--- title: "Forward deployed engineer vs agency vs freelancer" description: "In-house FDE, agency or an embedded engineer on a subscription? Who you talk to, who writes the code and who learns your business, compared honestly." url: "https://madsalt.tech/blog/forward-deployed-engineer-vs-agency-vs-freelancer/" author: "Denys Zaichenko" language: "en" published: 2026-10-09 --- # Forward deployed engineer vs agency vs freelancer TL;DR The real difference between these options is who does the work. An in-house FDE is one employee who learns your business and builds. An agency usually separates the person who sells from the people who build. A senior engineer on a subscription, which is how I work, is one person who talks to you, learns the business and writes the code. A freelancer marketplace is the fastest way to get a single task done. Each has a case where it is the right call. I'm Denys, a senior full-stack and AI engineer in Porto. I work as a forward deployed engineer on a subscription, so weigh my view accordingly. Below I try to give each model its honest best case. ## What are the ways to get forward deployed engineering work done? There are four, and the first three cover most startups. 1. **Hire an FDE in-house.** One employee, on your payroll. 2. **Hire an agency.** A company with a team, a process and a contract. 3. **Embed a senior engineer on a subscription.** One person joins your team, takes tasks and ships, for a flat monthly fee. 4. **Post the task on a freelancer marketplace.** Fast, usually for one defined job. ![Who stands between you and the code. Who you talk to, and who writes the code, in each option. In-house FDE: You → Your employee; Agency: You → Seller → Project manager → Engineers; Freelancer marketplace: You → Freelancer, one job at a time; Embedded engineer on subscription: You → The engineer who builds.](https://madsalt.tech/charts/en/forward-deployed-engineer-vs-agency-vs-freelancer.svg) *From the comparison table below.* | | In-house FDE | Agency | Freelancer marketplace | Embedded engineer on subscription | | ------------------------ | ------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | | Who you talk to | Your employee | Account manager or project manager | The freelancer | The engineer who builds | | Who writes the code | Your employee | People you may not meet during the sale | The freelancer | Same person you talk to | | Who learns your business | Your employee | Often the project manager, who then briefs the team | The freelancer, per job | Same person who builds | | Handoffs | None | Sales to scoping to build | None, but you manage them | None | | Time to start | About 3 to 7 months | After scoping and a signed contract | Days to two weeks | After a call and a first scoped task | | Cost model | Salary, benefits, recruiter fee | Fixed project price or hourly rate | Hourly or fixed per job | Flat monthly fee | | Commitment | Employment | Contract for a project or retainer | Per job | Month to month | | Best for | A permanent seat on your team | A large, well-specified build with many roles | One defined task | Shipping weekly with one person who knows the product | ## When is an in-house FDE the right call? When the work is permanent and you want someone to grow with the company. The role came out of Palantir in the early 2010s, as [The Pragmatic Engineer](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-deployed-engineers) tells it. [OpenAI's posting]() describes engineers who "own discovery, technical scoping, system design, build, and production rollout" alongside its customers. That is a full-time job. If you need someone on site with your customers every week, or you want to build a team of engineers, hire. The cost is time: by my sum of the ranges in [the hiring timeline](https://madsalt.tech/blog/hiring-a-forward-deployed-engineer-takes-months/), about 3 to 7 months from opening the role to a contributing hire. The subscription changes the contract, not the work. I am a forward deployed engineer for your team: embedded, learning how your business works, writing and shipping production code. You skip the recruiting months, the notice period and the recruiter fee. ## When does an agency fit? An agency fits when the job needs more roles than one engineer covers. Think of a build with a designer, a mobile team and QA running in parallel, against a specification that is already clear. An agency also survives a person leaving. If your priority is a fixed price and a contract for a defined project, that structure is a real advantage. The friction comes from the structure, not from the people. The person who sells the project, the project manager who runs it and the engineers who build it are often three different people. Each handoff loses a bit of what you said in the first call. If your scope will change every week, which is normal for a young product, that loss costs you. ## Where does a freelancer marketplace fit? It fits one defined task you can describe in a paragraph. [Upwork's own research](https://www.upwork.com/research/hire-freelancer-vs-employee-research) puts the median time to hire for contingent roles at 9 to 14 days, against a median of 35 days to fill a full-time role. Treat the source with care, because Upwork sells that speed. Still, a day or two to find someone for a clear task is realistic. What a marketplace does not give you by default is continuity. You vet, you brief, you manage. When the task ends, the context leaves with the person. A good freelancer who stays for a year starts to look like the subscription below, so the dividing line is the arrangement, not the label. ## What is different about an embedded engineer on a subscription? The person who talks to you is the person who writes the code. The engineer joins your chat, reads your product, takes a task and deploys it. There is no one between you to brief. Work comes in as scoped tasks: a feature, a bug fix, an integration, a page. Communication is mostly asynchronous, with a call when something needs one. The model works best for a product that changes every week, where the person who knows the context is also the person who builds. For a real-estate document service I built a system that turns property certificates around in 2 to 3 minutes instead of 2 to 3 weeks, at EUR 99 instead of EUR 200 to 300. The case file is at [/work/property-document-automation/](https://madsalt.tech/work/property-document-automation/). The limits are real too. One engineer is not a full team, so a project that needs design, mobile and QA at once belongs with an agency. On an existing codebase, expect a read-through period before the first task. Time zones matter: check how many hours a day you overlap live. ## Frequently asked questions ### Isn't a subscription engineer just a small agency? No, and the difference is who does the work. In an agency, the person who sells the project and the people who build it are usually different, and information passes through handoffs. With me, the person you speak to learns your business, makes the technical decisions and writes the code. The test is not how big the shop is. The test is whether the person who understood your problem is the one building the answer. ### Is a subscription FDE the same as hiring one? It is the same way of working and the same hands-on person in your team: embedded, learning how your business works, writing and shipping production code. The difference is commitment and contract. A subscription means no recruiting months, no notice period and no recruiter fee. Hire if you need a permanent seat that grows into a team lead. ### Which option should a startup choose? - Permanent seat, steady work for years, a team to grow: hire in-house. - A large, well-specified project with design, mobile and QA: an agency. - One task, needed this week: a freelancer. - Weekly shipping on a product that changes, with one person who knows it: a subscription. ### Can I start with a subscription and hire later? Yes. The code lives in your repository, and the arrangement is month to month, so moving to a hire later is a normal path. A subscription is also a way to find out what the full-time role should look like before you open it. Comparing notes on an FDE role? If you're weighing a hire against other options, I'm happy to share what I've seen. No pitch. [Get in touch](https://madsalt.tech/#contact)