How is Cubitrek staff augmentation different from Toptal, Andela, or a typical staffing agency?

No recruiter margin, no bench-seller incentive, no marketplace markup. You work directly with our delivery lead; our engineers are long-tenured Cubitrek team members, not marketplace contractors trying to move to the next gig. We also bundle our internal agent toolbox (pair programmer, standup reporter, spec reader, documentation writer, code-review agent) so the engineer ships 2 to 3x the old pace at no extra cost.

What do engineers cost under your staff augmentation services?

Three tiers: Mid-senior at $2,000/mo (3-5 years experience), Senior at $3,500/mo (5-8 years, lead-capable), Principal at $5,000/mo (8+ years, specialty expertise in AI, SRE, or security). Monthly billing, no setup fee, no minimum commitment beyond the first month. Seniority and specialization drive the rate, not negotiation theatre.

How quickly can you embed a senior engineer?

7 days median, 3 days fast-path when we have a current bench match. Brief on Monday, shortlist Wednesday, interview Thursday, contract Friday, embedded the following Monday. Slower when the role requires very narrow specialisation (rare framework, hard compliance overlay, niche industry experience), but we are transparent about that on the brief call.

What timezones do you cover?

EU and US working hours by default. Pakistan time zone for back-office or follow-the-sun coverage where it makes sense. Most engineers shift their day to overlap with the client's core hours; we screen for this on the candidate interview before the client ever sees the shortlist.

Can I try an engineer before committing long-term?

Yes. The first two weeks are a soft start. If the fit is not right (technical, cultural, communication, anything), we replace the engineer at no cost. The replacement candidate ships within 5 business days. Most engagements pass the two-week mark without a replacement; the soft start is insurance, not a normal path.

Who owns the code and IP the engineer produces?

You, 100%. IP assignment is done contractually before day one, covered under the master services agreement. Everything the engineer writes during the engagement is your intellectual property: code, designs, documentation, ML models, prompts, eval data. No surprises, no shared-IP fine print.

Can I scale up to a full pod (multiple engineers + PM + designer)?

Yes. Common pattern for series-B and -C startups that need a full squad against a 3-6 month deliverable. We staff a delivery lead, 2-4 engineers, a designer, and a PM under the same monthly billing model. Same vetting standard across all roles, same replace-anytime policy.

Do your engineers come with AI agent and LLM experience built in?

Yes, by default. Every engineer we place has shipped at least one production agent (LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, OpenClaw, or hand-rolled). They use the Cubitrek agent toolbox (pair programmer, code reviewer, spec reader, documentation writer, standup reporter) from day one. If your stack needs deeper AI/ML specialisation (RAG pipelines, fine-tuning, model ops), we route you to the AI engineer tier specifically.

How do you handle on-call and incident response?

Engineers on the Senior or Principal tier ship on-call ready. We support primary on-call rotation when the client's on-call infrastructure includes the engineer; secondary on-call as a backup; or 24/7 follow-the-sun coverage when the team is distributed enough to rotate naturally. Pricing for on-call is bundled into the monthly rate up to a reasonable cap.

What if our project ends or we need to ramp down?

30-day notice on any engagement. No cancellation fee, no contract escape clause. Engineers transition back to the Cubitrek bench or onto another client. We do not charge for engineers you do not need, and we do not lock you into multi-quarter commitments.

Do you handle compliance (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, ITAR)?

Yes. Standard engagements ship with NDA, mutual MSA, IP assignment, and our SOC 2 Type II attestation. GDPR-compliant for EU clients. HIPAA-aligned for healthcare clients (we have BAAs ready). ITAR and other US-export-controlled engagements are handled case-by-case via our US legal entity.

Can you also run the project end-to-end instead of just embedding engineers?

Yes. That is a different service: Cubitrek delivery (fixed-scope project with our PM running it) instead of staff augmentation (engineers embedded in your team under your management). Both run from the same engineering pool with the same vetting. The right choice depends on whether you want to own the project management or hand it off.

Staff augmentation services for AI, ML, and full-stack engineering

Hire senior engineers in days, not quarters.

Staff augmentation services with pre-vetted senior AI, ML, RAG, agent-framework, and full-stack engineers embedded into your team. EU and US timezone coverage. No recruiter margin, no middle-layer markup, contracts in days.

Book a strategy callSee our work

$2k-$5k

/month per engineer

7 days

to first day

5+ yrs

median experience

100%

senior only

Hiring senior engineers in-house takes quarters and burns $21k to $38k per month fully loaded. Our staff augmentation services embed pre-vetted senior engineers into your team in a week, at a quarter of the cost, with no recruiter or middle-layer taking a cut. Every engineer also gets our agent toolbox so they ship 2 to 3x the old pace.

What we ship

Everything under one roof, delivered by senior operators.

Full-stack engineers

Next.js, React, Node, Python, Go, TypeScript. Senior developers who ship production code with tests, observability, and documentation that matches reality.

AI and ML engineers

LLM engineering, RAG pipelines, embedding strategy, model ops, eval harnesses, fine-tuning. Engineers who have shipped GPT, Claude, Gemini, and open-source models into production.

Agent framework engineers

LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, OpenClaw, and MCP-native agent development. Engineers who have shipped autonomous agents to revenue teams, not just prototypes.

