Frequently asked questions
Do you build the agronomy, or the software around it?
The software, in almost every case, and we say which is which project by project. On AgroScout the pest and disease detection models are the client's own work and we built the mobile application and the flight control around them. On Milc Group we did the computer vision work ourselves: our engineers trained the detection models with YOLO and built the labeling and retraining pipeline in Roboflow, and the models belong to Milc Group, as everything we build does. We do not employ agronomists and we do not produce crop science. If a partner will not draw that line for you in writing, assume it falls in whichever place flatters them.
Have your engineers actually shipped drone software, or just mobile apps?
Three products on the DJI Mobile SDK: AgroScout, Skippy Scout and DroneDeploy, the last of which is used on more than 3 million jobsites. On AgroScout the standard waypoint mission mode was not enough, because it cannot adapt to elevation changes in real time, so we bypassed mission planning and took direct low latency control of the aircraft, reading telemetry every 10 milliseconds and triggering the camera at a fixed interval while hugging the terrain. That is the level of the work, and it is the part that is hard to fake in an interview.
What kinds of agriculture software do you build most often?
Four things, in this order. Drone flight and image capture applications. Field scouting and pest management tools that connect scouts, agronomists and producers as separate roles in one workflow. Farm and dairy operations platforms, including integrations with whatever the client already runs. And trading, traceability and supply chain systems for the part of agriculture that happens after the harvest, which looks like enterprise software rather than like a field app.
What happens when the engagement ends?
You own everything, and we hand it over. The clearest example is Milc Group: nine years, a dedicated team that grew to 40 people across five business domains, ended with an ordered handover to the client's in-house engineers when they were ready to run it themselves. Our agriculture engagements have run from three years to twelve and counting, and the shape of the ending is worth asking every partner about, because it is the only part of the relationship they have no incentive to plan.
What time zone do your engineers work in, and how much overlap will I get?
Our engineers work 10:00 to 19:00 Uruguay time, which is UTC minus 3. That covers the entire US East Coast working day, five to six hours of live overlap with the West Coast, and three to four hours with Europe, in their afternoon. The schedule is set that way deliberately: shifting the day an hour later widens the Pacific overlap without asking anyone to work nights, and it is the reason this arrangement is still working in month twelve rather than quietly falling apart in month three.
How fast can you actually start?
Five business days from signed agreement to first day is the standard, and if the engineer is already on our bench and your side is ready to receive them, they can start as soon as the next business day. What varies is finding the right person, not starting them: if the profile is on our bench you get CVs one business day after you sign off the role brief, and if the role has to be recruited, first CVs take about five business days. We tell you which of the two you are in on the first call, before you have signed anything, because that is what actually moves your start date.
What happens if the engineer is not working out?
You tell your account manager and we replace the person at our cost. There is no charge for the search and no penalty for asking. The outgoing and incoming engineers overlap for ten business days so that context, access and work in progress transfer inside the engagement instead of landing back on your team, and those ten days are not billed: during the handover you keep paying exactly what you were paying for one engineer. We would rather absorb that than have you carry a bad fit for a quarter, and a company that will not put a replacement policy in writing is telling you something.
Who owns the code and the intellectual property?
You do, exclusively. Everything created for you as part of the work is assigned to you with full title guarantee: source code, application logic, APIs, integrations, data models, configurations, UI and UX designs, documentation and any derivative works. The assignment covers the deliverables as they are created, it is not conditional on final payment, and it is not a licence back to you, it is ownership. We also warrant that what we deliver does not infringe any third party's intellectual property, and where third party material is involved we secure the consents for both sides first. For our own pre existing components that were not written specifically for you, you get a non exclusive, irrevocable, royalty free licence to use, copy and modify them, so nothing we bring with us can be used to lock you in later. Every CodigoDelSur employee signs a non disclosure agreement and an intellectual property assignment as a condition of employment. In an agriculture engagement that also covers the field data you collect, the imagery it comes from and any model our engineers train on it, and we do not reuse one client's data or models on another client's project.
