Staff augmentation gives you engineers who work in your process under your management — cheaper per person, but you own delivery. A managed team includes a technical lead accountable for delivery against your roadmap — more expensive, but you manage outcomes rather than individuals. Choose based on whether you have engineering management capacity.
The most common expensive mistake here is choosing augmentation because it is cheaper per head, then discovering nobody internally has time to direct the work.
Augmentation
Managed team
Managed team premium
The deciding question
Augmentation: your manager, daily. Managed: our lead, against priorities you set.
Augmentation: yours. Managed: shared, with a named lead answerable for what ships.
Augmentation $3,800–$6,500 per engineer. Managed teams from $8,500 including lead and process.
Augmentation adopts yours entirely. Managed brings its own, aligned to yours.
Augmentation: your board tells you. Managed: cycle demos and written delivery reports.
Augmentation is per person. Managed teams shift skill mix as the work changes.
| Staff augmentation | Managed team | |
|---|---|---|
| You provide | Management and priorities | Priorities only |
| We provide | Engineers | Engineers, lead, process, QA |
| Monthly cost | From $3,800 per engineer | From $8,500 for the team |
| Your time required | Several hours weekly per engineer | A weekly planning call |
| Delivery risk | Yours | Shared |
| Flexibility | Add or remove people | Shift team composition |
| Best when | You have engineering leadership | You need delivery ownership |
A technical lead who plans, reviews, reports and is accountable when a cycle slips.
Yes, in both directions, and clients do. A common path is starting managed while you build internal capability, then moving to augmentation once you have hired an engineering manager who can direct the work.
The reverse also happens: augmentation that is not delivering because nobody has time to manage it, converted to a managed team with a lead. That conversation is worth having early rather than after two disappointing quarters.
It is augmentation plus a lead who plans, reviews and reports, and contractual accountability for delivery. If a vendor charges the premium without providing those, it is a markup — ask specifically what the lead does and who escalation goes to.
Yes, and most clients do. One or two augmented engineers first, adding a lead and design capacity once the relationship is established and the volume of work justifies it.
You do, in both. Work happens in your repository under your organisation with IP assigned from the first commit, regardless of engagement model.
Tell us and we replace them with an overlap for handover. That applies to both models and is a normal request, not a relationship problem.
How we think about this work, in more depth.
Comparison
A 30-minute call, then a written proposal with scope, price and timeline within two to three working days. No retainer required to get a real number, and no obligation if the answer is that we are not the right fit.