How the European FDE firms in this guide were chosen

This page explains how the seventeen firms in the list of European FDE firms were chosen, what sources were used, and what was left out. Every source was opened on 21 October 2026. The Polish and French registers stamped their replies 22 October in local time, because Europe was already on the next day.

The three tests

1. The firm places its own engineers inside the client's team, in its own words. The strongest evidence is a service page that sells forward deployed engineers, such as Netguru's, 10Clouds' or SFEIR's. Some firms use the words only when hiring. accilium, Polynom and Faculty use the forward deployed title in job ads only, and STX Next uses it as a job title in a blog post. Netlight uses the words only in the text it wrote for Anthropic's directory. Each of those entries says so, so you can judge it.

2. The firm names an office in Europe. It counts when the firm's own pages, or an independent company register, name a European city. Grid Dynamics, Distyl AI and Tribe AI are US firms that pass on their own pages. Reveneau and Fluxon are the two exceptions: Reveneau lists offices in San Francisco and Vancouver, and Fluxon lists open roles located in Poland and Portugal with no European office named. Both entries say this plainly.

3. The firm sells engineers to clients. Software and model companies, such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Salesforce, also employ forward deployed engineers, but those engineers work with users of the company's own products. They appear in this guide as context only.

The sources, and how each kind was treated

Source type	Examples	How it was used
Company registers	The Polish National Court Register, the Polish Ministry of Finance VAT register, the French company register, UK Companies House	Treated as independent; used for legal names, registered addresses, creation dates and owners
News reports	BusinessCloud, Consultancy.eu, Crunchbase News, TechCrunch, MT Newswires on Placera, Computing.es, IO+	Treated as independent; named in the sentence
Official statistics	Eurostat, the UK Office for National Statistics, Statistics Sweden	Treated as independent; dated
Anthropic's partner directory	Tier, description and office regions	The tier is Anthropic's; the description and regions are the partner's own words
Company databases	Forbes's company page for Fluxon	Treated as independent; dated as of March 2026
The firm itself	Websites, job ads, data built into web pages, filings	Attributed in the sentence with words such as "by its own account"

The registers

The Polish National Court Register, known as KRS, is published by the Ministry of Justice. It gave the legal name, registered seat and date of entry for Netguru S.A., STX Next S.A. and 10Clouds Financial Institutions sp. z o.o. [1]. The Ministry of Finance's VAT register, a list of companies registered to charge value added tax, confirmed 10Clouds' Warsaw address.

The French company register at annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr gave the head office address and creation date for DEVOTEAM, SFEIR and HACKAJOO, whose trade name is POLYNOM [2]. Each French company has a SIREN number, a nine-digit identity number. The register also gives an employee band code for each company. This guide read code 51 as 2,000 to 4,999 employees, code 41 as 500 to 999, and code 12 as 20 to 49, from the register's own list of codes, for the reference year 2024. The band covers only the French company in the register, so Devoteam's band describes its French unit and leaves out the rest of the group. Polynom was matched on its trade name and on the exact street address it publishes.

UK Companies House gave Faculty Science Limited's registered office, incorporation date and its owner, Accenture plc [3]. It also gave the record for Iden Ventures Ltd, the company named in Brdge's footer, including its activity code, a standard number that describes what a company does [4].

No register was opened for accilium in Austria, Enjins in the Netherlands, Twistag in Portugal or Netlight in Sweden. The Dutch register's search page needs scripts to run, and the others were not opened. Their addresses come from their own sites.

Anthropic's directory

Anthropic's Claude Partner Network directory was read on 21 October 2026. It held 321 entries, 312 of them with a tier: 256 Select, 40 Preferred and 16 Global Premier, with 9 entries showing no tier [5]. The page was the same, byte for byte, as a copy saved on 20 October 2026. Each firm was searched for by name in all 321 entries. Anthropic sets the tier. Each partner writes its own one-line description and ticks its own office regions, so those are treated as the firm's own words. SFEIR's own offer page still calls it a Select partner, while the directory shows Preferred, and this guide uses the directory.

