Scale Your Team
Senior engineers who join your existing team and work to your direction. We handle recruitment, payroll and retention.
Who It's For
This service is most valuable for two scenarios.
- A role has been open too long.
- The search is taking longer than the roadmap allows, and the work is slipping while it runs.
- The team needs a skill it does not have.
- A stack or specialisation the current work needs that nobody in-house covers.
In both cases we place senior engineers inside the team you already run, on your tools and in your standups.
How It Works
- 1 Scope the role. A scoping call captures the stack, the seniority, the ramp and the constraints the role has to work within.
- 2 Shortlist in 48 hours. We recruit continuously rather than per request, so pre-vetted candidates reach you within 48 business hours.
- 3 Interview and accept. You interview the shortlist and decide who joins. If the fit turns out to be wrong, the 30-day replacement guarantee means we replace the engineer at no cost to you.
- 4 Embed and scale. Engineers work in your tools and your standups on a Resource-on-Request basis, and you scale up or down as the work moves.
You direct the work, the priorities and the definition of done. We handle recruitment, payroll and retention. If someone is not working out, the 30-day replacement guarantee covers it.
Team Structure
The engineer sits inside the team you already run and reports to you. The employment behind them sits with us.
Your team
You direct the work. The engineer takes direction from you, the same as anyone else on the team.
Embedded engineers
Senior engineers working in your tools and your standups. Assessed by our recruitment team and reviewed by our engineers before they reach you.
Adaca
Recruitment, payroll and retention sit with us, along with the 30-day replacement guarantee. None of it reaches your management line.
Adding a second or third engineer changes nothing about the line of management. They report to you the same way.
How It Compares
Every alternative below is a reasonable choice for some programmes. Read across a row to see where the two models actually differ.
| Hiring the engineer yourself | An Adaca embedded engineer |
|---|---|
| You write the ad, screen the applications and interview. | We shortlist pre-vetted engineers within 48 business hours. |
| Payroll, leave and equipment become yours to carry. | The employment obligations sit with us. |
| A wrong hire takes months to unwind. | A 30-day replacement guarantee, at no cost to you. |
| A contractor or freelancer | An Adaca embedded engineer |
|---|---|
| Sourced one at a time from the open market. | Sourced from engineers we already know, or recruited for the role. |
| Vetting the work is your job. | Assessed and engineer-reviewed before they reach you. |
| No cover when they leave mid-sprint. | A bench behind them and a replacement guarantee. |
| A recruitment agency | An Adaca embedded engineer |
|---|---|
| They search, they place, and the engagement ends. | We recruit, employ, and stay on the engagement. |
| Retention becomes your problem on day one. | Retention is ours, on 4.5-year average tenure. |
| A departure means starting the brief again. | A departure is ours to replace inside 30 days. |
If you need a whole team with its own delivery lead, rather than engineers inside the team you already run, explore Build a Team.
Case Studies
Qantas
Collaboration portal for aerospace engineers during aircraft maintenance and repair
Read case study →
ANZ
Real-time CRO dashboard for enterprise risk during the Banking Royal Commission
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ShoreTrade
B2B seafood marketplace now powering the new Sydney Fish Market
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Prospa
Specialist Salesforce engineering for a leading online lender
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Cora Group
Real-time supply chain visibility where there was none.
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ClearView
Life insurance advisor portal serving thousands of advisors with 99.9% uptime
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Plant Hire Solutions
Ground-up platform rebuild to escape legacy vendor lock-in
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Morrison Securities
Hybrid managed team and staff augmentation for a securities firm
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BikeExchange
Rebuilding a global cycling marketplace as a fully proprietary platform
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EY
R&D claims collaboration portal adopted globally from Sydney to New York
Read case study →
Retail Insight
Vendor managed inventory platform for a major retail supply chain
Read case study →
IAG
Multi-brand data dashboard and rapid-turnaround survey platform for a major insurer
Read case study →
Infomedia
Building a dedicated offshore development team for a global automotive SaaS platform
Read case study →
Portalink
Scaling a dedicated engineering team for enterprise B2B commerce automation
Read case study →
ABL Corp
Custom software engineering for a regulated financial services environment
Read case study →Common Questions
What does an engineer cost?
One monthly rate per engineer, all in. It covers recruitment, employment, payroll and retention, so there is no separate placement fee and no recruitment cost when someone is replaced.
Rates start at AUD $4,000 a month for a junior engineer, $5,500 for mid-level and $7,000 for senior. Junior means two to four years of experience, mid-level four to seven, and senior seven or more. The stack you need moves the figure within those bands.
Who directs the engineer's work?
You do. The engineer takes direction from you the same as anyone else on the team, works in your tools and joins your standups.
Recruitment, payroll, retention and the replacement guarantee sit with us, and none of it reaches your management line.
How are candidates assessed before we meet them?
Our recruitment team assesses every candidate. Our engineering team then cross-checks and reviews them, on the ground in the Philippines and locally in Australia where the role calls for it.
We recruit continuously rather than per request, so a shortlist exists before you ask for one. That is what makes a 48 business hour turnaround possible.
Where do the engineers come from?
One of three places. Some are already with us. Some are known to us from previous projects or from ongoing recruitment, because our recruitment team is speaking to candidates in the market whether or not a role is open. The rest are recruited for your role specifically.
Which of the three applies depends on the stack and the seniority you need.
Can we interview candidates ourselves?
Yes. You decide who you interview and who you accept, and no one starts before you have.
How quickly can we add or remove people?
Engineers work on a Resource-on-Request basis, so headcount moves with the work. A new role follows the same path as the first: a scoping call, then a shortlist within 48 business hours.
Headcount and term are separate. There is no minimum headcount, and the term is set at the start and revisited at renewal rather than partway through.
What happens if an engineer leaves?
Replacement inside 30 days, at no cost. Retention sits with us rather than with you, and average tenure across our engineers is 4.5 years.
How is this different from hiring a contractor?
A contractor is sourced one at a time from the open market, and vetting the work is yours to do. Here the assessment is ours, and it runs the same way whether the engineer is already with us or recruited for your role.
The difference that matters most is cover. A contractor who leaves mid-sprint leaves a gap, and a departure here is ours to replace inside 30 days.
What if we do not want to direct the work ourselves?
A managed team with a delivery lead does that instead. It can be as light as a small team with fractional management, so directing the engineers day to day stops being yours to do.