What does “forward deployed” mean if our team is distributed?

It means we work inside your systems, your meetings and your channels every day, rather than reporting in from outside. Week one is on-site wherever there is an office to sit in. After that we stay in your tools with daily contact, and come back on-site as often as the work needs it. Travel within Europe is included in the fixed price.

What happens if week one concludes we should not build it?

We say so, rather than building something to fill the remaining weeks. You keep the written problem definition, the evidence behind it, and our recommendation for what to do instead. If you decide to stop there, you pay for week one and the rest of the engagement is cancelled.

Who owns what you build?

You do. Everything we build for you transfers to you, and we are glad to work under your own IP terms rather than ours. Where we use open-source or third-party components we tell you which ones and under what licence before they go into the build.

We already have engineers. Does this still work?

It works better. Your engineers know the systems and constraints we would otherwise spend a week discovering, and they are the people who will maintain the result. We build alongside them, not instead of them.

How quickly can you start?

Typically two to three weeks from the first call to the start of week one: a scoping call, then the contract, then access to your systems.

What does an engagement cost?

One fixed price for the full four-to-eight-week arc, agreed before we start, from EUR 30,000 for a four-week engagement. Price follows scope and team composition rather than hours worked.

What about NDAs, security and access to our data?

We sign your NDA and work inside your environment and your own access controls. Sigli operates a certified information security management system, manages company devices through Microsoft Intune, and works to DORA requirements with financial-sector clients.

Home/Services/Forward Deployed Engineering

Forward Deployed Engineering

We Don't Send A Proposal — We Send A Team

At Sigli, we embed a small senior team inside your business for four to eight weeks. We sit with the people who own the problem, define what is genuinely worth building, and put working software in your hands inside the first two weeks — no handover deck, no six-month roadmap.

Book a 30-minute call See how an engagement runs

Sigli — software development and AI consultancy

Vilnius · Antwerp · London

150 project implementations, building since 2015

The Premise

Writing Code Got Cheap. Knowing What To Build Did Not.

AI tooling has collapsed the cost of turning a clear specification into working software. That is good news — and it moves the bottleneck. The hard part of a project was never the typing. It is deciding what the business actually needs, what "done" means for the people who will use it, and whether the thing being built solves the real problem or only the one that was easiest to write into a ticket.

Most engagements are still priced and shaped around the part that is now fast: a scoping document, an hourly rate, a team working off-site, and a delivery date a quarter away. By the time you see something real, the requirement has moved.

Forward Deployed Engineering puts our team where the problem is — so the work that takes judgment gets the time, and the work that is now fast does not.

The Old Shape Of A Project

A scoping document written before anyone has seen the real data
Billed by the hour, regardless of what the hour produced
Built off-site and reviewed in a demo call every two weeks
A first working version months after kickoff

How We Run It Instead

Scope is discovered in week one, on your data, with your people
One fixed price for the whole engagement, not a running meter
Built on-site, in the open, alongside your own engineers
Working software in your hands inside the first two weeks

An Engagement Runs In Three Phases

Four to eight weeks, depending on scope. The same team stays with you for the full arc — nobody rotates off after the interesting part.

1Week 1

Get inside the problem

We sit with the people who live with the problem daily — not only those who commissioned the project. Week one ends with a narrow, specific definition of what we are building and, just as importantly, what we are deliberately not building yet.

2Weeks 2–3

Build in front of you

Working software, not slides. Your team watches it take shape daily and reacts in real time — catching the "that is not how we actually do it" moments while they still cost an afternoon to fix rather than a sprint.

3Final weeks

Harden and hand over

The prototype gains what makes it safe to run without us in the room: tests, monitoring, access controls, and documentation your engineers can pick up. We leave when your team can maintain it — not before.

What You Have When We Leave

A fixed price is easier to agree when you know exactly what it buys. Every engagement ends with all four of these, in your hands and your repositories.

Working software

Running in your environment, used by the people it was built for. Not a prototype on our laptops.

The problem, written down

What we found in week one, what we deliberately did not build, and why. Useful long after we have gone.

Tests, monitoring, access control

The things that make software safe to run without the people who wrote it standing next to it.

Documentation your team can use

Written for the engineers who will maintain it, and handed over while we are still around to answer questions.

Thirty minutes is usually enough to tell whether this model fits your problem.

Book a 30-minute call

A Small Team, Not A Bench

Leads The Engagement

A senior engineer with product judgment

Has shipped this kind of work before, asks the questions that reframe the problem, and is comfortable saying "that is not the right thing to build" in week one.

Builds Daily

One or two engineers, working with AI tooling

Their hours go to architecture, integration with your existing systems, and the judgment calls the tools cannot make — not to retyping boilerplate.

Your Side Of The Table

Your own people, in the room

We build with whoever owns the problem day to day, rather than handing it over at the end. That is why what we build still makes sense six months after we leave.

Max Golikov

Chief Business Development Officer, Sigli — scopes every forward deployed engagement

"Most people who call me start by apologising for not having a proper brief. That is usually the right time to call. Tell me where it is stuck, and if a forward deployed team is not the answer I will say so on the call."

Book 30 minutes with Max

What This Has Looked Like

IT consulting and services, Italy

Eight branded apps, eight codebases, and no agreement on what a single platform should even look like

Every app in this enterprise client's portfolio had its own architecture and interface, which meant duplicated work and inconsistent experiences. Rather than write a specification first, we started by auditing the repositories with their engineers to establish what was genuinely shared and what only looked shared. That audit is what made the rest tractable: one backend and one codebase behind all eight brands, with theming and feature flags doing the differentiation.

8 → 1

brands on a single codebase

Days

to launch a new app afterwards

Read the full case study

"Sigli consolidated our portfolio of apps, creating a unified setup that still allowed for strong brand differentiation. It continues to save us a significant amount of resources and has prepared us for fast product expansion."

Client representative, IT consulting and services company, Italy

Where we have done this kind of work

IT consultingManufacturing and MESPayments and fintechTrade complianceInsurancePublic sector healthcareWood and forestry

Reviewed on ClutchISMS certifiedDORA ready

A Good Fit When

The problem is real, but nobody has pinned down what "solved" looks like
Earlier attempts stalled in scoping, or shipped something correct that nobody used
You need momentum and a working answer in weeks, not a roadmap in months
The people who should define the solution are busy running the business

Not The Right Fit When

You already have an agreed specification and simply need build capacity — our Team Augmentation service fits better
The work is a long-running platform build better served by a standing team
Nobody on your side has time to sit with us — the model depends on that access

How It Is Priced

From €30,000

for a four-week engagement

Every engagement is one fixed price for the full four-to-eight-week arc, agreed before we start — not an hourly rate and not an open-ended retainer. Price follows scope and team composition, not how long the work happens to take.

We run a small number of these engagements at a time, by design, because the team stays on one problem for its full duration.

Thirty minutes tells you if it fitsBook a call

Let’s get in touch

You don't need a brief, a specification, or an approved budget. A few lines about the problem and where it keeps stalling are enough to start.

What happens next?

We read it properly and reply within two working days.

A 30-minute call with Max Golikov to understand the problem in your words.

We tell you whether a forward-deployed team is the right answer, with scope, timeline and price. If something smaller or cheaper would do the job, we say that instead.

Bring us a problem you can't scope your way out of.

Tell us where the work keeps stalling. Or send it straight to info@sigli.com.

*If a forward-deployed team isn't the right fit, we'll say so on the first call and point you to what is.

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