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Currently available — for the right work·891-Day French Streak·2026 Q1 calendar opens 06 Jan
fauzul.
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Submitted · Jan 2026 · Forward-deployed engineer, Paris

Dear
Mistral,

A page from a builder in Dhaka, addressed to a lab in Paris.

I'm applying for the Forward-Deployed Engineer role on your applied team because — by my read of the public work — you build like founders, not researchers, and you ship like the company would die without it.

That's also how I run ELO. Eight years, three live AI-native products, one bistro running on a model I trained myself, and one French YouTube channel that's been alive for 891 consecutive days because I plan to be in Paris.

I'd bring three things you don't currently have a lot of: an operator with restaurant-line callouses, an engineer who's shipped to four EU clients, and a French-learning founder who knows what it feels like to be the smartest person in a room you can barely speak in.

— Fauzul

Self-scored fit — the five things I'd ask if I were on the panel.

01
Will they actually move to Paris?
Yes. I've been doing French in public for 891 days. Apartment shortlist in the 11th. EU Blue Card familiar; happy to use yours.
10/ 10
02
Have they shipped LLM-native products to production?
Three. NewScriber (multilingual TTS pipeline), TagRamp (intro embeddings), Haiba Ops (vision LLM). All live, all small teams.
9/ 10
03
Can they live with the chaos of a startup that ships weekly?
It's my preferred environment. I co-founded ELO and have not missed a weekly cadence in 8 years.
10/ 10
04
Customer-facing technical maturity?
Forward-deployed for Norwegian healthtech (11 weeks 0→1), Swiss B2B (62% cost cut), London audio. I've sat with the deploy and the procurement officer in the same meeting.
9/ 10
05
Will they make the team better, not just busier?
I hired 18 engineers across 4 companies; all 18 still ship. I coach 11 founders 1-on-1, mostly on judgement. Quiet senior who lifts the floor.
8/ 10
If you say yes

First 90 days, if I were on your team.

Weeks 1–2
Customer ride-alongs
I'd sit beside two paying customers and shadow their workflow end-to-end. Take notes. No code yet.
Weeks 3–4
A small, ugly thing
Pick one painful workflow that an existing customer mentioned. Ship a 100-line internal tool that solves it. Get used.
Weeks 5–8
The first proper feature
Now I know the team, the codebase, the customer language. First production PR lands by week 8 — measured against retention, not output.
Weeks 9–12
Loop becomes mine
I own a customer cohort end-to-end. Weekly written report. By 90 days, you should be able to say what I changed.

Want to talk?

I'm in Dhaka, but my calendar runs on Paris hours from 11h. If this resonates, let's find a 30-min slot — or ask the page directly.

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