Forward Deployed Engineering
Pay for Outcomes, Not Hours
Our Forward Deployed Engineers work as an extension of your team — flexible engagement, end-to-end ownership & accountability for your desired cloud ROI, and no limit on consulting hours.
15+ Years of Cloud Expertise
350+ Forward Deployed Engineers
20% Avg. Cloud Cost Savings
400+ Global Customers
What Forward Deployed Engineers can do for you?
Modern cloud environments evolve too quickly for one-time consulting or reactive support. Forward Deployed Engineers work inside your environment - they know your architecture, your constraints, and your business context. They provide hands-on expertise to help your team optimize cloud costs, improve performance, and strengthen governance, while ensuring continuous optimization throughout the partnership.
Our engineers remain accountable until the results are reflected on your cloud bill. It's an outcome-based model that most cloud vendors don't offer, and it's the core of how CloudKeeper works.
Dimension
Deliverable
Accountability
AI/GenAI workloads
Team structure
Platform backingOther Engineers
Typically advisory-led support with recommendations or project-based delivery
Engagement measured by hours billed or milestones reported
Limited or bolted-on AI expertise
Account manager as primary point of contact
Manual analysis, one-off audits
CloudKeeper's Forward Deployed Engineers
Own the execution - from identifying opportunities to implementing changes and measuring impact
Outcome-driven - accountable until savings show up on your invoice
Designated AI Center of Excellence covering GPU optimization, inference right-sizing, and agentic AI
Designated and embedded directly in your team, standups, and repos
Backed by CloudKeeper Platform Suite (Lens, Tuner, Commit, LensGPT) for continuous, data-backed changes
How do CloudKeeper's Forward Deployed Engineers Work?
Our Forward Deployed Engineers embed within your team, taking ownership to drive measurable cost savings, strengthen performance, and keep your cloud & AI workloads fast, lean, and reliable.
Cost Optimization Implementation
Rightsizing, storage tiering, idle resource cleanup, and architecture-level fixes.
Performance Engineering
RI, Savings Plans, and discount strategy managed continuously through CloudKeeper Commit.
Kubernetes & Workload Tuning
Optimize autoscaling, node sizing, and utilization without impacting reliability.
Well-Architected Reviews
Improve security, reliability, performance, and scalability using AWS best practices.
Governance & Cost Accountability
Tagging hygiene, showback/chargeback structures, and unit economics wired to teams and services.
Cloud Operations & Incident Support
Day-to-day ownership — monitoring, alert triage, root-cause diagnosis & production fixes.
Production-Grade AI
AI experimentation is easy, but Production-grade AI requires engineering discipline.
Our FDEs, along with the support of our AI Center of Excellence, work with your team to help build, optimize, and scale AI workloads that deliver measurable business value.
GenAI Build & Acceleration
Turn AI ideas into production-ready PoCs faster with reusable frameworks and expert guidance.
GPU & Inference Optimization
Improve AI performance and reduce costs with efficient compute and model selection.
Model Evaluation & Guardrails
Ensure AI accuracy, safety, reliability, and enterprise compliance.
FinOps for AI Workloads
GPU utilization, inference right-sizing, and token-level cost visibility for GenAI workloads.
Cloud-Native AI Architecture
Build secure, scalable AI solutions across AWS, Google Cloud & Azure.
Agentic AI & Advanced Use Cases
Develop intelligent agents, enterprise search, and workflow automation.
Why do teams choose CloudKeeper for
Forward Deployed Engineering?
Outcome-first engagement
We're measured on results delivered, not hours logged. Every engagement is anchored to outcomes you can see on your bill and in your environment.
Engineers, not account managers
Your day-to-day contact is a senior cloud engineer or a solution architect with hands-on experience in your environment.
Multi-Cloud Expertise
CloudKeeper is one of the few partners with deep multi-cloud expertise, backed by 350+ certified architects across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes.
Full-stack cloud & AI coverage
Cost, commitments, Kubernetes, operations, reliability, governance, and AI workloads - one embedded team across the entire surface.
Platform + people, together
FDEs work with the CloudKeeper Platform Suite (Lens, Tuner, Commit, LensGPT), so every change is backed by data and visible to your team.
AI-ready from day one
A dedicated AI Center of Excellence with certified AI specialists, reusable GenAI accelerators, and multi-cloud model expertise.
You decide how hands-on you want us to be
Your FDE flexes to match what you need — scope & hours based on your requirements
Reviews & recommendations
Architecture assessments, FinOps governance, cost strategy.
Hands-on implementation
Embedded execution, working directly alongside your engineers.
Anything in between
Scaled up or down as your needs evolve, on your timeline.
AI & FinOps Specialists
Cloud Architects
Kubernetes Experts
Cloud Security Specialists
DevOps Engineers
LLM Engineers
How the engagement works
From assessment to execution, we deliver continuous optimization and measurable outcomes
Assess
Zero-cost analysis of your cloud architecture. We map your cloud environment and priorities to identify the highest-impact areas to start.
01
Embed
Your Forward Deployed Engineers are assigned and onboarded into your team, tools, and workflows.
02
Execute
FDEs implement improvements alongside your engineers, with clear ownership for every change.
03
Measure
Progress reviewed against agreed goals at a regular cadence, with visibility into what shipped and what's next.
04
Frequently Asked Questions
- Arrow1.What is a Forward Deployed Engineer? Q1. What is a Forward Deployed Engineer?
A Forward Deployed Engineer combines the expertise of a senior cloud engineer and a solutions architect, working as an embedded extension of the customer’s team to implement solutions inside the customer's own environment. In cloud cost management, FDEs execute optimizations - rightsizing, commitment management, workload tuning - rather than handing off recommendations for the customer to implement.
- Arrow2.How is Forward Deployed Engineering different from managed services? Q2. How is Forward Deployed Engineering different from managed services?
Managed services typically operate your environment from the outside against an SLA. Forward Deployed Engineers work inside your team - attending your standups, working in your repos and consoles, and pairing with your engineers - so context and skills transfer instead of creating vendor dependency.
- Arrow3.How is Forward Deployed Engineering different from cloud consulting? Q3. How is Forward Deployed Engineering different from cloud consulting?
<p>
Consulting engagements end with a report; someone still has to do the work. FDE engagements end with changes shipped to production and savings verified on the invoice. The deliverable is the outcome, not the document.
</p> - Arrow4.Do Forward Deployed Engineers replace my cloud team? Q4. Do Forward Deployed Engineers replace my cloud team?
No. FDEs extend your team's capacity and transfer expertise. Your engineers stay focused on product; FDEs take ownership of cost optimization, commitment strategy, and workload efficiency - the work that otherwise never gets prioritized.
- Arrow5.Do Forward Deployed Engineers replace my cloud team? Q5. Do Forward Deployed Engineers replace my cloud team?
No. FDEs extend your team's capacity and transfer expertise. Your engineers stay focused on product; FDEs take ownership of cost optimization, commitment strategy, and workload efficiency - the work that otherwise never gets prioritized.
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