A standing slice of the machine.
Retainers run $5k to $15k a month for a standing slice of the machine: a named engineer, a fleet compute budget stated in dollars, and a ship log you can read without asking.
No hourly, no seats. You buy shipped work every week, and unused capacity rolls forward one month.
Sprint Zero first. Its price credits against the first month.
- engineer
- named in the proposal, on the Friday call
- fleet budget
- a dollar figure in your proposal, spent against on the board
- week
- Monday plan, daily commits, Friday demo, ship log
- hourly
- none
$5k to $15k a month, and what moves it.
The band is a band because the slice is a slice. What moves you along it: how much of the engineer's week you want, how many loads you want in flight at once, and how fast you need a hotfix answered.
The fleet compute budget is stated in dollars in your proposal, and the board shows what each load has spent against it. We do not print a budget number here because it is set for you, not per tier.
A named engineer for part of the week. A small fleet compute budget, stated in dollars. One load in flight at a time. The Monday plan, daily commits, the Friday demo, the ship log.
- engineer
- part of the week
- loads in flight
- one
- fleet budget
- small, stated in dollars
Most of an engineer's week. A larger fleet budget, stated in dollars. Several loads in flight. Hotfix response the same business day. A quarterly architecture review in writing.
- engineer
- most of the week
- loads in flight
- several
- hotfix
- same business day
- architecture
- a quarterly review, in writing
- rollover
- unused capacity, one month
- billing
- no hourly, no seats
Plan Monday. Ship all week. Demo Friday.
You see every commit. A senior engineer reads every diff before it merges, and if that engineer would be embarrassed by it in production, it goes back.
The week has the same shape every week, so you never have to ask what is happening. You open the board.
The plan. Your engineer writes the week's loads with a definition of done for each, and you approve it in writing. That plan is the scope for the week.
Commits you can see. The fleet works in parallel in its bays; your engineer reads every diff and merges what holds. The board shows what is in flight and what it has cost so far.
The demo. What shipped, running, on a call. What did not ship, and why, said out loud.
The ship log. Dated, generated from commits, not typed. Same format as the log on this site.
A name, a budget, a log.
Founders after a rescue or a product build, and companies after their first agent.
The engineer is named in the proposal and is the one on the Friday call. The compute budget is a dollar figure, not a vibe. The log is generated, not typed.
- A named senior engineer who owns your roadmap and reads every diff.
- A monthly fleet compute budget, stated in dollars in the proposal.
- A Monday plan, daily commits you can see, a Friday demo, and a ship log.
- Rollover of unused capacity for one month.
- The house standard on everything shipped.
- No staff augmentation by the head. You buy shipped work, not a seat.
- No unlimited scope. The Monday plan is the scope for the week.
- Unused capacity rolls forward one month, not forever.
Change the inputs. The formula stays on the page.
A senior software developer on US payroll runs about $20,000 a month once benefits are included, before recruiting, equipment, and management time (BLS OEWS May 2025 75th percentile wage of $171,980, times the 1.45 benefits load from BLS ECEC March 2026). Even a median US software developer costs about $16,000 a month with benefits; at the 90th percentile the same formula gives about $26,000.
Those are the defaults. Every one of them is a field below, because your hire is not the BLS median and you know your own numbers better than a government table does.
readouts · derived from the inputs
- base wage
- $171,980 a year
- loaded monthly
- $171,980 / 0.692 / 12 = $20,711
- retainer
- $10,000 a month, inside the $5,000 to $15,000 band
- difference
- $10,711 a month, $128,526 a year
This compares a monthly bill to a monthly cost. It says nothing about output: a retainer is a slice of the machine, not a person's whole week, and a hire brings things a retainer does not. Benefits in the BLS figure include legally required contributions, insurance, retirement, paid leave and supplemental pay; they exclude recruiting, equipment, and management time, so the default is a floor.
Nobody starts on a retainer.
The first load through the machine is Sprint Zero: $3.5k to $7.5k, fixed. A spec you can sign, a working slice, an eval harness that defines done, and a fixed price for the rest.
If it goes well, the sprint price credits against the first month of the retainer. If it does not, you keep the spec, the slice, and the eval harness, and we part on good terms.
Fixed price, $3.5k to $7.5k. Credits to a retainer if you continue.
Sprint Zero. A spec, a working slice, an eval harness, a cost model, and a quote.
A proposal with the engineer named, the band position, and the fleet budget in dollars.
The first Monday plan. The sprint price comes off the first invoice.
This is a real sequence, which is why it is numbered.
- credit
- The full sprint price, against the first month of the retainer if you continue.
- if you stop
- You keep the spec, the slice, the eval harness, and the quote.
- rollover
- Unused retainer capacity rolls forward one month, not forever.
Reserve a slice.
Tell us the roadmap in a few sentences and where on the band you think you sit. A human engineer reads every message and replies within one business day, Pacific time. The reply is either a Sprint Zero scope or the two questions we need answered first.
A human engineer reads every message and replies within one business day, Pacific time. No newsletter, no sequence.
The whole ladder, with what is out of scope.
No tenure statistics yet, and we will not type one. What you can check: the fleet you can watch work, the log of what shipped on this site, and the systems we built for ourselves. See the fleet, the log and the work page.