revenue on it

Retail AI is easy to demo and hard to prove. A new search ranking or product description generator must beat what is live today. That means an A/B test at production traffic, without slowing the page or breaking the catalogue feed.

A forward deployed engineer works with merchandising, ecommerce and data teams. They set up measurement first. They ship changes behind flags, so you keep only what moves the numbers you care about.

Tell us the role and the hours. We send you a shortlist of people who fit.

  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice
Send your requirement

What FDEs fix

Retail work an FDE can own

  • Product search and discovery Semantic and hybrid search, query understanding and ranking, tested against your current search on live traffic.
  • Catalogue enrichment Filling missing attributes, normalising supplier data and drafting product copy at scale. Merchandisers approve categories before they publish.
  • Customer service automation Order status, returns and product questions answered from your own systems, with a clean handoff to an agent when the case needs one.
  • Demand and inventory signals Bringing sales, inventory and supplier data together, so planners see problems earlier.

How to hire forward deployed engineers for retail

  1. 01

    Pick one surface and one metric

    Pick one surface, such as search, product pages or support. Name the metric it should move and who decides whether it ships. Mark your peak trading dates. It is free to send.

  2. 02

    We read it ourselves

    We read every requirement and ask if something is unclear. Then we look through the senior people who have applied to us, and our own contacts, for people who fit.

  3. 03

    You get a shortlist

    Each person comes with a CV and a short note on why they fit. A good candidate asks how you run experiments before asking about models.

  4. 04

    You choose

    Choose who to hire, or no one. You pay only when someone starts. The hiring company pays our fee, and talent never pays.

Retail rules to plan around

RuleWhat it means for the build
PCI DSSThe future-dated requirements of the standard are now mandatory. AI features stay outside cardholder data scope unless there is a strong reason and a plan with your security team.
CCPA and state privacy lawsCalifornia consumers have rights to know, delete and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. Personalisation and AI training data must respect those choices.
Brand and claims reviewGenerated product copy and answers go through the same rules as any marketing claim. Merchandisers approve before publishing.
Peak freezesChanges ship well before code freezes for peak trading, or wait until after.

Agency vs a forward deployed engineer

Digital commerce agency

  • Good at storefront builds and redesigns
  • Teams rotate across many clients
  • Work often set up as a project with a launch date
  • Measurement can end at launch

Forward deployed engineer

  • One senior engineer inside your team
  • Ships behind flags and measures against baseline
  • Stays through rollout and handover
  • Chosen by you from a shortlist

For companies

Tell us who you need.

Send your requirement. It is free and there is no deposit. We read it ourselves and send you a shortlist of people who fit. You pay only when someone starts.

Send your requirement
  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice

Fees, how it works and related industries

Get started

Tell us what you need.

Send your requirement. We send you a shortlist of senior leaders who fit. One agreement and one invoice, with the terms agreed in writing before anything starts.

  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice
Which side are you on?

Send your requirement

  • No deposit to get started
  • Every requirement read by us
  • A best-fit shortlist, not a pile of CVs
  • One agreement, one invoice

Apply to join

Talent never pays to apply, be shortlisted or be placed.

Availability, days per week

FAQ

Questions people ask

Can the engineer work with Shopify, Salesforce Commerce or custom stacks?

Yes. The engineer works with the platform you have, through its APIs, apps or your own services around it.

Will AI features touch payment data?

Almost never. Keeping AI out of cardholder data scope is usually the right design, and the one your security team will prefer.

How do you prove a change worked?

With an experiment against today's baseline, agreed before the build starts. If it does not move the metric, you will see that in the results.

Can the engineer work across brands or regions?

Yes, though it works best to start with one brand or region and expand from a working system.

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