Engagement Models
Honest pricing for serious work. Pick the engagement that fits where your build actually is — discovery, full delivery, or long-term partnership. Every engagement is fixed-scope or fixed-rate; no hidden retainers.
For founders and product leads who need a clear technical path before committing to a build.
End-to-end delivery of a production system — designed, built, hardened, deployed, and handed off.
Embedded engineering capacity for teams shipping continuously — defence, AI, and platform companies.
| What's included | Discovery | Full Build | Retainer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture & system design | ● | ● | ● |
| Working prototype | ● | ● | ○ |
| Production implementation | ○ | ● | ● |
| CI/CD & observability | ○ | ● | ● |
| Security review & load testing | ○ | ● | ● |
| Multi-region deployment | ○ | ● | ● |
| On-call escalation | ○ | 30 days | ● |
| Architecture review for your team | ○ | ○ | ● |
| Quarterly audits | ○ | ○ | ● |
Common questions about how engagements work, what's included, and how we handle scope, IP, and handoff.
Discovery and Full Build engagements are fixed-price against a written scope. Retainers are fixed-rate against monthly hours. Hourly billing tends to misalign incentives, so we avoid it for greenfield work.
You own all source code, designs, and documentation produced under the engagement. We keep the right to reference the project in our portfolio (with NDA-respecting redactions where required).
We use a written change-order process. Small clarifications are absorbed; material scope changes are estimated and signed off before work continues. No surprises on invoices.
Yes. We've delivered into SOC 2, ITAR-adjacent, and Australian Defence security contexts. We can sign NDAs, work on supplied hardware, and follow your secure development lifecycle.
Occasionally, for strategic builds where we can be operationally involved. Cash is the default — equity arrangements are evaluated case-by-case.
Every Full Build ends with documentation, runbooks, a recorded walkthrough, and 30 days of post-launch support. Most clients keep us on retainer afterwards; some take it fully in-house — both work.
Send a one-paragraph brief. We'll point you to the right model — sometimes it's none of the above, and we'll say so.