Staff augmentation

Engineers who join your team, and answer to your manager

No lead, no separate process, no account manager in the middle. They attend your standup and follow your definition of done. The catch is that delivery risk stays with you, so this only works when you have someone to direct them.

Book a 30-minute scoping call Compare all five models

If nobody on your side has spare management time, take a dedicated team instead. We will say so.

Where the responsibility sits in this model.
Priorities and direction What they work on	You
Day to day management Standups, reviews, blockers	You
Delivery risk If it slips	You
Employment and payroll Contracts, equipment, HR	Us
Replacement if needed At our cost	Us

Two red rows is what makes this model cheaper and riskier.

On-call groupExtra hands for urgent work in Germany
You interviewNobody joins without your approval
30 days noticeRolling, per person
Your processYour board, tools and standards

Be honest about capacity

This model fails in a predictable way

Augmentation goes wrong for management reasons, not technical ones. The pattern is the same every time.

It will not work when

Nobody has time to direct them

Your one senior developer is already the bottleneck
Onboarding is assumed rather than planned
Nobody owns priorities, so work queues behind a busy person
Requirements arrive as verbal descriptions in passing

Six weeks later the conclusion becomes that offshore does not work. It was never tested.

It works well when

You have a functioning team with a gap

A manager or lead already runs the work
You need a specific skill for a defined period
You want to add capacity without a hiring round
Your process and standards are written down
You can onboard someone in the first week

Then this is the cheapest way to add capable people quickly.

Plain definitions

Two questions that decide whether this model suits you

The second one is the one people get wrong, and it costs a quarter to discover.

What is staff augmentation?

Engineers from us join your team and work under your management. Your standup, your board, your definition of done, your code review. We handle employment, payroll and replacement; you handle the work.

What you are buying is capacity and skills, not delivery. That distinction is the whole model, and it is the reason the arrangement is cheaper per person than a managed team.

Where is the line against a dedicated team?

The line is management, not headcount. If you direct the work and own delivery, it is augmentation. If somebody on our side runs the day to day and reports progress to you, it is a dedicated team.

The failure mode is buying augmentation with no capacity to manage it. Engineers wait for direction, nobody notices for three weeks, and the model gets blamed for a decision made before it started. If your lead cannot give the work an hour a day, buy the managed version instead.

What you get

Five things included, and one that is not

Engineers in your process: Your board, your tools, your standup, your review standards. We do not run a parallel process alongside yours.
Your interview on every person: We screen and shortlist, you decide. This matters more here than anywhere, because you will manage them directly.
Employment handled: Contracts, payroll, equipment, holiday and HR sit with us. You get a person, not an administrative burden.
Replacement at our cost: If someone is not right, we replace them and carry the recruitment cost.
Rolling terms per person: 30 days notice, scaled individually rather than as a block.
No technical lead: That is the part you are not buying. If you need one, you want a dedicated team and should pay for the structure.

What people ask us for

Six gaps this model actually fills

These work. Anything that needs somebody to decide what to build does not belong on this list.

A skill your team lacks for a defined period: A React or a mobile specialist for six months, where hiring permanently would be wrong and going without would stall a release.
Extra hands on a delivery with a date: Where the plan is clear, the work is divisible, and the constraint is arithmetic rather than direction.
Cover for parental leave or a resignation: A known gap with a known end, filled by somebody who works in your process rather than beside it.
Automated test coverage on an existing product: Well-suited to this model, because the target is defined by the code that already exists.
A second pair of eyes on a legacy system: Where your own people cannot be spared but somebody has to read the thing before a decision gets made.
Burst capacity ahead of a launch: Short, intense and bounded. This is the model at its best, and the point at which it stops making sense is when the burst turns out to be permanent.

Tell us the gap you are filling

Three fields. An engineering manager reads it, not a sales rep. You get an answer within one working day.

We check whether augmentation is genuinely the right model
You get profiles, availability and a monthly cost
No obligation, and no phone number needed to start

Commercials and governance

How this is priced and governed

Simple by design. Complexity in the commercial arrangement is usually a sign that the model is wrong for the situation.

