Forward deployed engineers for RAG and search
Use cases / RAG and search
Your people want answers from your own documents, with sources. Forward deployed engineers for RAG and search join your team, part of the week or for a fixed period, and build the retrieval behind those answers. You tell us who you need. We send 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
Why RAG projects disappoint
Bad answers usually start with bad retrieval
Most RAG systems that give poor answers do not have a model problem. They fetch the wrong passages. Documents were split badly, tables were flattened, old versions sit beside new ones, or the search never saw the right synonym.
A forward deployed engineer starts with the documents and the questions. They collect real questions from users, measure retrieval on its own, and fix ingestion and ranking before tuning prompts.
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
What the work covers
What forward deployed engineers for RAG and search fix
- Ingestion and parsing PDFs, slides, wikis, tickets and spreadsheets parsed with their structure intact. Versions are tracked and stale content removed.
- Permission-aware search Results filtered by the same access rules as the source systems, so nobody sees an answer built from a document they cannot open.
- Retrieval quality Keyword and vector search together, reranking and query rewriting, each measured on your own question set.
- Citations users trust Every answer links to the passage it came from, and the system says when it does not know.
How hiring an engineer for your search works
- 01
Send your requirement
Tell us the document sources, who will use the answers and the questions that matter most. It is free, and there is no deposit.
- 02
Get a shortlist
We read every requirement ourselves and look for people who fit. Then we send a shortlist: each person's CV and a short note on why they fit.
- 03
Talk to them and choose
You talk to whoever you like and choose. Bring a sample of your worst documents to the conversation. You do not have to hire anyone.
- 04
Pay only when someone starts
One agreement and one invoice with us, on terms agreed in writing before anything starts. Talent never pays.
Constraints to plan around
| Constraint | What it means for the build |
|---|---|
| Access control | Search respects source permissions at query time. Putting everything into one open index is the most common RAG security mistake. |
| Sensitive information | OWASP lists sensitive information disclosure among LLM application risks. In search, that means data leaking across tenants or users. |
| Data residency | Where the index and model run may be fixed by policy or contract. The engineer designs for the region you need. |
| Content ownership | Someone has to own stale and conflicting documents. The system surfaces them, and your team decides what stays. |
A packaged search tool or a forward deployed engineer
Packaged enterprise search tool
- Quick to switch on with standard connectors
- Good on common sources and simple questions
- Limited control over parsing and ranking
- Custom systems and odd formats often unsupported
Forward deployed engineer
- Tunes retrieval on your questions and documents
- Connects the internal systems no connector covers
- Can extend a packaged tool rather than swap it out
- Leaves a test set so quality stays measurable
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.
- 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 use cases
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
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.
FAQ
Questions people ask
Which vector database should we use?
Often the one you already run, or the search features in your existing database. The choice matters less than parsing and testing.
How do you stop made-up answers?
Good retrieval, answers based only on retrieved passages, a citation on every claim, and a test set that checks the system says "I don't know" when it should.
Can it search across Slack, Drive, Confluence and our own systems?
Yes, through each system's API, with its permissions carried across. List your sources in your requirement.
We already have a RAG prototype. Can an engineer fix it?
Yes. The first step is a test set of real questions, so you can see where it fails. Then the engineer works through the causes.
Explore more
- How it works
What happens after you send your requirement, step by step.
- Fees
No deposit. One agreement and one invoice when someone starts.
- What is fractional
Senior leaders for part of the week, and when that makes sense.
- Locations
Talent based across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.
How it works
Fees
What is fractional
Locations