Engagement model
Dedicated Teams.
Senior engineers embedded into your stack on multi-quarter rotations. Your tools, your ceremonies, our bench, with the senior-only policy and department backing that staff augmentation can't match.
- Pricing
- Time & materials
- Cadence
- Quarterly
- Min term
- 1 quarter
- Ramp
- ≤ 2 weeks
When this fits
You need senior engineering capacity faster than hiring can deliver.
Three patterns we see consistently. First, the capability gap: your team is strong but missing one or two senior specialists (RAG architect, platform engineer, AI eval lead) and the hiring loop is six months. Second, the scale-up phase: a Series B or growth-stage company that needs to double engineering throughput in a quarter without doubling the org chart. Third, the platform consolidation: an enterprise modernizing a critical system that requires senior engineers who have shipped this exact pattern before: once, not for the first time.
Dedicated Teams answers all three. We embed senior engineers (G6+) into your existing stack, ceremonies, and ownership model. They report to your engineering leadership, attend your stand-ups, push to your repos, and show up in your retros. The difference from staff augmentation is the bench: every embedded engineer has CORTEX, FORGE, NEXUS, or CITADEL behind them, so when they hit a problem outside their depth, they have a senior department to pull from, not a tab in our ATS.
Operating cadence
How the engagement runs week-to-week.
The cadence below is what stakeholders actually feel. Named ceremonies, named owners, named acceptance criteria, not a generic agile slide.
- 01
Discovery & match
One-week intake: capability requirements, stack details, ceremonies, security clearance needs. We match named engineers from the bench, share resumes and depth references, and stage interviews if you want them. No pool-of-resources opacity. You know who you're getting before signing.
- 02
Onboarding sprint
First two weeks: laptop, access, security training, codebase walkthrough, paired work with your team's senior engineer. The embedded engineer's first PR ships before week three. Velocity ramp tracked in your team's actual sprint metrics, not vendor-managed dashboards.
- 03
Quarterly governance
Quarterly check-ins between your engineering leader and our delivery lead. Performance, scope evolution, headcount adjustments, and renewals all reviewed at this cadence. No mid-quarter resource shuffling unless you request it.
- 04
Department backing
Each embedded engineer gets a 4-hour weekly check-in with their home department lead at Prosigns. When a hard problem shows up: a model selection call, a HIPAA architecture review, a vendor risk assessment. They pull a senior peer in for a focused 1–2 day consult at no extra cost.
Scope
In and out of scope, in writing.
Scope creep is a contract problem, not an engineering problem. Both columns below appear in the SOW.
In scope
- Senior engineers (G6+) embedded into your stack and ceremonies
- Backfill within 2 weeks if an engineer leaves the engagement
- Department backing, pulled-in senior peers for hard problems at no extra cost
- Quarterly capacity adjustments (add/remove headcount with 30-day notice)
- Standard onboarding: laptop, security training, codebase walkthrough
- Time tracking, weekly status, retro participation, code review
Out of scope
- Fixed deliverables, fixed timelines, fixed price (use Project-Based)
- On-call coverage, SRE rotations, or production SLAs (use Managed Services)
- Junior engineer placements. We do not staff under G6
- Pool-of-resources or anonymous bench arrangements
- Sub-quarterly engagements or hourly piecework
Team
Who’s on the engagement.
Senior-only by policy. Each role below names the seniority floor; we don’t staff client work below it.
- 01G6 – G9
Embedded Senior Engineers
Six-plus years of practice in their specialty. Drawn from CORTEX (AI/ML), FORGE (custom software), NEXUS (cloud/platform), CITADEL (security), or other home departments. Embedded full-time on your stack.
- 02G9 – G10
Department Lead Co-pilot
Each embedded engineer has a department lead at Prosigns who runs a weekly 30-minute check-in. Available on demand for architecture review, model selection, hard escalations, or vendor decisions.
- 03G8
Delivery Lead
Single point of contact for your engineering leadership. Owns engagement health, quarterly governance, headcount planning, and any operational issue. Reports separately from the embedded engineers' technical line.
- 04G9
Optional Practice Co-pilot
On request: a senior architect from any practice (1–2 days/week) who reviews architectural decisions, runs technical RFCs, and accelerates the embedded squad without holding a seat full-time.
Pricing
Line items in the SOW.
Brackets, not hidden quotes. We publish ranges so visitors self-qualify before the first call.
- 01
Senior engineer (G6 – G7)
Specialist senior engineers. Full-time embedded into your team. Day rate billed monthly in arrears.
Range
$700 – $1,000 / day
- 02
Principal engineer (G8 – G9)
Architecture-leading engineers for hard or regulated workloads. Often paired with a G6/G7 in a small squad.
Range
$1,100 – $1,600 / day
- 03
Department lead co-pilot
Included at no charge: 30 minutes weekly with the embedded engineer's home department lead, plus on-demand pulls for hard problems.
Range
Included
- 04
Delivery lead governance
Included at no charge for engagements of 3+ engineers. Quarterly governance, weekly status, and single-point-of-contact escalation.
Range
Included (≥ 3 FTE)
- 05
Practice co-pilot (optional)
Add a senior architect for 1–2 days/week of strategic review without a full-time seat. Useful for high-risk programs.