Pricing: Monthly per person, quoted by role and seniority. Send the skills and the duration and you get a number.
Notice: Short, deliberately. This model exists to be easy to stop, and a long notice period would remove the reason to choose it.
Who manages: You do, entirely. We handle employment, equipment, holiday and replacement, and we stay out of the work.
Hours: We agree the overlap before anyone starts. A Vietnam team gives a UK morning overlap and most of an Australian day; a US west coast overlap has to be engineered and we will say how.
Access and confidentiality: NDA signed before repository access, and accounts in your systems under your control so you can revoke them without asking us.
When we would refuse: If nobody on your side has time to direct the work, we will say the model is wrong rather than take the booking and watch it fail.

Who does the work

Twenty engineers, eight of them senior

A team of twenty has no bench to unload. Everybody we put forward is somebody we would keep, which is the only real guarantee available in this model.

Engineers in Ho Chi Minh City: 20
Senior engineers: 8
Average experience: 5+ yrs
Working with US, UK and EU teams: 10+ yrs

You interview everyone and you can say no without giving a reason. Nobody arrives on your team because we needed to place them somewhere.

How we work

Five engagement models, and you pick how much you keep

The models differ in one thing: how much of the management you hand over. Everything else, including who owns the code, is the same in all five.

Changing model later is normal. Augmentation into a dedicated team is the common direction, and the people stay.

You are hereStaff Augmentation

Engineers join your team and work inside your process, your board and your code review.

Team control: You manage the day to day
Pricing: Monthly per person, by role and seniority
Minimum: 1 month

Dedicated Team

A team that works only on your product, with a lead on our side running delivery.

Team control: Shared. Our lead runs delivery, you set priorities
Pricing: Monthly per role, lead included
Minimum: 3 months

Offshore Development Centre

A long-term engineering site under your standards, where we carry recruitment, HR, payroll and equipment.

Team control: You direct the work, we run operations
Pricing: Monthly per role plus site costs
Minimum: 6 months

Fixed Price

One price for a scope that is genuinely settled, with the overrun carried by us.

Team control: We deliver, you accept against written criteria
Pricing: Fixed bid, paid against milestones
Minimum: Project based, usually 10 to 14 weeks

Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT Model)

Everything in the centre model, with the whole team moving into your own Vietnamese entity on an agreed date.

Team control: Transfers from us to you
Pricing: Monthly per role, transfer price agreed up front
Minimum: 2 to 6 years

FAQs

Questions we get on the first call

How is this different from a dedicated team?

The lead. With augmentation you manage the people directly and carry delivery risk. With a dedicated team our lead runs the day to day and we share that risk. Everything else is similar.

Can we start with one person?

Yes. One person is a reasonable way to test whether the working relationship fits before adding more.

What hours do they work?

The overlap you need. Vietnam is 6 to 7 hours ahead of the UK, so mornings overlap naturally and US teams need more planning.

Do they use our tools?

Yes, entirely. Your repositories, your tracker, your CI. We do not ask you to adopt anything of ours.

What if we need to stop?

30 days notice, per person.

Who owns the code they write?

Your company, from the first commit, with an NDA signed before repository access.

How much does staff augmentation cost?

Monthly per person, priced by role and seniority rather than from a published table. It is the cheapest of our models per head, and the reason is that you absorb the management, the recruitment churn and the cover when somebody is ill. Whether that is genuinely cheaper depends on what your lead time is worth. If you would rather buy an outcome than people, the fixed price model above covers that.

At what point should we switch to a dedicated team?

When you find yourself managing three or more of our people, or when the engagement passes a year, or when your own lead has become the bottleneck. The switch costs nothing beyond a new agreement, because the people stay and the knowledge stays with them.

What if somebody is not working out?

Tell us early and we replace them. We would rather hear it in week two than read it in a review at month six. Replacement is at our cost, and we handle the overlap so the work does not stop while it happens.