Staff augmentation and dedicated teams
We place vetted, full-time engineers from our own payroll into your team: a shortlist within 48 hours, first commit within 10 working days, a named roster with a 90-day no-swap commitment, and a contractual daily overlap with your working day. They use your tooling, attend your ceremonies and work to your definition of done. They are our employees, not contractors sourced on demand.
At a glance
From brief to first commit
Ten working days from acceptance to a merged pull request. The timeline below is what we commit to in the contract, and the reason it holds is that verification and paperwork run in parallel with technical onboarding rather than after it.
How fast this actually moves
We produce a shortlist of two to three matched engineers per role within 48 hours of an agreed brief, because we shortlist from our existing bench and pipeline rather than starting a recruitment process. From your acceptance, first commit lands within 10 working days: contracting and verification in days one to three, access and environment in days three to six, codebase onboarding and a first small ticket in days six to ten.
Not a job description. We want the codebase and stack, the team shape they are joining, the first three tickets they would pick up, your definition of done, your ceremony calendar, and the seniority you actually need rather than the one on the requisition. Most briefs get corrected during this call, usually downwards on seniority and upwards on domain context.
Two to three profiles per role. Each comes with a technical summary written by the engineer who screened them, a code sample or repository walkthrough, the scores from our own assessment stages, availability date, and an honest note on where they are weaker. We would rather send two strong profiles than five padded ones.
You interview whoever you want, however you want: pairing session, system design, take-home, your existing loop. We do not gate this or coach candidates on your process. You have an unconditional right to reject, and we reshortlist at no cost.
Work order signed against the master services agreement. Background verification completed or refreshed. Individual NDA and IP assignment executed. Your own supplier onboarding, security questionnaire and any client-specific training scheduled. This runs in parallel with the next step, not before it.
Accounts in your identity provider, repository access, issue tracker, chat, VPN and cloud roles. Laptop configured to your endpoint policy, disk encryption verified, MDM enrolled if you require it. Local environment running and the test suite green before any ticket is picked up.
A guided tour of the domain, a walkthrough of the deployment path, and a deliberately small first ticket chosen to touch the build, the tests and the release process end to end. The measure of a good first ticket is not size, it is how much of your pipeline it exercises.
A structured review with you: velocity, code review quality, communication, and whether the seniority match was right. This is the point at which a no-fault replacement costs you nothing. We ask the question directly rather than waiting for you to raise it.
Roles and indicative rates
Indicative monthly rates in USD for full-time dedicated capacity, roughly 168 hours per month. All-inclusive: salary, statutory employment costs, benefits, equipment, connectivity, workspace, standard tooling licences, recruitment and management overhead. There is no separate recruitment fee and no pass-through charges.
| Role | Junior (1–3 yrs) | Mid (3–6 yrs) | Senior (6–10 yrs) | Lead / Principal (10+ yrs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backend engineer | 4,600 | 6,400 | 8,400 | 10,200 |
| Frontend engineer | 4,400 | 6,100 | 8,000 | 9,600 |
| Full-stack engineer | 4,800 | 6,800 | 8,800 | 10,600 |
| Mobile engineer (iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter) | 4,700 | 6,600 | 8,600 | 10,400 |
| DevOps / SRE engineer | 5,200 | 7,400 | 9,400 | 11,200 |
| Data engineer | 5,000 | 7,200 | 9,200 | 11,000 |
| Machine learning engineer | 5,600 | 7,900 | 10,000 | 12,000 |
| QA automation engineer | 4,200 | 5,700 | 7,400 | 8,800 |
| Solution architect | Not offered at this band | Not offered at this band | 9,800 | 11,500 |
| Delivery lead / engineering manager | Not offered at this band | 7,000 | 8,900 | 10,800 |
| Product designer (UX and UI) | 4,300 | 6,000 | 7,800 | 9,300 |
| Business analyst | 4,300 | 5,900 | 7,600 | 9,000 |
These are indicative bands, not a price list. The final rate depends on the specific stack, the domain context required, contract length and team size. Commitments of 12 months or more, and teams of five or more, attract a discount of 5 to 12 percent. A delivery lead is included at no charge on teams of five or more, so on a six-person squad the effective per-engineer rate is lower than the table suggests.
| Band | Years | What they own |
|---|---|---|
| Junior | 1–3 | Well-defined tickets inside an existing pattern, with review. Needs a senior nearby. Productive from week three |
| Mid | 3–6 | Whole features end to end, own testing, reviews junior work. The band that does most of the shipping on a healthy team |
| Senior | 6–10 | Ambiguous problems, cross-service design, mentoring, and the judgement to say a requirement is wrong. Sets patterns others follow |
| Lead / Principal | 10+ | Architecture across systems, technical strategy, difficult trade-off calls, and accountability for engineering quality across the team |
Included: gross salary, employer statutory contributions under Indian law, health insurance and benefits, annual leave, laptop and peripherals, redundant internet and power at the office, desk and workspace, standard tooling licences on our side, recruitment cost, HR and payroll administration, training budget, and our management overhead and margin.
