Author Archives: Ashley Alfred

Forward deploy engineers, senior-heavy teams, and the junior math nobody’s run yet

I talk to founders and technical leaders across our client base every week, and right now they are running two completely different playbooks.

Some are just getting started with AI. Others have already cut their engineering teams down while getting more output than before, some as much as 10x on certain workflows. On paper it looks like the same story: AI is replacing headcount. Underneath, it’s a more specific story, and it’s the one I think matters for how you hire in the next 12 months.

AI collapsed the cost of building something. It did not touch the cost of knowing whether what got built is actually sound. That second thing, judgment, is where the real hiring decisions are happening right now. Here’s what I mean, based on four patterns I’m seeing repeat across very different companies.

Forward deploy engineers are back in demand

We’re seeing a real uptick in requests for forward deployed engineers. This isn’t nostalgia for a role that never really left. It’s a direct response to what AI can’t do: sit inside a specific client’s messy, half-documented environment and figure out what actually needs to be built there. A model can write excellent code in the abstract. It can’t yet walk into a client’s stack and know which of their five conflicting systems is the source of truth. That’s judgment applied to a specific mess, and it’s exactly the kind of work that’s getting more valuable, not less.

The staff/principal-only strategy

Some companies have made a clean bet: stop hiring mid-level, hire only Staff and Principal level people, and let them direct AI to do the rest. The logic is sound. If judgment is the scarce resource, concentrate it in fewer, more senior hands and let AI handle execution underneath them. Where I’d push back a little as an advisor is that this only works if those senior hires actually have the bandwidth to review what AI produces at the volume it’s now being produced. I’m watching a few clients learn that lesson the hard way, where the bottleneck just moved from “not enough engineers” to “not enough senior reviewers.”

The instinct here is usually to hire even more seniors to close that gap. I don’t think that’s the right fix, and this is coming from a recruiter. Senior engineers are already the scarcest, most expensive part of the market, so trying to out-hire your way past a review bottleneck just runs you straight into the same scarcity problem you started with. The real fix is making senior review scale differently, not making more of it. That looks like staged review, reserving real senior attention for the architecturally risky parts and letting lighter checks cover the rest, building more judgment directly into the harness so less output needs a human pass at all, and letting mid-level people do a first pass with seniors spot-checking rather than routing everything straight to a Staff or Principal. If you’re betting on staff/principal-only, the binding constraint isn’t headcount. It’s review throughput, and that gets solved with process and tooling, not by trying to hire your way past a talent pool that’s already this thin.

The junior-plus-harness math is getting more complicated

The opposite bet is happening too. Some companies let juniors run with AI once a solid harness and guardrails are in place, and it works, to a point. But token costs add up fast, and companies are about to start doing the real math: tokens plus junior salary plus review time, versus one experienced hire who needs less of all three.

A director I spoke with, at a company running fully AI-first, is hungry for juniors right now, cutting against the staff/principal-only trend. Their process is spec-driven: product writes the PRD, it becomes a spec, agents build against it, and engineers review for architecture soundness instead of writing code themselves, in trios of a designer, an engineer, and a product person. His view: models are good enough now that you don’t need to already be a great engineer, just trainable into good judgment inside a strong harness.

Even there, the gap shows up. A junior on his team ran up an enormous credit bill building one website, because no one was overseeing him closely enough. The harness existed. The oversight didn’t, and it hit the bill directly.

I’ve seen this pushed further. One client told me you don’t need to be a developer at all anymore, they planned to hire anyone and have them build AI agents directly in the codebase, trusting the harness to carry all the judgment a developer used to need. A junior with real training can learn to spot when something’s off inside a good harness. Someone with no development background has no baseline for that judgment at all.

Neither extreme is right. Hire the juniors, and actually oversee them while they learn inside the harness, instead of assuming the harness alone will catch what a person would have.

The through-line

Every one of these patterns is a company deciding, consciously or not, where judgment sits in their org. Forward deploy engineers put it in the field. Staff/Principal-only hiring puts it at the top and hopes it scales. Junior-plus-harness puts it in the guardrails and the token budget, which only works if someone’s actually watching the budget too.

If you’re hiring right now, the question worth asking isn’t only “where can AI replace a role.” It’s “where does this org actually need a human making a judgment call, and do we have the right person in that seat?” That’s a different hiring brief from the one most companies are still writing, and it’s the one I’d want to build my team around.

