Embed inside the account.Ship production-ready solutionsin days, not months.
Microsoft's Frontier Company Engineering team has run a Forward Deployed Engineering model for over a decade — principal engineers embedded directly within customer teams, turning business needs into shipped, production-grade solutions side-by-side with the customer. That customer-embedded, translate-then-build-then-transition motion is the seat I've run for a decade as a high-agency founder-operator: 0→1 delivery across UK, Swiss, Norwegian and North American clients, phased program leadership, and AI-first engineering. Remote across the UK, Netherlands and Switzerland — and ready for the travel.
Embedded delivery. AI-first execution. Clean hand-offs.
Program leadership that survives the engagement lifecycle
Principal work means decomposing a fuzzy brief into phases, owners and measurable milestones, running the senior-stakeholder room, and handing over cleanly. I coordinated Frontgo's Norway pod through to a clean handover to the client's in-house team, and stood up 's delivery team for the long horizon. CSPO discipline for prioritisation.
The Frontier Company Engineering seat is the work I already do — embed inside the account, ship in days not months, influence the senior room, and hand it over so the impact sustains over time.
I drop into an ambiguous account, translate the business need into a technical approach, ship the production-grade solution side-by-side with the customer — then hand it over clean so the impact sustains over time.
Fauzul — on why Microsoft Frontier Company Engineering
Every verdict above maps to shipped work. Pick one and challenge it.
Questions a sharp hiring loop would raise.
The objections a sharp Principal FDE / TPM loop would raise — answered straight, including the ones the gaps invite.
You've never held the title 'Technical Program Manager.' Why are you an IC4/IC5 TPM hire?
Because the discipline maps even though the title doesn't, and I'd rather say that plainly than dress up my CV. As co-founder, Engineering Manager and then CIO at I've run exactly what a TPM runs — decomposing ambiguous scope into phases, owners and measurable milestones, driving cross-functional and cross-team delivery, and holding the senior-stakeholder cadence — across a 22-person cross-functional core and nine client geographies, managing people for 7 of those years while staying hands-on, with CSPO discipline behind the prioritisation. The JD asks for engineering-or-TPM experience OR equivalent experience; mine is founder/CIO-equivalent program leadership, and I'll formalize it into Microsoft's TPM artifacts fast rather than pretend it was already titled that way.
Your customer work is founder/studio scale, not Fortune-500 strategic accounts. Can you operate at Microsoft-account scale?
Honestly, that's the real ramp — and I'd name it in the interview rather than let it surface later. What I've done is the embedded technical-leadership motion: primary technical leader inside a customer's environment, translating a fuzzy brief into shipped, production-grade software, then transitioning it cleanly. That motion doesn't change with account size. What changes is the scaffolding around it — account planning, stakeholder maps, and the FDE-crew structure at enterprise scale — and that's what I'd learn on the account with the team, not fake going in. The founder-operator instinct for urgency, boundaries and accountability travels straight across.
Your production AI is Claude-led, not Microsoft's Azure OpenAI / Copilot stack. Does that matter for an AI/ML FDE?
The AI-first discipline the role asks for is model-agnostic, and I'll be candid about where my receipts come from. My production AI has been Claude-led with Gemini second — the model and harness get picked per task, not by vendor loyalty — and I already ship against Azure where the task fits: renders its dual-host voices with Gemini TTS served via Azure, and I hold an Azure ML AutoML NLP certification. The transferable thing is the practice: designing around model behaviour, wiring evals and guardrails, using AI tools to create software artifacts daily via Claude Code with agent skills and hooks. I'm eager to go deep on Azure AI Foundry and Copilot tooling from day one — the deployment skill is what carries, and it carries across model families.
Do you have a degree?
Field of Study: Computer Science & Engineering · North South University (2012–2015). I do not claim a completed degree — I went straight into building, and I'd rather be precise about that than imply a credential I don't hold. The JD explicitly allows equivalent experience, and a decade of shipped, production-grade, customer-embedded work is the operative qualification here.
This is remote across the UK, Netherlands and Switzerland with 25–50% travel — are you set up for that?
Yes, and none of those geographies is abstract for me. My sister lives in London and I've delivered audio-engineering and B2B SaaS work there for years; Switzerland is a real professional base — AG was a direct client in Zürich for over six years before Loopcloud acquired it in 2026; Norway (Frontgo, Vipps) sits right beside both; the Netherlands I'm open to. I've been remote-first since 2020, I'm fully compatible with European hours, and the 25–50% travel is the embedded part of the job I actually want.
You co-founded and run ELO — why step into an individual-contributor FDE seat?
Because being embedded with a customer and turning an ambiguous problem into a shipped system is the part of the work I love most, stripped of the agency overhead. As CIO my role drifted toward running a client-services business; the FDE seat is that same customer-embedded delivery with Microsoft's frontier tech and strategic accounts behind it. I'd rather carry the lab's tools into real enterprise production than keep running the studio around it.
Claude-led, model picked per task, not by vendor loyalty.
The stack and receipts behind the claims — Claude-led for client delivery, Gemini second, ships against Azure — the right tool wins the task, not vendor loyalty.
let's ship it_side-by-side, in days not months.
This role is remote across the UK, Netherlands and Switzerland — and every one of those is real ground, not a pin on a map. London is where my sister lives and where I've delivered audio-engineering and B2B SaaS work for years. Switzerland isn't abstract either: Jamahook AG was a direct client in Zürich for over six years before Loopcloud acquired it in 2026. Norway (Frontgo, Vipps) sits right beside both. The Netherlands I'm open to and happy to base from. Remote-first since 2020, fully compatible with European hours, and comfortable with the 25–50% travel this seat asks for.
Four other Microsoft seats, each in its own register.
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