IT Staff Augmentation Services

Is staff augmentation the right model for you?

Yes, if:

• You have an engineering manager or tech lead with room to direct one or more extra people.
• You have a roadmap and a backlog. The work is defined, you are short on capacity.
• Your hiring plan is behind and the gap is measured in months, not years.
• You need overlap with your working day, not handoffs at midnight.

No, if:

• Nobody on your side has time to review pull requests and set direction.
• You want one supplier accountable for delivering a product, not for staffing it.
• What you have is an idea that still needs shaping. That is full-cycle product development.

How long it actually takes to add an engineer

Every nearshore company promises a team "in days". Here is the breakdown behind that promise, so you can compare it to the one you got from someone else.

The number that matters is the second row against the third. Anyone can move fast when the person is already sitting on the bench. What tells you who you are dealing with is whether they admit it when the person is not.

Roles and stacks you can hire

Seniority runs from mid level to tech lead. We do not staff junior engineers into augmentation roles, because an embedded engineer who needs supervision costs your team more than the capacity they add. Everyone we place is an employee of CodigoDelSur, not a freelancer sourced for your project, which is why the same person can stay on your team for years. On Shutterfly it was more than three.

What it costs and how billing works

Rates run from $50 to $99 per hour in US dollars, depending on role, seniority and stack. Volume discounts apply once the group grows: 5 percent from 5 people, 10 percent from 7. Invoicing is per sprint, for hours worked, in dollars, and terms are Net 14. If your accounting team would rather receive one invoice a month, we bill monthly instead, on the same terms.

The shortest engagement we will sign is two weeks, one sprint. There is no minimum term beyond that and no annual lock in: after the first sprint it runs continuously, and either side can stop with two weeks of written notice. The $10,000 figure on our directory profiles is a minimum project size, not a minimum commitment, so a single trial sprint is a real way to start.

There is no recruiting fee, no placement fee and no separate management fee. The hourly rate is all in: it covers the engineer, their equipment, the project manager on our side, and the cost of keeping them at the company. If we have to replace someone you do not pay for the search, and you do not pay for the handover either.

Two things that are not included, so there are no surprises: third party licences and cloud spend are yours, and travel to your office is billed at cost and only when you ask for it.

Three teams we joined

Help Scout, customer support SaaS. Help Scout brought CodigoDelSur engineers into its own production codebase, working across the React application and the legacy Backbone.js code that still runs alongside it. The engagement started in November 2024 and is ongoing. It later grew into scoping the migration of five sidebar applications off jQuery and Backbone onto React, with feature parity, accessibility and a low risk production rollout as hard requirements. This is what augmentation looks like when it works: our people in their repository, their release process, their standards. Read the Help Scout case study.

Leadpages, marketing SaaS. The Leadpages marketing team needed frontend capacity to relaunch redesigned pages, reskin their reusable components and move their content from Sanity v2 to v3. CodigoDelSur worked inside their team and shipped the migration in two months, and the engagement reduced their dependence on their previous vendor. Read the Leadpages case study.

Shutterfly, consumer e-commerce. Shutterfly used CodigoDelSur engineers on the internal Ruby on Rails tooling behind its catalog: product uploads, stock management and very large volumes of order and product data. The engagement ran from December 2016 to April 2020. The reason to mention it on this page is not the stack, it is the duration. More than three years with the same people is the thing staff augmentation is supposed to buy you and usually does not. Read the Shutterfly case study.

Staff augmentation, dedicated team or full-cycle product development

Three different products get sold under the same word, "outsourcing". They are not interchangeable and picking the wrong one is the most expensive mistake in this category.

When staff augmentation is the wrong answer for you

Do not choose staff augmentation if nobody on your side has the time to direct the person. An embedded engineer is exactly as effective as the direction they are given, and a senior engineer with no owner is worse than no engineer at all, because someone still has to review their pull requests. This is the single most common way these engagements fail, and it fails on the client side, not the vendor side.

If that describes you, what you want is a dedicated team, where we assemble the whole group and a CodigoDelSur project manager coordinates it at no extra cost. Those teams include senior developers, and the most senior person on the team makes the technical calls. And if you have no engineering leadership at all and an idea that still needs shaping, neither model fits: you want full-cycle product development, where one company is accountable for the outcome. We do all three, so we have no reason to sell you the wrong one, and we would rather say it on the first call than in month four.

Where "taking over an existing project" and "short-term work" fit

Neither of those is a fourth model. They are situations, and both are handled inside the two models above. If you already have an application and you want to switch providers, we review the existing codebase and start working on top of it, either with engineers embedded in your team or with a dedicated team taking the product over. If the work is short, the two week minimum means you can run it as a single sprint with one or two people and stop there, without committing to anything longer. We spell this out because these are the two things buyers ask for by name, and neither of them changes how the engagement is structured or priced.

Frequently asked questions

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 the United Kingdom, 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 practice we also work inside your repositories and your cloud accounts, so in most engagements the code never lives anywhere else to begin with.

What does the contract look like and how do I end it?

One standard services agreement. We do not layer a master agreement plus a statement of work per role on top of it unless your procurement team requires that structure, and if they do, we sign it. The minimum commitment is two weeks, one sprint. After that it runs continuously with two weeks of written notice on either side to reduce or end it, and the agreement gives you the right to terminate for convenience, without cause, on fourteen days written notice. There is no annual lock in and no termination fee. You can scale from one engineer to five and back down again inside the same agreement, without renegotiating anything.

Who does the technical onboarding?

Your team owns product and codebase onboarding, we own everything else. Our engineer arrives with equipment, accounts, signed agreements and background checks (where required) already done, joins your standup on day one and is paired with one of your engineers for the first week. After that, a CodigoDelSur project manager stays on the account: performance conversations, time off coverage, career growth and retention are handled on our side and do not become your manager's job. The only thing we ask from you in week one is someone who can answer questions and merge a pull request.

How much does staff augmentation cost?

Between $50 and $99 per hour in US dollars, by role, seniority and stack. Groups of 5 people or more get a 5 percent discount, and 7 or more get 10 percent. Invoicing is per sprint, Net 14, or monthly if that suits your accounting team better. The shortest engagement we will sign is two weeks, one sprint, so the smallest realistic commitment is one engineer for one sprint. The rate is all inclusive: no recruiting fee, no placement fee, no management fee, and no charge for the ten day handover if we have to replace someone. The $10,000 on our directory profiles is a minimum project size, not a minimum commitment.

Will the engineer work only for us?

A full time engineer works for one client only. If you take someone full time they are on your product and nothing else: your standups, your sprint planning, your Slack, and for practical purposes they are part of your team, with the difference that their employment, payroll and career are our responsibility. If you only need part of a person we do offer part time engineers, and a part time engineer is assigned to a maximum of two projects, never more. We tell you which of the two you are getting before you sign, because "dedicated" is a word this industry uses loosely.