Who actually employs the developer?

We do. We hold the employment contract, pay the salary, handle leave and cover the employment risk. You direct the work day to day and they sit inside your team and report to your manager for delivery. That split is the reason this arrangement exists — you get the capacity without taking on the employment.

Can we hire them permanently later?

Yes, through a buy-out fee agreed in the contract before anyone starts. Every agreement includes a non-solicitation clause covering the engagement and a defined period afterwards, with the conversion route priced in it. Having that written down early keeps it a normal commercial conversation rather than an awkward one.

What notice period applies?

Thirty days is the usual shape, both directions, and it is deliberate on both sides — it gives you the ability to stop without a legal process, and it gives us enough warning to find that person their next placement rather than carrying them unpaid.

What if someone is not working out?

The replacement clause defines it in advance — the window in which a replacement is free, how quickly it happens, and how many days of handover overlap are included and who pays for them. Discovering that none of this was agreed while it is happening is what turns a fixable problem into weeks with the seat unfilled.

How quickly can someone start?

Sourcing and screening usually runs one to three weeks, then your interview, then onboarding. Expect roughly two weeks after a start date before the output is genuinely useful, because access, codebase familiarity and the team's own conventions all take that long regardless of seniority.

Do they work our hours?

Overlap hours are agreed in writing before the engagement starts, along with which of your ceremonies they attend. Vague overlap arrangements are the single most common source of friction in the first month.

Consulting, Product & Talent

Staff augmentation and dedicated teams

Developers embedded in your team on a monthly per-head fee — our employment contract and payroll, your day-to-day direction, notice on both sides.

From: $1,800–$7,000/dev/mo
Typical time: ongoing
Usually bought by: Agencies, product firms

What this actually solves

A product company needs three more developers for the next six months. Hiring locally means running a full recruitment cycle before anyone starts, carrying a salary plus the employment overhead that sits on top of it, and — if the project ends early — ending the contract through a legal process rather than a decision. The capacity is needed now, and the commitment being asked for is permanent. Those two things do not match, and that mismatch is the whole reason this service exists.

So what is being bought here is not really engineering. It is flexibility — the ability to start quickly and to stop cleanly, without a hiring cycle at one end or an employment process at the other. That makes this an HR and risk purchase before it is a technical one, and it explains why the contract matters more here than on any other service in this category. On a project, the work protects you. On this, the paperwork does.

What we do, and in what order

The contract, before anything else. Master agreement, rate card, notice period on both sides, replacement clause with a defined window, and non-solicitation covering the engagement and a period after it. This step feels like a delay and it is the reason the arrangement survives month four. Three to seven days.
Sourcing and screening against a written rubric. Five criteria scored one to four, each score defined in words rather than left to impression, and at least two of the five about how someone works inside a team they did not choose — because that is the actual job here. Years of experience and which university someone attended are not scoring criteria. One to three weeks.
Your interview, and your veto. We shortlist; you decide. Anyone we put forward comes with the single strongest signal, the single biggest risk we saw, and the two questions we would ask to test that risk. About a week.
Onboarding and access. Accounts, repositories, environments, and an agreed set of overlap hours and ceremonies in writing. Plan for roughly two weeks before output is genuinely useful, whatever the seniority. Two weeks to useful output.
A monthly rhythm. Timesheets, invoice, and a short written report on what was delivered and what is blocked — so the value is visible in writing rather than assumed. A structured review every quarter on fit, growth and whether the arrangement still suits both sides. Ongoing.
The human part, which is most of it. Someone gets ill. Someone becomes unhappy. Someone gets an offer elsewhere. You conclude someone is not right for the team. All of that is handled by us, on our side of the line, under the clauses agreed in step one. For the life of the engagement.

The toolset here is deliberately unremarkable — employment contracts, a spreadsheet, an international payment route, and a recruiting channel. There is no clever technology that makes this service work. Contracts and cash flow make it work.

What moves the price

The band is $1,800–$7,000/dev/mo and the arrangement is ongoing rather than fixed-term. Three things decide where a given person sits in that band.

Seniority. A capable mid-level developer sits near the bottom of the range, a senior engineer or a team lead near the top. The band reflects the level, not the location.

Your payment terms. The salary goes out on the first of the month whether or not your invoice has cleared, so the longer your terms, the further we carry that salary before anything comes back. The rate carries the cost of that carry; terms that pay sooner are cheaper to carry.

What the contract obliges us to carry. A thirty-day notice period, a fast replacement guarantee and paid handover overlap all transfer risk from you to us, and each of them moves the rate. A longer commitment moves it the other way.

What usually goes wrong

Direction arrives from three people at once. The arrangement rests on one reporting line — the developer sits inside your team and takes direction from your manager. When a second and a third person start handing work over directly, the developer has no way to rank any of it and no standing to refuse it, so what gets built is whatever was asked most recently. Name the one person who sets priority before the start date, and route everything else through them.

The contract carries a rate and nothing else. A monthly figure is agreed, everyone is happy, and the notice period, replacement clause and non-solicitation are all left for later. Then the engagement needs to stop early, or to run months longer than planned, or the developer turns out to be a person you want permanently — and there is nothing written down to do any of it with. Each of those is a routine conversation when the clause exists and an argument when it does not.

Nobody defines what not working out means. Six weeks in, someone decides the fit is wrong. Without an agreed definition, a window and a handover arrangement written in advance, that conversation becomes a dispute about whose fault it is instead of a replacement — and both sides lose more in the argument than the clause would ever have cost to write.

See where the site stands before you brief anyone.

If the site is already live, start from what it scores rather than from a guess. The audit reports what it checked, what it found, and — the part most tools leave out — what it could not check, and why.

See the website audit Talk about this work

Questions people ask before they commit.

Who actually employs the developer?: We do. We hold the employment contract, pay the salary, handle leave and cover the employment risk. You direct the work day to day and they sit inside your team and report to your manager for delivery. That split is the reason this arrangement exists — you get the capacity without taking on the employment.
Can we hire them permanently later?: Yes, through a buy-out fee agreed in the contract before anyone starts. Every agreement includes a non-solicitation clause covering the engagement and a defined period afterwards, with the conversion route priced in it. Having that written down early keeps it a normal commercial conversation rather than an awkward one.
What notice period applies?: Thirty days is the usual shape, both directions, and it is deliberate on both sides — it gives you the ability to stop without a legal process, and it gives us enough warning to find that person their next placement rather than carrying them unpaid.
What if someone is not working out?: The replacement clause defines it in advance — the window in which a replacement is free, how quickly it happens, and how many days of handover overlap are included and who pays for them. Discovering that none of this was agreed while it is happening is what turns a fixable problem into weeks with the seat unfilled.
How quickly can someone start?: Sourcing and screening usually runs one to three weeks, then your interview, then onboarding. Expect roughly two weeks after a start date before the output is genuinely useful, because access, codebase familiarity and the team's own conventions all take that long regardless of seniority.
Do they work our hours?: Overlap hours are agreed in writing before the engagement starts, along with which of your ceremonies they attend. Vague overlap arrangements are the single most common source of friction in the first month.

Often taken together.

Start with the brief, not the invoice.

Send what you are trying to achieve. You get a written scope, a price and a date — or an honest “this is not the right service for that”.

Talk about Staff augmentation / dedicated team All Consulting, Product & Talent services