Talk to us

Services

Team augmentation

Senior engineers and tech leads who join your team, take a fair share of the work and leave it stronger than they found it.

Two developers pair programming at a standing desk

What it involves

Sometimes you don’t need a project team, you need two more senior people in your own. Our engineers join your stand-ups, your codebase and your on-call rota, and work to your priorities.

Everyone we place has at least six years’ experience and has worked on one of our own delivery teams first, so they bring habits as well as hands: pairing, small releases, writing things down. A Kestrel tech lead checks in with them and with you every fortnight.

We measure success by how well your team runs without us. Most placements end with us helping you hire and onboard the people who take over.

Our approach

  1. Brief

    A call about the team, the work and the gaps. We suggest names within five working days.

  2. Meet

    You interview each engineer, usually with a pairing session in your codebase.

  3. Join

    They start within two to three weeks and ship in their first fortnight.

  4. Hand over

    We help you hire their replacements and step back one person at a time.

Typical engagement

engineers per client
1–6
Most placements are two to four
months minimum
3
Then month to month, with 30 days’ notice
weeks from brief to first day
2–3
Faster for one engineer
years’ experience for everyone we place
6+
All have worked on Kestrel delivery teams

Team and pricing

Time and materials only, billed monthly against approved timesheets. Three-month minimum, then 30 days’ notice.

Typical team

Day rates per person

Tech leadLeads the engineers, owns quality and releases
AED 4,500–5,500
Senior engineerBackend, frontend or mobile
AED 3,500–4,500
Senior platform engineerCloud, infrastructure as code, observability
AED 3,800–4,800
Senior data engineerPipelines, warehouses and event streams
AED 3,800–4,800

Day rates exclude 5% VAT. Where a rate sits in its range depends on experience; rates are the same in all three studios and fixed for 12 months from signing. Every engagement is quoted in writing before work starts.

Ask for a quote

Related work

Lorries lined up at the loading bays of a freight depot at dawn

Marfa FreightLogistics

Four engineers who turned a firefighting team into a platform team

We joined Marfa Freight’s platform team for fourteen months, cut incidents by 61% and helped hire the people who replaced us.

production incidents
−61%
average time to recover, down from 3 hours
25 min
Marfa Freight

Questions about team augmentation

Can we hire your engineers permanently?

After twelve months, yes, with no fee if they want to move. Before that, a fee of 15% of first-year salary applies.

Do they work on site?

As often as your team does. Most clients ask for one or two days a week in the office; travel within the UAE is included in the day rate, and trips to Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the GCC are quoted up front.

What if someone isn’t the right fit?

Tell us and we’ll replace them within two weeks at no cost, including a handover week.

Do we need to sponsor their visas?

No. Our engineers are Kestrel employees on Kestrel residence visas, so there’s nothing for you to sponsor or cancel. You contract with Kestrel Engineering FZ-LLC, not with individuals.

Talk to us about team augmentation

Describe the problem in a few lines. A partner replies within one working day.

Talk to us All services

Cookie preferences

Cookie policy