Fractional AI Engineering.

Dedicated senior AI engineer on your team. Build new systems, optimize existing ones, run evals, handle production. 20-80 hours per month.

The Model

Your AI team, on retainer.

You get a dedicated senior engineer who becomes part of your team. They work on your backlog, respond to production issues, run experiments, and help you scale AI across your organization. It's not a sprint; it's a partnership.

What's Included

Dedicated engineer hours: 20, 40, 60, or 80 hours per month. Flex up or down with 2 weeks notice.

Monthly evals: Measure system performance, identify optimization opportunities, test new models or approaches.

Quarterly reviews: Strategic review of your AI roadmap, upcoming projects, and architecture decisions.

On-call coverage: Production incidents get immediate attention. Critical issues resolved within hours.

Continuity: Same engineer across months/years so they understand your systems, constraints, and priorities.

Pricing

$8,000/mo (20 hrs): Light maintenance, evals, 1-2 small features per month.

$16,000/mo (40 hrs): Standard engagement. New feature development, evals, production support.

$24,000/mo (60 hrs): Accelerated roadmap. Multiple projects in parallel, deeper optimization work.

$30,000/mo (80 hrs): Full-time equivalent. Your dedicated AI engineering team.

Common Work

What retainer engineers do.

New system development

Build the next AI feature or workflow. From architecture through production launch.

System optimization

Reduce latency, improve quality, lower costs. Run evals and A/B tests.

Model migration

Evaluate new models, run side-by-side benchmarks, manage switchovers safely.

Production incidents

On-call for system failures, degradation, unexpected behavior. Root cause analysis and fixes.

Infrastructure & ops

Logging, monitoring, cost optimization, security hardening, compliance reviews.

Team enablement

Help your engineers learn. Code reviews, architecture discussions, best practices.

Typical Engagement

How retainers work.

You choose your hours (20/40/60/80/month) and kick off with a brief alignment call. Your engineer then joins your team — attends standup, syncs on priorities, picks up work from your backlog.

Hours are tracked and flexible: slower months roll unused hours forward (up to 2 months), faster months you can burn them or add capacity. You get a monthly report of work completed, current systems status, and recommended priorities.

Critical production issues are handled immediately, outside the hour budget. Everything else comes from your monthly allocation.

FAQ

Common questions.

How many hours per month do I get?

Our retainers are offered as 20, 40, 60, or 80 hours per month. You can flex usage month-to-month, and unused hours roll over (up to 2 months) so you're not penalized for lighter months.

What's included in a retainer?

Dedicated engineering hours, monthly evals, quarterly reviews, on-call coverage for production issues, and ongoing optimization. You get a senior engineer as part of your team.

Can I pause or scale up a retainer?

Yes. You can pause for a month or scale hours up/down with 2 weeks notice. The engagement is designed to flex with your actual needs.

What happens if we hit a production issue?

Retainer hours include on-call coverage. Critical issues get immediate attention; we prioritize your production systems over other work.

Do you work across our whole AI stack, or just new builds?

Both. We build new systems, optimize existing ones, run evals, handle migrations, integrate with your infrastructure, and manage production incidents. You get your own AI team.

Who's the engineer on our team?

A dedicated senior engineer who becomes part of your team. They own your roadmap, understand your systems, and provide continuity across projects.

Let's Talk

Find your AI team.

Tell us about your roadmap and current AI systems. We'll match you with an engineer and scope the engagement.

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