Senior engineers embedded in your repo in two weeks. Gone cleanly when you don't need them.

When you have a known 3-9 month scope, a hiring pipeline that's slow (typical Series A/B senior hire takes 60-100 days from req to start date), or a specialty you don't need permanently — payments integration, a one-time migration, an ML feature. If the work is core product and ongoing for 18+ months, hire. If you're bridging a gap or de-risking before a hire, augment. We will tell you which one we think it is.

An agency typically sells a fixed-scope project with a project manager, account manager, and a team you don't pick. Our engineer reports to your tech lead, sits in your Slack, follows your PR process, and is interviewed by your team before they start. There's no PM layer, no separate project plan, no SOW change orders for every shift in priority. You manage them like a contractor on your team.

All-in cost of a senior engineer at Series A/B in the US is typically $230K-$320K loaded (salary, equity, benefits, taxes, equipment, recruiting fees). Our blended rate for an embedded senior runs higher per hour but with zero ramp cost, no severance risk, and you can end it on 30 days notice. For engagements under 12 months it's almost always cheaper. Past 18 months, hire.

Typical timeline is 10-14 days from signed agreement to first PR merged. That covers your interview loop (usually 2-3 conversations), paperwork, access provisioning, and a few days of repo onboarding. If you need someone faster we sometimes have bench capacity for a 5-day start, but we'd rather move at a pace where you actually vetted the person.

Most of our bench is strong in TypeScript/Node, Python, Go, Postgres, and the major cloud providers (AWS primarily, GCP secondary). We have engineers with deep experience in Rails, Django, React Native, iOS/Swift, Kubernetes, and ML infrastructure (PyTorch, vector DBs, RAG pipelines). If your stack is exotic — Elixir, Rust, Clojure — tell us up front; we'll be honest about whether we have the right person.

We plan the exit from week one. The engineer writes ADRs, runbooks, and onboarding docs continuously, stored in your repo. When you hire a full-timer or the engagement ends, we schedule a 2-week overlap where the embedded engineer pairs with the incoming person, walks them through the systems they touched, and answers questions in Slack for 30 days post-rotation at no cost. No knowledge gets locked up with us.

Sometimes, but honestly augmentation is usually wrong at pre-seed. At that stage you need founders writing code or one or two early hires with equity skin in the game — not a contractor. We'll tell you that on the first call. Where it does make sense is a seed-stage company that just closed and has a specific 2-3 month build (MVP infrastructure, a payments integration, a security review remediation) where speed matters more than equity alignment.

Yes, VooStack is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business and veteran-owned. For most commercial startups this is irrelevant to the engineering work itself. Where it matters: if you're a startup selling into federal agencies or DoD, having SDVOSB-certified engineers on your team can help with set-aside contract eligibility and prime/sub relationships. If you're pursuing SBIR or DoD pilot work, mention it on the intake call.

Yes. We have a conversion arrangement — after 6 months of engagement, you can convert the engineer to a full-time hire with a defined conversion fee that's substantially less than typical recruiter fees (usually 15-20% of first-year base, prorated down the longer they've been embedded). We'd rather you hire someone who's already shipping in your codebase than churn through another 90-day search.