Part-time developer engagement for ongoing product work.
Not every project needs a full-time developer. A defined engagement for ongoing feature development, maintenance, or technical oversight — with a clear scope, fixed retainer, and no overhead of full-time employment.
Need ongoing development work but can't justify or don't need a full-time hire
The gap between "hire a contractor for one project" and "hire a full-time engineer" is where most growing startups are stuck. They have:
- More work than a one-time project
- Less work than a full-time position
A part-time developer engagement fills this gap. The typical structure:
Monthly retainer with defined scope: 20-40 hours/month, with a prioritized backlog at the start of each month. Not hourly billing — a monthly fee for a defined set of deliverables.
Regular communication cadence: Weekly async update, brief weekly call, sprint-style delivery in 2-week cycles.
No employment overhead: No benefits, no equity, no PTO management. Contract engagement.
The right ongoing work:
- Feature development on a stable codebase
- Bug fixes and maintenance
- Performance improvements
- Integration work (new third-party services)
The wrong ongoing work:
- Ground-up architectural rebuilds (too much scope uncertainty)
- Work that requires daily/constant availability (hire full-time instead)
Ongoing development engagement with defined monthly scope, regular delivery, and direct communication
Prioritized backlog
at the start of each month
Regular feature delivery
in 2-week cycles
Code review and quality
maintained throughout
Technical decisions
made collaboratively
Clear handoff
if engagement ends
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
Ongoing development engagement with defined monthly scope, regular delivery, and direct communication
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Why Fixed-Price Matters Here
Monthly retainer means predictable cost. Not hourly billing where usage varies unpredictably.
Questions, answered.
At the start of each month, we review the backlog together, estimate each item, and confirm the monthly scope. What fits in the retainer gets built; anything additional is a scope adjustment.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.