Range
$2,000 – $3,200 / day
Governance
How we report, escalate, and change.
- Reporting cadence
- Weekly status to your engineering lead. Quarterly governance review with our delivery lead.
- Headcount changes
- 30-day notice in either direction. No financial penalty for downsizing within the original quarter.
- Engineer continuity
- Backfill within 2 weeks for any engineer who exits. New engineer's onboarding cost absorbed by Prosigns.
- Escalation path
- Direct line to the delivery lead. Escalation to HELM (Prosigns leadership) within 1 business day if needed.
- Security review
- Background checks, NDA, BAA where applicable. Security clearance support on engagement.
- IP & confidentiality
- Work-for-hire by default. All IP assigned to client at the close of each sprint. Standard confidentiality terms in MSA.
Decision grid
Dedicated Teams vs the alternatives.
Most buyers debate at least two of our engagement models. Here is how to choose, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | Dedicated Teams Time & materials | Project-Based Delivery Fixed-price · milestone-based | Managed Services Monthly retainer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Long-term capability gaps, scale-up phases, embedded squads | Bounded initiatives with fixed scope, MVPs, modernization phases | Production support, SRE, AI ops, ongoing platform stewardship |
| Pricing | Time & materials | Fixed-price · milestone-based | Monthly retainer |
| Cadence | Quarterly | Per SOW | Continuous |
| Min commitment | 1 quarter | Per SOW | 12 months |
| Embedded in your team | |||
| Fixed-price contract | Retainer | ||
| Production SLA | |||
| On-call coverage | |||
| Department backing included |
Selected work
Dedicated Teams engagements, in flight.
- 01Growth-stage SaaS
4 → 11
models in productionAI/ML squad embedded in a Series C platform team for 5 quarters.
Embedded a G8 ML platform engineer + two G7 specialists into the customer's data org. CORTEX department co-pilot weekly. Velocity tripled vs the prior internal-only quarter, and the customer hired three of the embedded engineers as permanent staff at the end of year two.
16 months
- 02Financial Services
−42%
cloud cost vs prior architectureCloud platform squad for a regional bank's modernization program.
Embedded a G9 platform principal + G7 SRE + G7 IaC specialist alongside the bank's internal team. NEXUS department co-pilot for architecture reviews. Replaced a hand-managed AWS estate with IaC-backed environments and a documented operating cadence.
11 months
Common questions
Asked before the first call.
- 01
How is this different from staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation pools resources: you get a person, but if they leave or hit a hard problem, you're on your own. Dedicated Teams is a senior-only model with department backing. Every embedded engineer has a Prosigns department lead they meet with weekly, and a senior peer they can pull in for a 1–2 day consult on architecture, security, or AI/ML decisions at no additional cost. The price reflects that backing.
- 02
Can we interview the engineers before they're assigned?
Yes, and we recommend it. After the discovery week, we share named candidates with resumes and depth references. You can interview them through your standard process. We don't deploy engineers without your team's sign-off; pool-of-resources opacity is explicitly out of scope for this model.
- 03
What seniority floor do you actually enforce?
G6 minimum, six-plus years of relevant practice, with the typical embedded squad averaging G7. We don't staff under G6 because the senior-only policy is core to the firm. If a workload would be better served by a junior, we'll tell you and recommend you hire one directly rather than rent one from us at senior rates.
- 04
What happens if an embedded engineer leaves mid-engagement?
Backfill within two weeks, with the new engineer's onboarding ramp absorbed by Prosigns (you don't pay for the first sprint of their work). The home department also stays on co-pilot duty during the transition. Continuity is part of the price.
- 05
Can we convert an embedded engineer to a full-time hire?
Yes, with a conversion fee structured as a percentage of first-year salary, scaled down by the length of the engagement. We've placed engineers as full-time hires at multiple growth-stage clients: the senior-only policy means our engineers are exactly the kind of people growth-stage companies want to hire. We negotiate the conversion terms in the original MSA so there are no surprises.
- 06
Do you offer hourly billing?
No. The minimum unit is a day, billed monthly in arrears against logged hours. The economics of senior-only embedded work don't fit hourly billing: context-switching costs and the department co-pilot model both assume a daily commitment minimum. If you need bursty capacity, the Project-Based engagement model or a smaller Managed Services retainer is usually a better fit.
- 07
What about timezone overlap and offshore work?
Embedded engineers are sourced from our Dallas, Doha, Lahore, and Islamabad benches based on the timezone-overlap requirement and security clearance constraints. Most U.S. clients run with at least 4 hours of business-day overlap; many run full-shift U.S. hours with engineers based in CT or ET. We size the engagement around your actual ceremony cadence, not a generic timezone arbitrage pitch.
- 08
How do you handle confidentiality and IP assignment?
Standard work-for-hire under our MSA: all engagement output is assigned to the client at the close of each sprint, with engineer-level NDAs and BAAs in place where regulated data is involved. Confidentiality survives engagement termination. The MSA template is available for procurement review under NDA, and we work with most enterprise legal teams' redlines without friction.
Talk to us
Ready for a dedicated teams engagement?
A senior engineer plus the relevant department lead joins the first call. Bring the problem; we’ll bring the SOW draft.