Mobile engineers

Swift, Kotlin, React Native, Flutter. Pre-vetted senior mobile talent who can ship to the App Store and Play Store without surprises in the review process.

DevOps and SRE

AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, Pulumi. On-call-ready engineers who can stand up production infrastructure and own the pager when it goes off.

Data engineers

Warehousing (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift), dbt, real-time pipelines (Kafka, Flink), and the LLM-augmented analytics stack that lets the rest of the team self-serve.

Security engineers

AppSec, SOC 2 readiness, pentesting, zero-trust implementations, prompt-injection defense for agent workloads. The skill set most teams need but cannot hire fast enough.

Technical leads

Staff-level engineers who can architect, code-review, mentor your team, and own delivery across multiple workstreams. The hire that usually takes 6 months to find in the open market.

Whole pods

Need a 4-person squad (PM + 2 engineers + designer) instead of one engineer? We staff full pods with a delivery lead, same vetting standard, same monthly billing.

AI in the loop

The agents that sit next to the engineers you hire.

Every engineer we place comes with the same agent toolbox our own teams use. You do not just get a senior. You get a senior who ships at 2 to 3 times the old pace because half the production grind is now agent-driven.

agent 01

Pair programming agent

Real-time code completion, refactors, and test scaffolding inside the IDE (Cursor, VS Code, Zed, JetBrains).

triggerEvery keystroke in the engineer's editor.

Fewer lines written by hand, more focus on architecture and judgment.

agent 02

Standup reporter

Summarizes yesterday's commits, PRs, blockers, and merged work for your team chat.

triggerEvery morning at the engineer's local standup time.

A short, skimmable update so your PM never has to chase.

agent 03

Spec reader

Parses your Notion, Linear, GitHub, or Jira specs into implementation checklists with open questions flagged.

triggerWhen a ticket is assigned to the engineer.

A broken-down plan with risks and unknowns surfaced before code is written.

agent 04

Documentation writer

Produces ADRs, READMEs, runbooks, and changelogs directly from merged code.

triggerEvery merged PR.

Docs that match the code on day one and stay current.

agent 05

Code-review agent

Pre-reviews every PR for style, security, performance, and missing tests before a human reviewer sees it.

triggerOn every PR open or update.

Inline comments with suggested fixes. Frees senior reviewers to focus on architecture.

You pay for the engineer. You get the engineer plus the agent stack at no extra cost.

How we work

A four-stage cadence that compounds every sprint.

Brief

Tell us role, stack, seniority, and timezone. Written job spec back in 48 hours with the candidate pool sized and the shortlist plan agreed.

Match

Two to three senior candidates delivered within 3 to 5 business days. Each candidate ships with a written work sample, a recorded technical walkthrough, and reference notes.

Interview

You run the technical interview. We handle contracts, payroll, compliance, IP assignment, and onboarding. First two weeks are a soft start: if it is not a fit, we replace at no cost.

Operate

Your engineer shows up on day one fully integrated (Slack, email, repo access, on-call rotation if applicable). Monthly billing. Replace anytime. Delivery lead checks in monthly to make sure the engagement is compounding.

What good looks like

Representative outcomes from recent programs.

Specific numbers from specific engagements. We can walk through unabridged case studies on the strategy call.

< 7 days

median time to embed

Series-B fintech needed two senior backend engineers (Go + Postgres) for a 6-month build. Brief on Monday, two candidates Wednesday, contracts signed Friday, engineers fully embedded the following Monday. 7-day end-to-end. The same hires through their previous recruiter took 14 weeks each.

-60%

cost vs in-house US senior

Mid-market SaaS replaced a churned US-based senior AI engineer ($28k/mo fully loaded) with a Cubitrek-staffed senior AI engineer at $3,500/mo. Same seniority, EU timezone overlap, MCP + LangChain experience, started in 9 days. 12-month savings: $294,000 with no productivity loss on the team.

94%

retention at 12 months

Across 47 engineers placed in the 12 months ending Q1 2026, 44 are still embedded with the same client. The 3 transitions were one client downsize, one engineer family move, and one role-fit mismatch we resolved with a no-cost replacement. We track this monthly because durable embeds beat fast embeds every time.

Who we serve

Categories we know well.

Not a list of logos, a list of categories where we already speak the language and know the funnel.

SaaSFintechE-commerceHealthcareAI and LLMEnterprise ITMarketplacesLegal-tech

Pricing

Transparent tiers. No hidden setup fees.

Month-to-month. Cancel anytime. All tiers include a dedicated delivery lead.

Mid-senior

$2,000/mo

3 to 5 years experience.

Full-time embed
EU/US timezone overlap
Replace anytime
Monthly billing, no setup fee
IP assignment included

Start with Mid-senior

Frequently asked questions

No recruiter margin, no bench-seller incentive, no marketplace markup. You work directly with our delivery lead; our engineers are long-tenured Cubitrek team members, not marketplace contractors trying to move to the next gig. We also bundle our internal agent toolbox (pair programmer, standup reporter, spec reader, documentation writer, code-review agent) so the engineer ships 2 to 3x the old pace at no extra cost.

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Ready when you are

Ready to start staff augmentation?

A 30-minute call. We map your goal, audit what exists, and come back with a scoped plan, usually within 72 hours.

Book a strategy call