01
The situation
Get an engineering team
You need engineering capacity. Hiring it will take the better part of a year.
There are two versions of this problem, depending on whether you already have a technology function.
In the first, you have a technology function and it is outnumbered. You know what needs building, you have a roadmap, and you cannot recruit fast enough to work through it.
In the second, you have software your business depends on and nobody inside the company who owns it. Decisions get made by whoever is nearest, or they wait.
02
Two ways in
Two ways in.
The arrangements differ, and so do the commitments that come with them. Pick the one that describes you.
Extend our team
For companies that have a technical function and need more of it. Our engineers embed into your team, your process, and your repository, and you direct the work.
Be our team
For companies with no in-house technology function at all. We take the function in full, on one accountable line, with a small number of named people.
03
Extend
Extend our team.
For companies that have a technical function and need more of it.
The situation
You have a roadmap and not enough people to serve it. Hiring takes months, the intermediate and senior market is thin, and every month spent recruiting is a month the roadmap does not move. Meanwhile the people you do have are being pulled between delivery and interviews.
How it works
Our engineers embed into your team. Your process, your standup, your board, your repository, your definition of done. You direct the work. There is no client-services layer between you and the people writing code, and no monthly report standing in for visibility you should already have.
An engineer joins, spends the first stretch on codebase inheritance, which means documenting the system as they learn it rather than only reading it, and makes a small change end to end before touching anything that matters. That document stays with you afterwards.
What we commit to
You meet the person, not a profile
Our team is small enough that you meet whoever would be working with you, and give them a real task before you commit. Where someone is intermediate rather than senior, we say so, because you would find out in week three anyway.
Ramp-up is budgeted, not pretended away
On a documented codebase of ordinary complexity, expect useful contribution inside the first fortnight and full pace after that. On an undocumented one it takes longer, and the inheritance work is the reason.
An engineer allocated to you stays allocated to you
Small teams break client relationships by quietly borrowing people for whatever is on fire elsewhere. If we need to move someone you hear it from us in advance, with a handover, rather than noticing a drop in velocity. We will put the allocation in the agreement.
You own the code
Everything our engineers write for you is your work product, in your repository, from the first commit.
Objections
What if it does not work out?
Notice period is one calendar month, and we would rather end an arrangement that is not working than defend it. Handover is documented either way.
What does it cost?
Rates are on request. The bench is small and the rate depends on the seniority of the person you actually get, so a published number would either be wrong for most engagements or high enough to be safe for all of them. Ask and we will give you a real one.
04
Become
Be our team.
For companies with no in-house technology function at all.
The situation
Your business runs on software. Nobody inside the company owns it. When something needs deciding it gets decided by whoever is closest to it, or it waits. When something breaks you find out from a customer. Hiring one developer rarely closes that gap. What is missing is the whole function, and you should not have to build a department to get it.
How it works
We take the technology function in full: the roadmap and the consulting, the project management, the architecture, the build, the data, the DevOps, the hosting, the security, and the daily liaison with your operations and support people. One accountable line, rather than a set of suppliers who each blame the others.
In practice you deal with the same small number of named people, one of whom is our CTO.
The honest size of this
We are already one company’s entire technology function, running exactly this scope, and we have room to become a second. If you need a supplier who can absorb four of these next quarter, we are not that supplier.
What you get instead is that the people who built the thing are the people who answer for it, and the relationship is small enough that nothing gets lost handing over between departments that do not exist.
What we commit to
Every system carries an inheritance document
What it does, how to run it locally, how to deploy it, and where the decisions were made. Written so that somebody who has never seen it can take it over.
Infrastructure runs in your accounts
Hosting, repositories, domains, and certificates in your name, with your access. Nothing runs somewhere only we can reach.
You own everything you pay for
Code, data, credentials, and documentation are yours as work product, throughout the engagement rather than at the end of it.
Leaving is a defined piece of work
Ask us at any point to hand everything to a third party. It should take days, and it is the only real test of whether the three commitments above are true.
Objections
Does this not make us completely dependent on you?
Somewhat, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. The four commitments above are what we do about it, and they are all things you can test rather than take on trust.
What if you go under?
The same artefacts answer that question, which is most of the reason for having them.
Can we bring it in-house later?
Yes, and some clients should. If you reach the scale where a permanent team is cheaper than us, we would rather help you hire it and hand over cleanly than spend two years being the thing that stops you.
How do we budget for this?
A monthly retainer sized against the actual function and reviewed against real hours. Where a large piece of project work sits inside the arrangement, we scope and price it separately so it does not silently consume the capacity keeping the lights on.
Who actually does the work?
Named people you meet. See the about page.
05
Disciplines
The disciplines this draws on.
All of them, which is the point of this page.
06
Commercially
How it works commercially.
Both paths are Embedded Function: a monthly retainer for open-ended capacity, sized against the shape of the work and reviewed against actual hours. Notice period is one calendar month. Work that sits inside the arrangement but has a definable end is scoped and priced separately.
Claer & Volker
453 Winifred Yell St, Garsfontein
Pretoria, South Africa
info@claervolker.com
© 2026 Claer & Volker
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