How we work
Who does the work, how it is billed, what you end up owning, and what happens when it stops. The four things worth knowing before you talk to us, without the process diagram.
How does a Simple Engineers engagement work?
The people who scope your work build it, and no junior engineers are billed to client work. Scoped work is fixed-price, ongoing work is a monthly retainer, and open-ended work is hourly. You own the code and the cloud accounts it runs in, and engagements end with documentation your team can run the system from. There is no long-term lock-in.
Key Facts:
- Staffing: senior engineers only, and the people who scope the work build it
- Pricing: fixed price for scoped work, monthly retainer for ongoing work, hourly where scope is genuinely open
- Ownership: you own the code and the cloud accounts
- Exit: documented handover, no multi-year minimum, no penalty for ending
Who does the work
The people who scope your work write the code and ship it. No junior engineers are billed to client work, and the person you talk to in the first conversation is someone who will be building.
The people who scope it build it
There is no handoff from a sales team to a delivery team. Whoever sits in the scoping conversation is doing the work afterwards, which is what stops a plan being made by someone who never has to execute it.
Senior engineers only
We do not staff junior engineers onto client budgets. This constrains how fast we can grow, which we accept, because the alternative is charging you to train people.
You talk to the engineers
Questions go to the people doing the work rather than through an account manager. Fewer layers between the question and the answer is most of what makes a small team worth hiring.
How we price
We work three ways: a fixed price for scoped work, a monthly retainer for ongoing work, and hourly where the scope genuinely cannot be defined up front. Which one applies depends on how well the work can be described before it starts, and we will tell you which we think fits before you ask.
Fixed price for scoped work
Assessments, audits, and defined pilots are quoted as one number before anything starts. If the scope is knowable, the price should be knowable, and the risk of getting the estimate wrong is ours rather than yours.
Monthly retainer for ongoing work
Continuing leadership, build, and run work is billed monthly. This is the structure most engagements settle into once the shape of the work is clear, because it prices a relationship rather than a transaction.
Hourly where scope is genuinely open
Some work cannot honestly be scoped in advance. When that is the case we bill for the hours worked rather than inventing a fixed number and managing you toward it later.
No long-term lock-in
Engagements are not structured around multi-year minimum commitments. We would rather keep the work because it is worth keeping.
Why we publish the structure and not a single number
The honest answer to "what does this cost" is that it depends on scope, and any firm that gives you one number before understanding the work is either guessing or protecting themselves with padding you will pay for. What you can reasonably expect up front is to know how the billing works, so that the eventual number is predictable rather than a surprise.
So we publish the structure. Scoped work is fixed-price because if the scope is knowable the price should be, and the risk of a bad estimate belongs with us. Ongoing work is a retainer because that is what a continuing relationship actually is. Hourly exists for the cases where nobody can honestly scope the work in advance, and we would rather say so than invent a fixed price and manage you toward it later.
Where to find real numbers
For market context rather than our quote, our cost guides carry current industry figures with linked sources: what fractional CTOs typically charge, what AI implementation typically costs, and how those numbers move with scope. Those are benchmarks from named third parties, not our rate card, and we keep them separate on purpose.
If you want a number for your specific situation, the fastest path is a conversation about scope. We will tell you which of the three structures fits before you ask.
What you own
You own the code, you own the cloud accounts it runs in, and you get documentation to run it without us. Ending an engagement does not cost you the ability to operate what we built.
You own all the code
Intellectual property in what we build is yours. There is no licensed core you keep paying for and no component that stops working when the engagement does.
You own the cloud accounts
Infrastructure runs in your AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud accounts under your billing and your credentials, not ours. If we disappeared tomorrow, nothing would need to be migrated back to you, because it was never anywhere else.
Documented handover
Engagements end with documentation and runbooks written for your team to operate the system. A handover that depends on us being available to explain it is not a handover.
No lock-in
There is no multi-year minimum and no contractual penalty for deciding you are done. The exit path is documented at the start rather than negotiated at the end.
Procurement, security, and risk
We carry professional liability insurance, sign client NDAs as a matter of course, and work inside your accounts under access you issue and can revoke.
Professional liability insurance
We carry professional liability cover. Certificates are available for your procurement or legal team on request.
NDAs signed as standard
We sign your confidentiality agreement rather than asking you to accept ours. Client work, client names, and client data are not used as marketing material, which is why the case studies on this site are anonymized.
Access you issue and can revoke
We work under credentials you create in your own accounts, scoped to what the work requires. Removing our access is something you can do yourself, immediately, without asking us.
Client data stays in client systems
Production data stays in your environment. We do not copy client data onto personal machines or into our own storage to make the work more convenient.
Questions people ask before hiring us
Get answers to common questions about our services
Talk to the people who would do the work
No account manager, no discovery deck. A conversation with an engineer about what you are trying to build and whether we are the right fit.
Tell us what you're building.
Bring us the problem you're solving. We'll tell you how we'd build it, what it takes, and how Simple Engineers can help your business scale its technology.
Get in Touch
Location
Global Remote Team
Serving clients worldwide
Response Time
Within 24 hours
Emergency support available
Why Partner with Simple Engineers?
- Senior engineers who build and ship, not just advise
- We stay on to run and grow what we build
- You own everything: your code, your cloud, your keys
- Scaling companies from startup to enterprise since 2016
Send Us a Message
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