Not included: licences for your proprietary tooling seats, travel and accommodation if you ask us to visit, work outside the committed overlap window where it needs a shift allowance, and any client-mandated certification or training you require beyond our standard.
You will find quotes 30 to 40 percent below these bands. They are real quotes, and they are usually one of four things: contractors rather than employees, engineers shared across two or three accounts, a seniority label inflated by one band, or a rate that has stripped out the delivery management the engagement will need anyway. The comparison worth making is cost per shipped increment over six months, not cost per seat in month one.
Vetting
Roughly 4 in 100 applicants reach our bench. The two stages that eliminate the most people are the practical build exercise and the communication assessment, in that order.
How engineers reach our bench
Our funnel has six stages and an end-to-end pass rate of about 4 percent. Applications are screened on evidence rather than keywords, then a timed practical build, a live pairing session with one of our engineers, a communication and written-English assessment, a values and reliability interview, and background verification. Everyone who reaches your shortlist has cleared all six.
| Stage | What it tests | Pass rate | Of 100 applicants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Application screen | Evidence of shipped work: repositories, production systems, measurable outcomes. Keyword-matched CVs without evidence do not progress | 38% | 38 remain |
| 2. Technical screen, 45 minutes | Depth in one language, understanding of the systems they claim to have built, and whether they can explain a past trade-off they got wrong | 45% | 17 remain |
| 3. Practical build exercise | A timed task in a realistic codebase: read existing code, extend it, write tests, handle an edge case. Assessed on readability and testing as much as correctness | 42% | 7 remain |
| 4. Live pairing session, 90 minutes | Working alongside one of our engineers on an unfamiliar problem. Debugging method, how they ask for help, and how they respond to a changed requirement mid-task | 68% | 5 remain |
| 5. Communication assessment | Spoken clarity on a technical topic, a written incident summary, and an asynchronous update written for a reader in another time zone. This is a hard gate, not a soft preference | 74% | 4 remain |
| 6. Values, reliability and reference check | Ownership under pressure, honesty about limits, and two employment references contacted directly rather than accepted as documents | 92% | 4 reach the bench |
Stage 4 has a high pass rate because stage 3 has already removed most of the people who would fail it. The stage worth arguing about is stage 5. We reject technically strong engineers on written communication, because on overseas delivery an engineer who cannot write a clear asynchronous update generates more cost than their code saves.
Verification reports are shared with you on request, redacted for personal data we are not permitted to disclose under the DPDP Act.
The alternatives, honestly
Where we fit
A freelancer is cheapest per hour and carries no continuity or replacement guarantee. A recruitment agency gives you an employee and a one-off fee, with 8 to 16 weeks to hire and all employment risk on you. A large consultancy gives you process and indemnity at three to five times the rate. We sit between the agency and the consultancy: employed engineers, delivery accountability, no permanent headcount.
| Dimension | Freelance marketplace | Recruitment agency (permanent hire) | Large consultancy | Redcubical dedicated team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to productive | 1 to 2 weeks, variable quality | 8 to 16 weeks including notice period | 4 to 8 weeks through their staffing process | 10 working days from acceptance |
| Indicative monthly cost, mid-level engineer | USD 3,000 to 6,000, no employment costs, no guarantee | Salary plus 15 to 25 percent one-off fee, plus your employment costs and overhead | USD 18,000 to 32,000 per engineer equivalent | USD 6,100 to 6,800 all-inclusive |
| Who employs them | Nobody. Independent contractor | You, with all statutory and termination obligations | The consultancy, often with subcontracted layers | Redcubical Systems Private Limited, on permanent payroll |
| Continuity risk | High. Can disappear or take a better rate mid-sprint | Low once hired, but the hiring risk was yours | Moderate. Rotation is common and often unannounced | Low. Named roster, 90-day no-swap, 30 days notice thereafter |
| Replacement if it is not working | Your problem. Start again | Your problem, and you carry the termination process | Available, usually slow, and often the same profile again | At our cost in 10 working days, with a two-week overlap we pay for |
| Vetting depth | Platform rating and your own interview | CV screen plus your interview loop | Internal grading, quality varies widely by geography | Six-stage funnel, roughly 4 percent pass rate, plus your interview |
| Delivery accountability | None beyond the task | None. They are your employee now | Contractual, with a large governance layer you also pay for | A named delivery lead, included on teams of five or more |
| Scaling up or down | Fast up, fast down, no continuity | Slow both ways. Down is expensive and unpleasant | Fast up, contractually slow down | 4 to 6 weeks to add a seat, 30 days notice to remove one |
| IP and confidentiality | Platform terms, weak individual chain, jurisdiction problems | Strong, through your own employment contracts | Strong, with heavy contractual overhead | Assignment on creation, individual NDA and IP agreement per engineer |
| Honest best use | A bounded, well-specified piece of work with no continuity requirement | Roles that are permanently core to your business and located where you are | Programmes needing regulatory indemnity, board cover, or thousands of people | Sustained engineering capacity where you want control without permanent headcount |
We are genuinely the wrong choice in two of these columns. If a role is permanently core and you want it in your building, hire it locally. If you need audit indemnity at board level for a regulated programme of hundreds of people, a large consultancy carries insurance and legal structure we do not.
