Founders and CTOs looking to add engineering capacity usually face a frustrating dilemma: hire full-time engineers, which takes three to six months and carries heavy recruiter fees, or hire an outsourcing agency.
Traditional agencies run a broken model: senior sales executives pitch you, but once the contract is signed, your critical architecture is handed to junior developers separated from you by project managers, language barriers, and endless status meetings.
The forward-deployed model
At 3 Dices Technology, we work a different way: forward-deployed cloud and web engineers.
A forward-deployed engineer is a senior technical lead who integrates directly into your team's Slack, GitHub repositories, and sprint planning. There is no project manager in between; you talk directly to the engineer writing your Terraform, building your web applications, and securing your cloud.
Advantages for technical founders and CTOs
- Direct technical communication: real-time architectural problem solving with senior engineers who understand distributed systems.
- Ownership and accountability: clean, modular, production-ready code with documentation and automated tests your internal team can maintain.
- High velocity: no ramp-up friction, using established infrastructure templates and proven patterns.
- Flexible engagements: scale capacity up or down, from fractional CTO guidance to intensive sprint delivery.
Agency versus the 3 Dices model
Why scaling startups choose forward-deployed engineering:
- Communication: from filtering through non-technical project managers to direct Slack and GitHub access to senior engineers.
- Talent seniority: from junior offshore developers with high turnover to senior cloud architects and full-stack leads.
- Code quality and docs: from brittle, undocumented black-box deliverables to clean, documented, version-controlled infrastructure as code.
- Roadmap alignment: from rigid change-order pricing to embedded sprint agility aligned with your roadmap.
- Onboarding speed: from weeks of discovery workshops to meaningful technical contribution within 48 hours.
Work with senior engineers directly
Our forward-deployed engineering and fractional CTO advisory engagements put senior people on your product from day one.
About the author
Deep Mehta
Deep is the founder of 3 Dices Technology, a cloud engineering studio shipping AWS architecture, DevOps automation, and production AI systems for startups and SMBs.
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