The rise of forward deployed engineering says something important about where software projects succeed or fail. The hard stuff starts when new systems meet the people, workflows and habits inside a real organization.
I recently worked with a creative agency of more than 100 people as they migrated from another project management tool into Notion.
The workspace itself was not especially complicated.
We built the databases, views, automations, and agents the team needed.
The migration would stick only if the team became comfortable and confident using the new workflows.
The harder work started after the build.
People needed to understand the new workflows. Team leads needed confidence that the system could handle real projects. We needed feedback from the people struggling quietly alongside the loudest people in group meetings. The rollout had to keep moving while we fixed friction and helped the internal team take ownership.
That project made me think about the rise of forward deployed engineers.
What forward deployed engineers are hired to do
Forward deployed engineers embed with customers and own more of the path from a technical capability to a working production system.
OpenAI describes the role as covering discovery, technical scoping, system design, building, production rollout, and adoption. Success is measured through workflow impact and feedback from real deployments. OpenAI’s FDE role
Varick Agents uses a similar model for enterprise AI. Its engineers sit with teams, map how work happens, identify the exceptions that written SOPs miss, evaluate the proposed system, and deploy into the client’s environment. Its FDE guide describes the sequence as Audit, Evals, and Deployment. Forward Deployed Engineering 101
The role is growing because software capability has moved faster than organizational adoption.
A working prototype can still fail when it’s met with unclear ownership, legacy systems, informal approvals, missing context, or a team that never becomes comfortable using it.
The embedded model gives one person or team responsibility for closing that gap.
What is Notion consulting, exactly?
Notion consulting is a broad category.
Notion maintains a global directory of certified consultants, and the range of backgrounds is one of the first things you notice. The directory includes independent consultants, small studios, and larger firms with experience in operations, design, automation, software, training, and change management.
Their engagements also cover very different parts of the market. One consultant may provide a few hours of support for a small team. Another may build a project management system, lead a migration from several existing tools, or manage a rollout across an enterprise organization.
I wrote a separate guide around the question What is a Notion consultant? It covers the work consultants take on and when it makes sense to hire one. The title describes the tool and the relationship. The method is the part companies need to inspect.
That variability matters when you compare Notion consultants with forward deployed engineers.
A consultant can work from a requirements document, construct a workspace, and hand it over. Another consultant may spend weeks inside the organization, learning how projects move, where handoffs break, and what people do when the documented process stops matching reality.
The second consultant is working forward deployed.
The Model That Companies Need the Most
The work companies need has expanded with the product.
A Notion implementation can now include databases, permissions, automations, integrations, Custom Agents, and Workers that execute steps across a workflow. Each new connection increases what the system can do. It also introduces more decisions about access, triggers, exceptions, review, and ownership.
The workspace has to function, and the team has to make the new way of working stick.
At Workcraft, our engagements start with a two to three week audit before we build anything. We interview the people doing the work, review the current tools, follow live projects, and map the handoffs that create delays or confusion. We want to understand the process people describe and the process they follow when a deadline is close or an exception appears.
The ABCD Method
- Audit: Observe the current workflow, identify friction, and establish a baseline.
- Blueprint: Co-design the future workflow, define ownership, sequence the rollout, and agree on how we will measure progress.
- Construction: Build the system against the process and constraints we uncovered.
- Deployment: Roll it out with the team, gather feedback, fix friction, and transfer ownership.
The deployment phase includes documentation, office hours, and milestones that teams hit sequentially. Those milestones show whether the new process is working. Conversations and one-on-ones reveal what the numbers miss, including whether people trust the system, understand their responsibilities, and know what to do when something goes wrong.
This is where implementation changes the consultant’s job. Feedback rarely arrives as a clean list. You have to ask for it, speak with the people who are quietly working around the system, and understand why the workaround exists.
The FDE model gives Notion consultants a useful standard for this work. Stay close enough to the client to learn the real constraints, build with the people who will use the system, and remain accountable through deployment.
That approach has become more valuable as Notion has taken on more work inside organizations. A database is easy to inspect. An agent running on a trigger can affect records, messages, approvals, and decisions while nobody is watching the screen. The consultant needs to help the team define where that work starts, who reviews it, and how the organization responds when it fails.
The deployment has succeeded when the internal team can answer those questions and manage the system themselves.
The end goal is internal ownership
There’s a lot of ways to approach this work, and I can probably easily pitch a long-term or perpetual support retainer.
I know consultants who do this, and have had success, both for themselves and for clients.
But for Workcraft, a datapoint we use to measure success is simple: does the organization feel confident owning everything we’ve built and deployed? If the answer is yes, the engagement was a win.
A strong engagement leaves the client able to manage the system without the consultant.
The internal team should know how the workspace is structured, who owns each workflow, how changes get reviewed, and which signals indicate that the process is becoming unhealthy.
We check in again at three, six, and twelve months. The question is how the health of the workflows compares with the baseline we established during the audit. We look for changes in ownership, adoption, exceptions, and the team’s ability to maintain the system.
A clean handoff marks the beginning of that test.
So, are Notion consultants forward deployed engineers?
The question really depends on the consultant’s approach.
For consultants that are signing on a new client, building, handing off, and running in the other direction, the answer is no. This is the work of a contractor, and I think this work will get totally commoditized over time.
Notion consultants are not automatically forward deployed engineers. The best ones work forward deployed.
They earn that comparison when they embed inside the client’s work, develop a deep understanding of the workflows, build against real constraints, manage rollout, and remain accountable for adoption and internal ownership.
The consultants who only build and hand off are competing in a service category that is becoming easier to commoditize.
The durable work happens inside the organization, where software meets behavior, ownership, and change. That is the part clients need help with, and it is where Notion consulting starts to look forward deployed.
Workcraft helps teams work smarter. We rebuild the workflows underneath AI tools to accelerate productivity and margins.
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