Four ways to buy, and how to tell which one you need
The shape of the engagement decides the cost, the management load on your side and, outside the US, the legal character of the arrangement. It is worth ten minutes before you commit to a team.
Four questions
Do you have a technical lead and a code review process in-house?
YesStaff augmentation works. Your lead directs the work.
NoTake a pod or a fixed-scope project, so our delivery lead carries that role.
Is the work ongoing, or does it have a definable end?
YesOngoing: augmentation or a pod, priced monthly.
NoDefinable end: a fixed-scope project, priced on the deliverable.
Do you need more than two people?
YesA pod is cheaper per unit of output and far lighter to manage.
NoOne or two augmented engineers. A pod at that size means paying for a lead you do not need.
Will this capacity be permanent for three years or more?
YesConsider build-operate-transfer — owning it eventually costs less than renting it.
NoStay in a pod. Transfer below eight people never pays back.
The models
DevOps and platform engineering
Pipelines, clusters, infrastructure as code and the telemetry that turns an outage into a five-minute diagnosis.
Per engineer monthly, or fixed-scope for a defined piece of work
Better suited to
Do not buy this if what you actually need is someone to keep existing servers patched, backed up and monitored — that is system administration and it costs less. And if you have no deployable application yet, DevOps work is premature; the pipeline can wait until there is something to ship through it.
System administration and server management
Someone whose job is that the servers are patched, backed up, monitored and boring.
Per administrator monthly, or per managed estate with an agreed response time
Better suited to
Do not buy this to redesign the estate. If the answer to your problem is a migration, a pipeline or an architecture change, that is DevOps and platform engineering, and an administrator will keep a bad design alive rather than fix it. Buy this when the design is fine and the operating discipline is not.
IT staff augmentation
Named engineers inside your team, reporting to your leads, working your hours.
Per engineer, monthly, with 30 days' notice
Better suited to
Do not buy staff augmentation if you cannot give the engineer a technical lead, a code review process and a ticket queue. Augmentation amplifies an existing engineering function; it cannot replace one. If you have no in-house engineering leadership, buy a project or a pod with our own lead instead.
Dedicated development team
A squad with its own lead, bought as monthly capacity rather than as a row of hourly timesheets.
One monthly capacity fee for the pod
Better suited to
A pod is poor value below about three people — at one or two engineers you are paying for a lead you do not need, and plain staff augmentation is cheaper. It is also wrong if you want to direct each person's day individually; that is augmentation, and asking for it inside a pod wastes the lead.
Offshore software development
Build capacity in India, run to the security and reporting standard your auditors expect.
Per engineer monthly, or a pod fee, or fixed scope
Better suited to
If the project has no technical owner on your side and no written definition of done, offshore delivery will fail however good the engineers are. Fix that first — or buy a fixed-scope project where we own the definition and carry the risk.
IT outsourcing
Hand over a function — maintenance, QA, cloud operations, support — with the service level written down.
Monthly service fee against an agreed scope and service level
Better suited to
Do not outsource a system that is actively changing shape. Outsourcing works on steady-state work with definable service levels; a product mid-pivot needs a pod or augmented engineers who can absorb changing direction.
Contract staffing
Fixed-term engineers for work with a known end date, with the employment risk on our side.
Per contractor, monthly, for a defined term
Better suited to
If the need is genuinely open-ended, a fixed term just adds a renewal negotiation. Take monthly staff augmentation instead and keep the 30-day notice.
Fixed-scope projects
A defined deliverable at a defined price, with acceptance criteria written before anyone writes code.
Fixed price against milestones, or a capped outcome fee
Better suited to
Fixed scope needs a stable target. If the requirements are genuinely being discovered as you go, a pod is honest and a fixed price is a fiction that one of us will pay for.
Build, operate, transfer
We build and run your India team, then hand it to you — people, process and entity — on a date agreed at the start.
Monthly operating fee plus an agreed transfer fee
Better suited to
Below about eight people the overhead does not pay back, and under three years the transfer never happens. If offshore is a trial rather than a direction, start with a pod and revisit.
How we contract
The contract shape, in plain terms
We contract as a provider of services, not as a supplier of labour. In practice that means four things, and they are the same four in every market we work in:
- Pricing is a monthly capacity fee or a fixed scope, not headcount multiplied by hours.
- Our delivery lead directs our people, using our tooling and our standards, against outcomes you set.
- Delivery happens from India. Any on-the-ground presence in your country runs through a local entity or partner, separately.
- Intellectual property is assigned to you at creation, comprehensively and irrevocably.
US clients who want straightforward hourly time-and-materials billing can have it — the considerations above are a UK, European and Australian matter rather than a US one.
This describes how we structure our own agreements. It is not legal advice on your position, and your counsel should review any arrangement against your own obligations.
Questions
Engagement models
- Which model do most clients end up in?
- A pod. They usually start with one or two augmented engineers to test whether working with us is comfortable, then consolidate into a pod once the work is ongoing and they would rather not coordinate individuals from their side.
- Can we change model later?
- Yes, at any renewal or with 30 days' notice. Augmentation to pod is the common direction. Pod to fixed scope happens when a programme firms up enough to price.
- Why does the pricing unit matter outside the US?
- Because in the UK, the EU and Australia the question of whether you are buying a service or being supplied with labour has tax and employment consequences for you, and pricing that tracks headcount and hours is one of the things that pushes an arrangement towards the second answer. A capacity or outcome fee with our delivery lead accountable does not. We contract that way by default.
- Who owns the code and the IP?
- You do, from the moment of creation — assigned comprehensively, exclusively, irrevocably and perpetually, not on final payment. This also matters for tax: in Germany a licence rather than an assignment triggers withholding on your invoice.
Send us one role brief
One page is enough: the stack, the seniority, the first month of work and the hours you need covered. Three shortlisted CVs come back within 48 hours, with the rate band and notice period attached.