Three shapes, and the difference matters more than the headcount.
Shape 01
One to four engineers joining your existing team, reporting to your engineering manager, in your ceremonies. No Redcubical management layer. You gain capacity and keep every process exactly as it is.
Shape 02
A cross-functional group taking ownership of a bounded area: a service, a module, a platform capability. Includes a delivery lead at no extra cost. Your product owner sets priorities, the pod owns the how.
Shape 03
End-to-end ownership of a product area including engineering, QA, design and business analysis, with a delivery lead and a technical lead. Effectively an outsourced product team that reports into your product organisation.
What we commit to in writing
The commitments that matter
The roster is named in the contract with a 90-day no-swap commitment, then 30 days written notice for any change. If an engineer is not performing we replace them within 10 working days at our cost, with a two-week overlap between outgoing and incoming engineer that we pay for. Committed daily overlap is stated per market as clock times in both time zones.
| Market | Committed overlap | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 4.5 hrs | ET/CT/PT morning overlap |
| United Kingdom | 7 hrs | Full UK working day |
| Germany | 6.5 hrs | CET business hours |
| Netherlands | 6.5 hrs | CET business hours |
| United Arab Emirates | 8 hrs | Near-identical day |
| Saudi Arabia | 8 hrs | Sun–Thu week supported |
| Singapore | 7 hrs | SGT afternoon overlap |
| Australia | 5 hrs | AEST morning overlap |
| Canada | 4.5 hrs | ET/PT morning overlap |
| India | Full day | Domestic delivery |
Overlap is measured against your local business day and written into the work order as clock times in both time zones. For North American clients the standard pattern is a 13:30 to 22:00 IST shift, giving live overlap with the Eastern morning and the Pacific start of day. Extended shifts and split coverage are available where the work genuinely needs it, with a shift allowance disclosed in the rate.
Written on purpose, because a supplier who buries their exit terms is managing your perception rather than your risk.
The uncomfortable part
When more hands is the wrong answer
Adding engineers multiplies whatever your delivery system already does. If requirements arrive half-formed, priorities change mid-sprint, and nobody owns a decision, then six more engineers will produce six times the confusion, faster. Extra hands solve a capacity problem. They make an ownership problem worse, because they increase the coordination load on the person who is already the bottleneck.
If three or more of these are true, buying individual engineers will disappoint you. Buy an outcome instead: a pod with its own delivery lead, or fixed-scope and capped time and materials work under our engagement models, where we own the plan and are accountable for the result.
We say so on the brief call, before a contract exists. In practice that means one of three recommendations, each of which is worth less revenue to us than the augmentation you asked for.
Answers
A shortlist of two to three matched engineers per role within 48 hours of an agreed role brief, interviews inside a week, and first commit on your codebase within 10 working days of acceptance. The 10 days cover contracting, background verification, NDA and IP execution, access provisioning and codebase onboarding.
Indicative monthly rates run from USD 4,200 for a junior QA automation engineer to USD 11,500 for a senior solution architect, for full-time dedicated capacity. A mid-level full-stack engineer is around USD 6,800 per month. Rates include equipment, connectivity, workspace, standard licences, statutory employment costs and management overhead.
Yes, and you should. Every shortlisted engineer is available for a technical interview with your team, and you have an unconditional right to reject. We keep shortlisting until you are satisfied at no additional cost. If we cannot fill a role to your standard we say so rather than sending a weaker profile.
Tell us inside the first 30 days and we replace them at our cost, with a two-week overlap between outgoing and incoming engineer that we pay for. After 30 days the same replacement process applies with 10 working days notice. You are never billed twice for the same seat during an overlap.
Yes. Dedicated means dedicated: one client, one backlog, full-time. They are not shared across accounts and they are not pulled onto internal work. The roster is named in the contract with a 90-day no-swap commitment.
It depends on your market and it is written into the contract. UK clients get around seven hours, Gulf and Singapore clients seven to eight, continental Europe six and a half, North America four and a half to five, and Australia five. Stand-ups, demos and escalation all sit inside that window.
You do, on technical direction and priorities. We manage employment, performance, career progression and retention. On teams of five or more we include a delivery lead at no extra charge to handle ceremony facilitation, reporting and escalation, so your engineering manager is not absorbing coordination overhead.
Thirty days written notice by email to your engagement lead. No exit fee, no release fee, no penalty. The notice period includes a two-week structured handover with recorded walkthroughs and a runbook review, and a named engineer stays available for questions for 30 days after the last day.
Tell us the stack, the team they are joining and the first three tickets. You get two to three matched profiles with assessment scores and an honest note on where each is weaker, within two working days.