This is the first in a series I’ll be writing on how AI is actually changing hiring and org structure, not the version people talk about at conferences.

Step 1: KYC!
The first step to becoming a good recruiter is knowing your customer! You can’t find a person if you don’t know what type of person you’re looking for. Learn about the company, culture, technologies, processes and methodologies, find out how often they release code and what their deployments look like, how big their teams are, room for advancement, what this person is going to be doing (get detailed); basically, every question you could possibly ask about their environment, culture and the position, you should ask.

Step 2: Understand the Tech:
Ok, so you don’t need to be a programmer to recruit programmers (though, it does help), but you should (at min) understand the terms, various languages, what they’re used for, the difference between frontend and backend software development, what the SDLC is, how to use GitHub and anything else you might read on a software engineer’s LinkedIn profile.

Step 3: Don’t Rush!
You need to find this person fast, but you also need to do a good job. I’ve been sourcing software engineers for over 10 years and I’ve found that I do my best work when I slow down. Take the time to read people’s profiles in detail before reaching out in order to make sure they’re the right fit for the job. This builds trust in the community and is the first step to building solid relationships with top-tier engineers. Also, don’t skimp on the search! A good full search takes me at least one full day just for sourcing the profiles. Doing a good job takes time.

Step 4: Don’t Spam!
Ok, so you’ve spent time building a list of people to reach out to and they’re all great matches for the job, but how do you get them to respond? Try sending a catered email to the individual backed by research. For this to work, you must ensure the candidate will relate to the position. You need to get them interested enough to reply! That means, researching their interests, ensuring the job lines up with said interests and then communicating this in a clear and effective manner. It’s not easy, but it is that simple 😉

Step 5: Follow up!
Most people don’t answer on the first email, many don’t even see it. Email again, pick up the phone, find a way to get in touch. If getting in touch with the best candidates was easy, they’d be talking to everyone. Recruiting is hard work, put in the effort and you’re more likely to be successful.

Step 6: Learn to Interview
Believe it or not, most technical recruiters have no idea how to conduct a technical interview. I don’t blame them because this is one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn (outside of how to program, which is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever learned!). In order to give an effective technical interview, you must know a lot more than just the lingo. I would recommend taking an intro to coding or computer science course, or a training program focused on technical recruitment. I recommend Harvard CS50 b/c it teaches you the fundamentals and it’s comprehensive.

Step 7: Listen!
(Paraphrasing) Buhda said that if your mouth is open, you’re not learning. Your job is to learn about the companies you’re hiring for and the candidates you’re representing, which is done by asking questions and listening to the answer. Hearing someone is different from really listening, which is why I recommend that you study the field of listening to ensure you’re really understanding and taking in what the person is saying.

IMPORTANT: Google is your friend! I always advise googling everything you don’t understand that’s on a candidate resume BEFORE you speak with them. Also, Google for interview questions you can ask the candidate based on their experience (just make sure you know what the right answer should be!).

Step 8: Be Courteous
Treating people fairly is not a new concept, it’s just undervalued and often forgotten. Choose ethics over money and you will always be rich! Remember that you’re in the service industry and it’s your job to treat everyone like you would your best friend (even if they’re ignoring your texts!).

Step 9: Be Ethical
Do the right thing! Never forget that your reputation is worth more than any deal you could close. You’re never going to please everyone, but if you feel good about your decisions and experiences at the end of the day, then you know you’re doing a good job.

Step 10: Be Responsive Give Feedback!
This is one of the most overlooked aspects of recruiting but also one of the most important. Build a process that ensures you are accountable for providing feedback and declining candidates. Also, make sure your client is willing to give feedback to candidates. In fact, make this a requirement before you even agree to work with them. This will ensure strong, long-lasting relationships with people that will choose to work with you again and again.

So how do you know if you’re being a good recruiter?

Well, that’s easy, people will tell you. You get 5-star reviews from candidates that didn’t get the job. Your clients praise you and thank you regularly. People literally tell you that you’re a good recruiter and they appreciate the hard work you’re putting in to ensure their career development. This is also the type of stuff that makes this job fun and keeps you invested for the long term.

I hope this has helped someone, somehow. Thanks for reading!