Named Engineers Working to Your Plan, With the Code in Your Own Repository

Fewer and slower than a large firm would promise you, and we would rather you heard that now. We are a small company based in Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru, and people come from the same team that does our project work. One or two people can usually start within a few weeks. A larger group takes longer, because it means recruiting specifically for your engagement, which we will tell you plainly rather than describing as a bench. If we cannot staff it properly by your date, we say no.

You do, entirely, and it is written into the agreement before any work starts. More importantly, it is true in practice from day one: work is committed to your repository, deployments run in your cloud accounts, app store listings sit under your developer account, and documentation lives in your repository. Nothing has to be extracted from us at the end because nothing was ever held by us. An arrangement where ownership is only a clause in a contract is worth much less than one where it is a setting on your systems.

Tell us early and we replace them, with an overlap so context is handed over rather than lost. The terms are written into the agreement before the engagement starts, including how much notice applies and who carries the cost of the overlap. We would rather change somebody in week three than have you quietly dissatisfied for six months. It is also why you interview candidates yourself instead of accepting a profile we chose.

People do resign, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. What we commit to is how it is handled: you are told as soon as we know, a replacement is proposed and interviewed by you, and an overlap is arranged so knowledge moves across rather than evaporating. The deeper protection is that documentation is written as the work happens and everything lives in your repository, so no single person is the only route to understanding your system.

In who carries the risk and who gives direction. A fixed-scope project has a defined outcome, a price and delivery risk sitting with us, which suits work that is clear enough to specify. A dedicated team gives you capacity and flexibility, and the direction comes from you, which suits an evolving backlog or ongoing product work. If your requirement is well defined and has an end, a project is usually the cheaper buy and we will say so. If you cannot direct a team, a dedicated team is the wrong purchase.

Overlap is agreed at the start and written down. Within India the working day is broadly the same, so it rarely comes up. For clients in the Gulf, Europe or the United Kingdom the overlap is usually comfortable. For the American west coast it is genuinely hard, and honest planning means a few hours of overlap and asynchronous working for the rest, rather than asking people to work nights, which produces tired engineers and poor code. We will tell you what overlap is realistic before you sign.

Yes, and it usually works best that way. Our people join your stand-up, work from your backlog, follow your review process and your definition of done. Where you have no technical lead, we can add a senior who plans, reviews the work and reports to you, but priorities stay with your business. What we ask for in return is a groomed backlog, because the quickest way to waste a dedicated team is to leave it without prioritised work while everybody stays busy.

Usually a few months, because anything shorter rarely pays back the ramp-up. An engineer joining an unfamiliar codebase needs a fortnight to become genuinely useful, so a six-week engagement spends a third of itself getting started. Short specialist work is the exception: a migration, a performance problem or a release can be scoped in weeks because the person is brought in precisely for something they have done before. Notice periods for reducing or ending are agreed at the start, in both directions.

A non-disclosure agreement is signed before anything starts, and intellectual property assignment along with it. For work touching live data we prefer not to have it: a masked copy preserves the shape and the awkwardness of real records without exposing names, phone numbers or financial values. Where production access is genuinely necessary, it is limited to named people, logged, and removed when the engagement ends. We can also work entirely inside your own environment where your policy requires it.

Pricing is a monthly rate per person, and it varies with seniority and skill. Included are the person’s time, their equipment, their leave cover arrangements, code review from a senior, and the documentation produced as part of the work. Outside it are cloud and third-party costs, which sit in your accounts and are billed to you directly, and travel where you want somebody on site, which is agreed in advance. We do not publish rates, because the honest number depends on the roles and the term, and it is settled in a written proposal.

A planned wind-down rather than a last day. Knowledge transfer sessions with whoever is taking over, recorded if you want them. Documentation and runbooks completed. Access transferred in a sequence so nothing is orphaned. An overlap period where your new person or team works alongside ours. Because the code, the accounts and the documentation have been yours throughout, the end of an engagement is a transition rather than a recovery operation. We plan this in the last month, not in the last week.

Yes, where that is agreed in writing. Agencies and consultancies often need this, and our people can work under your project management, use your email addresses and stay out of the client conversation entirely. What we will not do is have somebody misrepresent their employment or sign things in your name. The arrangement is set out clearly at the start so there is no awkwardness later about who says what in a client meeting.

If the need is permanent and central to what your business does, hire. Paying a monthly rate for a role that will still exist in five years is the expensive way round, and an in-house person accumulates context you do not have to buy again. This arrangement earns its place when the need is temporary, when you are bridging a resignation or a hiring cycle, when a skill is required for weeks rather than a career, when you want capacity without creating an employment relationship in India, or when you want to see how the work goes before committing to headcount. Several of our engagements ended because the client hired their own team, which is a good outcome.