Forward deployed product + engineering
Twin Keel embeds a senior product leader and a senior engineering leader inside your business. We find where AI will actually pay off, get your people aligned on it, then build it and roll it out alongside your team.
A short, no-pitch conversation with both of us about where AI is stalling for you.
The gap
The industry has rallied around forward deployed engineers: people who embed with a customer to make the technology work inside their business. That matters. But a working tool is not the same as a used one, and a used one is not the same as a valuable one.
Most AI projects stall in the space between a sponsor who wants AI to happen and the people who build it. Nobody owns which problem comes first, whether the workflow is ready, or whether anyone is using the thing three months later.
Twin Keel covers both columns, with one team and no handoff in between.
Book a call to find your gapHow it works
We spend time with the people doing the work and map where time, money and judgment actually go. Every AI idea gets scored on business value and on how ready the workflow, data and team are for it. You get a ranked shortlist, not a wish list.
Sponsors, operators and IT agree on the first problem, the number that defines success, and what changes for whom. Projects stall less when everyone signed off on what “working” means before anything was built.
We build with your engineers against your real systems and workarounds, not an idealized version of them. Product and engineering sit in the same conversations, so the tool stays tied to the workflow it is meant to change. You see working software early and often.
We plan the rollout instead of announcing a tool and hoping. We train, watch real usage, and decide what to change next. Then we help you pick and coach an internal owner, often someone who already knows the work and has the team’s trust, so it keeps improving after we step back.
Not sure which step you’re stuck on? That’s what the first call is for.
Book an intro callTwo roles, one team
You get both, embedded together, from people who have done this side by side for years.
Forward deployed product manager
Forward deployed engineer
What you walk away with
Who it suits: companies with a sponsor who wants AI and projects that keep stalling, teams that bought AI tools nobody uses, and founders without senior product or engineering leadership yet.
Sound like you? Book a callWho we are
We learnt our craft at Pivotal Labs. Rosemary built the London product function from scratch, and Henry joined the engineering team shortly afterwards. Product and engineering as partners has been the default for us ever since.
Forward deployed product
Rosemary has worked in product for more than 15 years, including at Spotify, Mind the Product, Pivotal Labs and Thoughtworks. Her clients have included HSBC, Santander and Sainsbury’s, as well as early-stage startups, where she often steps in as the product leader they don’t have yet.
Forward deployed engineering
Henry has worked in software for fifteen years, in London and now Australia. As founding engineer and then VP of Engineering at BeZero Carbon, he wrote the first version of the product and grew the team to around twenty people by Series C. Since 2024 he has held fractional VP of Engineering roles at climate and fintech startups.
Book a call
A pilot nobody uses, a sponsor with a mandate and no plan, a build that keeps slipping. Book a call with both of us and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help.