Named people, not a pool
You know who is working on your product and you meet them before anything is agreed. No silent substitutions partway through.
Contract software engineers, for when the deadline will not move.
Experienced engineers working inside your team, your tools, and your process for a defined period, with an end date agreed at the start.
- Extra capacity for an urgent release
- Cover for an unfilled or departing role
- Short notice starts and an agreed end date
- Your tools, your process, your standards
- Weekly time reporting and a budget cap
- Handover notes so knowledge stays with you
Sometimes the problem is not a specification. It is a date. A release is committed, someone has left, a hire is three months from productive, and the work does not care about any of that.
This is the one service where you do not need us to run anything. You keep ownership of the product, the backlog, and the decisions. We add capacity to the team you already have, working the way that team already works.
That means our people join your standups, work in your codebase, follow your review process, and write in your codebase's style instead of importing ours. The measure of success is that after we leave, nobody has to unpick what we did.
What the engagement includes
Your process, not ours
Your tracker, your codebase, your review standards, your definition of done. We adapt to the team, which is the entire point of reinforcement.
A defined end date
Agreed at the start, extendable if it suits you both. Nobody has to have an awkward conversation to make the engagement stop.
Weekly time reporting
What was worked on, for how long, against an agreed budget cap. No surprise invoices at month end.
Handover notes throughout
Written as the work happens, not in the last week, so the knowledge stays with your team when the contract ends.
Overlap that actually works
Working hours arranged around your team's, not ours. From GMT+7 that is the European morning and the US East Coast evening, and the exact window goes in the engagement sheet.
Whether this is the right fit
We would rather tell you now than three weeks in. If the right column describes you, say so on the call and we will point you somewhere better.
Best when
- A committed release date needs more capacity than the team has
- A role is unfilled and recruitment will not close the gap in time
- A specialist skill is needed for a defined stretch, not permanently
- Your team is strong and simply outnumbered by the backlog
- You want to try working together before a larger engagement
Not the right fit when
- The problem is an unclear specification, not missing capacity
- Nobody is available to own the project technically
- Nobody can review pull requests within a day or two
- The deadline is already impossible and more people will only slow it
- The need is permanent and full-time, and you can recruit for it
How it runs
Fit call
Thirty minutes on the work, the stack, the team, and the date. If reinforcement is the wrong shape for the problem, we say so here.
Meet the people
You meet whoever would actually be working with you, and see relevant work. Nobody is assigned to your product sight unseen.
Scope, cap, and end date
Agreed in writing: who, for how many hours a week, until when, and the budget ceiling. The first two weeks are a trial period that either side can end with two days notice.
Onboard properly
Access, context, and a first small piece of real work in the first week. A contractor who ships something small quickly is a contractor who understood the codebase.
Weekly rhythm
Your standups, your reviews, a weekly time report against the cap. Extend, reduce, or stop at any point with the agreed notice.
What is agreed before day one
Written into the engagement sheet you sign, so nothing about how this runs is left to assumption.
- Minimum engagement
- Twenty hours a week for four weeks. Smaller than that and onboarding costs more than the work returns.
- Trial period
- The first two weeks end with two days notice from either side, no reason required.
- Notice after that
- Ten working days, the same in both directions. Reducing hours needs the same notice as stopping.
- Budget cap
- A weekly ceiling and a total ceiling, both in the engagement sheet. We stop at the cap. We do not invoice past it.
- Allocation
- A stated percentage of the week, with actual hours reported against it every Friday. If it slips, you see it that week.
- Start conditions
- Repository and tool access, a named person who can answer questions, and a named reviewer. We agree the start date once these exist.
- Blocked time
- Flagged in writing the same day. Beyond half a day we do not bill for waiting, we reduce the week.
- Holidays
- Local public holidays and the Tet break are listed with dates when you sign, not mentioned afterwards.
- Replacement
- If someone has to be replaced, the handover overlap is at our cost, not yours.
- Hiring them yourself
- Allowed, at a conversion fee agreed at the start. Nobody has to pretend the conversation is not happening.
How this is priced
This is time and materials, with a budget cap and an agreed end date. Fixed price makes no sense here, because you are buying capacity, not a defined outcome, and pretending otherwise would just mean padding the number.
Where the work happens
The engineers work on GMT+7. Reinforcement is the one service where that has to be answered in hours, not in principle, because they are sitting in your standups: the working day overlaps the European morning and begins in the US East Coast evening, and the overlap window is written into the engagement sheet, not discovered in week three. Hiring contract software engineers is usually a rate decision; what is on offer here is a named person you meet first, working under a registered business you can check on the public tax register. Local public holidays and the Tet break are listed with dates before you sign.
Before you ask on the call
How quickly can someone start?
It depends on current commitments, and we will tell you honestly on the first call instead of promising a date we cannot hold. Short notice starts are the normal case for this service, so it is a question we expect.
Who owns what your engineers write?
You do. Work produced under a reinforcement engagement is yours under the contract, and it lives in your own codebase from the first commit.
What if the person is not working out?
Tell us early and we will replace them or end the engagement with the agreed notice. Both are better than everyone being polite about it until the deadline arrives.
Do you work in our timezone?
We arrange hours around your team. From GMT+7 we overlap the European working day comfortably and the US East Coast at each end. Where overlap is genuinely thin, we agree fixed hours that work and say so, instead of calling it a non-issue.
What happens if your engineer is blocked waiting on us?
It gets flagged in writing the same day, not absorbed quietly. Past half a day of waiting we do not bill the time, we reduce the week. Waiting is not work and invoicing it as work is how these engagements sour.
What happens over Tet?
Local public holidays and the Tet break are non-working days, and the exact dates are in the engagement sheet before you sign. On a deadline-driven engagement this belongs in the plan at the start, not in an email in month two.
Is this not more expensive than hiring someone in-house?
Per hour, yes. The fair comparison is not the salary line, though: it is salary plus employer contributions, equipment, recruitment, and the two to three months a new hire is paid in full while getting up to speed, divided by the days someone is actually available after leave. Against that, with no notice period or severance to carry, a defined stretch of contract capacity usually costs less. Past about a year of continuous full-time work it stops being true, which is why the fit list above says to hire instead.
What if we want to hire the person permanently?
You can, at a conversion fee agreed at the start of the engagement. It is a normal outcome of working with someone good, and pricing it up front is better than a clause nobody read.
Can this become a longer engagement?
Often it does, and that is a fine outcome, but it is not the aim. Each extension is a decision you make with the evidence of the previous period in front of you.
If this is not quite the shape of it
The engagements next to this one, and the reason you might want them instead. All five are in the Services menu at the top of the page.
Tell us the date and what is missing.
Thirty minutes by video with Tai. Describe the team, the stack, and the deadline. You will get a straight answer on whether extra capacity is the right fix.
Bring the date first. Everything else is easier to work backwards from.