Hiring cycle is the constraint.
You need senior engineers in week one, not month six.
Managed AI Pods · Flagship
A senior AI engineering pod.
Fully staffed in two weeks.
Skip the 6-month hiring cycle. We staff a pod — architect, ML engineers, data engineer, MLOps — and run delivery against a production milestone you set. You get a senior team without the recruiting risk, the bench overhead, or the staff-aug premium.
The Managed AI Pod is our flagship engagement. It is not staff augmentation. The pod is led by an accountable architect who runs delivery against an agreed milestone; we report weekly to your stakeholders; we own the runbook and the eval harness. You retain the IP, the architecture decisions, and the option to bring delivery in-house at any handover point.
Why teams pick this
Four reasons enterprises choose a managed pod.
Architecture leadership is missing.
Your team has builders. They need an architect who has shipped this before.
The roadmap is stalled.
A staff-aug team won't fix it. A managed pod with a senior architect can.
Compliance is hard.
SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001 — the pod is designed around the audit, not retrofitted.
Pod composition
How a pod is built.
- Architect
- Engagement lead. Accountable for delivery. Runs the weekly review.
- Senior engineers
- 2–4 engineers — ML, data, backend, frontend — depending on the system.
- MLOps engineer
- Observability, eval pipelines, deployment, incident response.
- Optional: research engineer
- When the use case requires fine-tuning or novel methods.
- Scale-up / scale-down
- 2-week notice cycle. We carry bench depth on the seniority bands we staff.
Engagement shapes
Three pod shapes.
Discovery pod
4–6 weeksSmall pod (architect + 1 engineer). Output: scoped reference architecture and delivery plan.
Build pod
12–24 weeksFull pod, milestone-based delivery. Output: production system + eval harness + runbook.
Steady-state pod
OngoingSmaller pod after build. Output: maintenance, expansion, on-call coverage.
Pricing is monthly retainer, banded by pod size and seniority mix. Use the Pod Calculator for an indicative range, or book a call for a quote against a specific scope.
Engagement minimums
What we commit to.
Build pod minimum12 weeks · 2-week change notice
Discovery pod minimum4 weeks · fixed-fee
Steady-state minimum4 weeks · 30-day termination notice
Pod swap on request2 weeks (bench-backed)
Proof
A global financial-services group had a stalled 18-month AI build with a Tier-1 systems integrator. The pod ran a 4-week discovery, restructured the program, and shipped a production RAG system in 9 weeks. Annual saving on the original program: $4.2M. Pod retained for steady-state at lower cost than the previous burn rate.
Global financial services · Build → steady-state pod
Frequently asked
What buyers actually ask
Where are your engineers based?
Global delivery. We staff against the engagement, not a single timezone. Most pods run with overlap across two zones for handover and a primary timezone aligned to your business hours.
Can we hire your engineers at the end of the engagement?
Yes, with a transition fee. We've handed over multiple teams to clients. Our model assumes you may want to in-house — the pod is designed to make that handover clean.
How is this different from a staff-aug firm?
We run delivery. The architect is accountable for the milestone, not the hours. You don't manage individual engineers — you review weekly progress against an agreed plan.
What if a pod member doesn't fit?
Two-week swap on request. We carry bench depth on the seniority bands we staff, so swaps don't slow delivery.
What's the minimum pod size?
Two — architect + senior engineer — for discovery work. Build pods start at four.
Next step
Talk to an engineer, not a salesperson.
30 minutes. No slides. Bring an architecture, a stalled roadmap, or a vendor proposal you want a second opinion on. We'll tell you what we'd do.