Why this exists
Cloud-native and digital-native companies hit a recurring shape problem — they need senior cloud / data / platform engineering capacity, but not enough to staff a full team for it. The traditional alternatives are a Big SI bench (priced out), a staffing agency (no skin in the game), or a full-time hire (slow to onboard, hard to find, expensive to retain). The Pod is the alternative — a small, senior, accountable engineering unit billed monthly.
Pod types
- Cloud Engineering Pod. Infrastructure, IaC, networking, IAM, observability. The team that owns your cloud foundation and keeps it shippable.
- Data Engineering Pod. Pipelines, warehouse modelling, dbt, orchestration, BI plumbing. Ships the data layer your analytics team consumes.
- DevOps / SRE Pod. CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, on-call tooling, incident response, SLO instrumentation.
- Platform Engineering Pod. Internal developer platform, golden paths, self-service infrastructure, developer-experience tooling.
Engagement models
- Dedicated Pod. Two to four senior engineers, billed monthly, exclusive to your roadmap. Best fit when you have a roadmap that needs a small team for 2 + quarters.
- Embedded Engineer. One senior engineer, working inside your team's standups and rituals, monthly capacity (typically 60% or 80% of full-time). Best fit when you have a team but it lacks a specific senior skillset.
- Fractional Staff Engineer. A senior engineer at staff / principal level, 20 – 40% capacity, for technical leadership, architecture review, code review, hiring loops, and tech-debt triage. Best fit when you have a team but it lacks a senior IC.
- Platform Team Augmentation. A small pod (1 – 3) embedded into your existing platform team to accelerate a defined scope — e.g., a migration, an IDP build, an observability rollout — for 1 – 2 quarters.
How we differ from a staffing agency
- Senior-only. Every engineer is at least senior (7 + years); pods often include staff-level engineers. No mid-level rotation, no benched juniors.
- Outcome-shaped. The SOW specifies what gets shipped per quarter, not just hours billed. We have skin in the game on outcomes.
- Codified rule library. Pods bring our internal toolchain — migration packs, IaC modules, observability templates — into your stack. You get the leverage of work done elsewhere.
- No bait-and-switch. The engineers you start with are the engineers you finish with. Backfills require your approval.
- Knowledge handoff is in scope. Documentation, runbooks, and an onboarding plan for your eventual full-time hires are part of every Pod SOW.
Who this is built for
- Cloud-native scale-ups (Series B – Series D) that need cloud / data engineering muscle but are 12 + months from a senior hire pipeline filling.
- Digital-natives (SaaS, marketplaces, fintech, D2C with significant data) where engineering is a competitive moat but cloud / data engineering specifically is rate-limited.
- Post-funding teams that have a roadmap, a target market, and budget — but the hiring market for senior cloud engineers means time-to-impact is too slow.
- Platform teams at growth-stage companies that need to deliver a quarter's worth of work in a quarter, not three.
Who this is not for
- Teams looking for the lowest hourly rate. We are not the cheapest option, and we are honest about that up front.
- Teams that need a full-time CTO. We can play the fractional role and run your hiring loop, but we will not replace the role permanently.
- Pre-product / pre-PMF startups. We build for teams that have a market; we do not consult on whether you have one.
How we engage
Most Pod engagements start with the Discovery Sprint (₹2 – 3 L / $3 – 5k, 10 days) to scope the Pod composition, the roadmap, and the success metrics. The Pod runs monthly thereafter, scope-warranted, with a quarterly review built into the SOW. Onboarding (~2 weeks) is included in the first month — code access, credentials, repo walkthrough, standup integration.
FAQ
Can we hire your engineers full-time?
We do not block direct-hire conversations; the rate and notice period are negotiated in the SOW. We would rather you tell us early than be surprised.
What if a Pod engineer doesn't fit our team?
Raise it in the first quarterly review (or sooner if it's acute). We backfill with another senior engineer within two weeks; the onboarding cost is on us.
Do you work on weekends or after-hours?
Standard schedule is your business hours plus on-call participation per SOW. After-hours work on a roadmap deliverable is a written change order, not assumed.