Firms that were checked and left out

Firm	Why it was left out
ML6, Belgium and the Netherlands	Its Forward Deployed Engineer job ad is for work on its own platform, Unum, which the third test excludes [6]
Sigma Software, Sweden and Ukraine	It publishes an article that defines forward deployed engineering, but no FDE service page or office cities could be read
Searce, India	Its homepage says forward deployed, but no European office was confirmed on its own site
kiba solutions, Berlin	Only the title of its German page uses the term
Xebia, Amsterdam	It sells Forward Deployed Engineer training; the pages that describe it could not be opened
By The People Technologies, US	It sells forward deployed engineers, but its site names only New York
Tredence	Its directory regions list only Australia and New Zealand and Southeast Asia; no European office was checked
Neurawork, Germany	Its FDE ads appear only on job boards, and its own site did not open
Tomoro	OpenAI agreed in May 2026 to buy it; whether the deal closed could not be confirmed, and its location was not verified

Twelve other European technology firms were also checked: Datatonic, Artefact, Fuzzy Labs, Kainos, Satalia, Merantix Momentum, Appsilon, Theodo, Scott Logic, Codurance, Zartis and Godel. Their homepages, opened on 21 October 2026, had no forward deployed wording. Zartis mentions embedded AI specialists for training, and Godel sells its own Godel Factory. This guide did not read their other pages.

Six large companies were treated as context: Mistral AI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Salesforce and Databricks, which sell their own software or models, and the consultancy BCG X. Salesforce's Madrid team of Forward Deployed Engineers, reported by Computing.es on 20 October 2026, is an example [7].

Figures from the firms' own pages that were left out

Firm	What was left out	Why
Netguru	Its outcome figures for two named clients	Only Netguru states them, and the clients' own statements were not opened
10Clouds	Market figures about AI projects on its service page	The page gives no source for them
Brdge	Its counts of projects shipped and value delivered, and award shortlists	Only Brdge states them
Devoteam	A figure on its FDE page credited to the knowledge base of OSS Ventures	OSS Ventures runs Devoteam's FDE certification programme with Devoteam Academy, so the figure is not independent
Faculty	The value of Accenture's purchase	Accenture's own announcement could not be opened
STX Next	Its client count and the share of discovery work it says ends in a prototype	Only STX Next states them

Some claims a firm makes about itself are used, with the words "by its own account" or "the firm says": staff counts, founding years and named clients. Where a register gives a different date, both dates are shown.

Facts this guide could not confirm

• Accenture's own announcement that its purchase of Faculty was complete. BusinessCloud and Companies House were used instead.
• Atomico's own figure for AI funding in Europe. It is given as IO+ reports it.
• Street addresses for Netlight, Distyl AI's London office, Tribe AI's Lisbon office, Brdge's London office and accilium's Berlin office.
• A headcount for Faculty.
• Independent confirmation of any client named by Fluxon, Netguru, 10Clouds, STX Next, Devoteam, Polynom, Brdge, Enjins, Twistag or Netlight.
• Whether OpenAI's purchase of Tomoro has closed.

The order of the list

Reveneau is listed first and Fluxon second. The firms based in Europe come next, grouped by country: Poland (Netguru, 10Clouds, STX Next), France (Devoteam, SFEIR, Polynom), the UK (Faculty, Brdge), Austria (accilium), the Netherlands (Enjins), Portugal (Twistag) and Sweden (Netlight). The US firms with a European office follow: Grid Dynamics, Distyl AI and Tribe AI. No firm gets a score or a rating, and the pages do not compare named firms on speed, price or quality.

Reveneau's entry gives only its present practice, in its own words. Reveneau says AI writes 100 percent of its code and that every change has to pass a large eval suite, a set of automated tests written from the specification, before release. It says Jev grades that suite and makes it run ten times faster than its previous grader did. It says it uses AI in place of hiring more engineers and puts that saving into clients' prices, and that it takes responsibility for the whole project through production and after release. Its offices are at 435 Utah Street, San Francisco, and Floor 33, 909 Mainland Street, Vancouver, and it lists no office in Europe. Anthropic's directory did not list Reveneau when all 321 entries were searched on 20 October 2026 [5]. Its forward deployed engineers page has the rest.

Fluxon's entry uses Fluxon's own pages and its Forbes company page. Forbes gives 200 employees as of March 2026, and Fluxon's own careers page says "300+ builders" [8]. Both are shown because they disagree.

How to repeat a check yourself

1. Open the firm's own service page. Look for words that offer engineers inside your team, and note whether they appear on a page that sells to clients or only in a job ad.
2. Find the company in its country's register. In Poland, search the court register by name. In France, search the company register. In the UK, search Companies House, and open the persons with significant control tab to see the owners.
3. Compare the address and the dates. If the register's date is later than the firm's founding year, ask the firm which company will sign your contract.
4. Search Anthropic's directory by name if the firm claims a partner tier, and compare the tier with what the firm's own page says.
5. Ask for a client you can call. No client named by most of these firms was confirmed by an outside source.

The questions to ask a European FDE firm turn these checks into a printable list. The US guide explains its own method in how the FDE firms in that guide were chosen. To discuss a project, contact Reveneau.