Forward Deployed Engineer engagement charter.

A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) engagement is a named-principal-plus-pod relationship operating inside the customer's change control, validation cadence, and audit posture.

The FDE pod is part of the Reign Assurance and Reign Continuous subscriptions. The pod composition is sized to the engagement: a named principal engineer plus one to three supporting engineers, drawn from the iTmethods Reign and Forge practices.

The pod operates against the canonical Reign shared-responsibility model. Decisions Reign automates close inside the platform. Decisions the customer owns flow through customer change control. Decisions that require regulator-fluency, specialty modeling, or cross-functional negotiation are run by the FDE.

Not a generic services engagement billed by the hour. The FDE pod is a subscription-included capability scoped to the Reign Assurance or Reign Continuous tier the customer is on.

Not a research handoff. The pod produces audit-ready evidence, not slide decks. The artifact is the work product.

Not a Big-4 alternative. iTmethods does not perform external audits. The FDE pod produces the Assurance Pack the external auditor consumes.

Not a model-development team. The FDE pod governs production AI in regulated environments. Model development is the customer's work; governance and remediation are the iTmethods work.

Not a long-term staff augmentation. Each engagement has scope, milestones, and a documented finish line. Reign Continuous engagements roll annually with a posture-review checkpoint at every quarter.

Named principal engineer. Accountable for the engagement end to end. Same face from kickoff to production.

One to three supporting engineers. Drawn from the iTmethods Reign and Forge practices, sized to the engagement.

Optional regulatory specialist. Brought in for examinations not previously covered by the customer's existing controls (e.g., a first-time FDA PCCP submission, a first-time DORA examination).

Optional Forge runtime engineer. Brought in when the engagement requires runtime-layer remediation in addition to governance-layer remediation (a Reign Continuous capability).

Kickoff. Joint working session between the customer's CRO/CISO/Head of MRM and the FDE pod. The shared-responsibility model is walked end to end. The boundary is made explicit.

Inventory and severity-scoring. The FDE pod maps the customer's AI inventory (models, agents, prompts, tool calls) against the regulatory frameworks that apply.

Remediation plan. The pod produces the remediation plan with audit-defensible rationale per gap.

Audit-ready baseline. The pod produces the Assurance Pack template for each examination the customer faces. The customer's first quarterly Assurance Pack is generated within 90 days of kickoff.

Continuous (Reign Continuous tier only). The embedded pod operates under a continuous-remediation SLA: P0 within 7 days, P1 within 21 days, P2 within 60 days. Quarterly posture reviews. Audit-ready every quarter.

Single accountable owner inside the customer organization. CRO, CISO, or Head of MRM. The FDE pod operates as the operational counterpart to that owner.

Access to the AI inventory. Models, agents, prompts, tool calls. The pod cannot govern what it cannot see.

Access to the regulatory commitments. Which frameworks the customer is examined under. Which examinations are upcoming. Which regulators are the audience for the Assurance Packs.

Sign-off authority on artifacts the customer owns under the shared-responsibility model. Approved-model registry additions. PCCP approvals. Quarterly Assurance Packs before submission.

Reign Assurance engagement: completion of the audit-ready baseline. The customer can choose to renew into a new annual subscription term, or transition to Reign Platform alone, or transition to Reign Continuous.

Reign Continuous engagement: ongoing under annual renewal. Each renewal cycle includes a posture-review checkpoint at the four-quarter mark plus the option to descope to Reign Assurance or Reign Platform.

Customer-initiated exit: documented in the engagement charter. The customer retains the Reign Platform deployment and the Assurance Packs already generated.