How a forward deployed team works inside your business
Every engagement starts with a two-week diagnostic and ends when your team passes a handover test without us. Here is what each step costs and who owns what, week by week.
Four ways to work with us
The diagnostic comes first. The other three follow from what it finds.
Diagnostic
US$2,000–5,000
2 weeks
One workflow mapped, timed and costed. We design and price the fix and run a working prototype on a sample of your real data.
Ends with A written plan and price you can take to any vendor.
Forward deployed team
US$12,000–30,000 a month, by team size
8–16 weeks a workflow
Two to six people: a lead engineer and engineers, plus a designer, analyst or growth specialist when the work needs one. They work in your chat and tracker, and in a shared repository when your engineers build with them.
Ends with The handover test: your team runs the system for two weeks without us.
Dedicated engineers
US$2,500–4,500 a month per engineer
Monthly
Engineers we manage, on your ongoing product work. Offered as a second step, after a first build.
Ends with Documented code. You can take the work in-house at any time.
Run and improve
From US$800 a month
Monthly
Monitoring, AI evaluation, model and dependency updates, website care and growth operations after handover.
Ends with A monthly report your team can read.
Last reviewed
How we set the price
The diagnostic is one fixed fee within US$2,000–5,000, agreed before it starts. It ends with a fixed price for the build, in writing, so you know the cost before you commit to more.
A team's monthly fee follows its size, and its length follows the scope agreed in the diagnostic. Work outside that scope is quoted as a written change before anyone builds it.
Procurement steps, data access and ownership questions go into the plan as named dependencies, each with an owner and a date, so the timeline holds to the agreed scope.
Your hours and ours
Our Dhaka office runs on UTC+6. A team can also work your full business day on request. Most work is remote, with an optional on-site week at kickoff or handover; travel is billed at cost.
--
shared each working day
- Your working day
- 09:00–17:00 London
- Our Dhaka office
- --
- Shared
- --
The office keeps 08:30–17:30 Dhaka time, Monday to Friday. Offsets come from your browser's time-zone data, so they follow daylight saving.
Who owns what, week by week
Each part moves to your team only when your team passes its handover test, with our engineer watching and not typing. Scope, priorities and budget are yours from the first day. Drag through an example 16-week build; your own weeks are set in the diagnostic.
- Code changesYour team
- Technical decisionsYour team
- OperationsVerne
- On-callVerne
- Repository and IPVerne
Week 11 Handover tests
Your team runs one test a week while our engineer watches and does not type. Each pass moves one part to you.
Your team owns code changes and technical decisions. Verne still owns operations and on-call and repository and ip.
- Week 10Code changes. Your engineer ships a reviewed change through the pipeline to production, then rolls it back.
- Week 11Technical decisions. Your lead reads the evaluation results and approves a release without us in the room.
- Week 12Operations. Your team investigates a failed job, retries it safely, and the record counts match the ERP.
- Week 13On-call. Your team restores staging from backup and rotates a credential, using only the runbook.
- Week 16Repository and IP. Delivery is signed off: the code repository, documentation and IP transfer to you.
For your engineers
Transfer is written down as exercises with evidence, in the spirit of a production readiness review. Your team does the work; our engineer observes.
transfer-acceptance.yaml · example handover plan
# Ownership moves when these pass with your team at the keyboard.
system: returns-triage
receiving_team: ops-platform # your engineers
observer: verne-fde # watches, does not type
exercises:
- id: deploy-change
task: Ship a reviewed change through the pipeline to production
evidence: [pipeline_run, change_ticket, rollback_test]
pass_if: deployed_by in receiving_team
- id: handle-exception
task: Investigate a failed job, retry it safely, reconcile with the ERP
evidence: [incident_note, reconciliation_report]
pass_if: record_counts_match and no_duplicate_postings
- id: recover-environment
task: Restore staging from backup using only the runbook
evidence: [runbook_version, restore_log, time_to_restore]
pass_if: completed_without_observer_help
support_boundary:
verne_on_call: as_agreed_in_contract
escalation: ops-platform-leadThe method borrows from public-service and reliability engineering. Readiness is measured rather than declared, with delivery measures your engineers already use.
- How the discovery phase works GOV.UK Service Manual, last updated 21 June 2021. Understand the problem before committing to build; stopping at the end of discovery is not a failure.
- The Evolving SRE Engagement Model (Site Reliability Engineering, chapter 32) Google, sre.google, undated web edition. Production readiness review, training, and a progressive transfer of operations, change management, and access, with the development team as backup.
- DORA's software delivery performance metrics DORA (Nathen Harvey), last updated 5 January 2026. Defines delivery measures including failed deployment recovery time, used here as handover readiness evidence.
What you own, and when
- Code and IP
- The code repository and the IP in it are handed to you at full delivery. On joint work, your engineers get tiered access while we build. If you need the repository in your name from day one, we can agree it in the contract, with safeguards for both sides.
- Hosting and accounts
- Your hosting, domain and accounts stay in your name, and we work through access you can remove at any time.
- Data
- We can sign your NDA before the diagnostic starts. Our privacy policy sets out how we handle client data.
- Compliance
- We help your team meet the regime you answer to, such as GDPR, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and prepare the evidence your auditor asks for.
Questions about engagements
Can we stop after the diagnostic?
Yes. The plan and the price are yours to keep. You can build the fix with us, with your own engineers or with another vendor, and stopping there is a fair result.
Who leads the work day to day?
A named lead engineer from Verne joins your stand-ups and runs the weekly demo. On your side, one named person owns the workflow and makes the business calls.
What do you need from us to start?
One workflow and the person accountable for it, access to representative data and the people who do the work, and your security and procurement rules.
What if our team is not ready by the last planned week?
The handover tests decide, not the calendar. We keep running the parts that have not passed, and any extra weeks are agreed in writing before they start.
Can you work alongside our existing engineers?
Yes. The handover is planned around them. They pair with our engineers during the build and run the handover tests themselves.
Start with one workflow and two weeks
You get a measured cost, a designed fix and a fixed build price. The plan is yours whether or not we build it.