Your roadmap is slipping, a launch is coming or a skill is missing in the team. You need more engineering capacity, but in what form? The four most common options don’t answer the same need.
Permanent hiring
Hiring builds lasting capability inside the company. It’s the right choice for core roles you’ll need for years.
Its limits: hiring often takes a long time, mistakes are expensive and there’s little flexibility if the need drops. For a peak in activity or a niche skill needed for a few months, it’s rarely the best answer.
Fixed-price outsourcing
With a fixed-price contract, a provider commits to a result, a price and a deadline. It works well when the scope is stable and precisely described: a website, an integration, a well-bounded migration.
Its limits: every change of scope has to be renegotiated, and much of the project knowledge stays with the provider. If your needs change every week, fixed price quickly becomes a source of friction.
Time and materials
With time and materials, you buy engineering time: the person works under your direction and you pay for the time spent. You keep control of priorities and the scope can change freely.
Its limits: steering is your job. Without clear organisation on the client side, you get hours rather than results.
Staff augmentation
Staff augmentation is a form of time and materials designed to embed engineers in your existing teams: same tools, same rituals, same standards. Extra capacity scales up or down with the project.
It fits when you know what needs to be built but lack the hands or skills to build it: a critical launch, missing DevOps or QA expertise, technical debt to pay down.
How to choose
Ask yourself three questions:
- Is the scope stable? Yes: fixed price may work. No: prefer time and materials or staff augmentation.
- Is the need long-term? Several years in a core role: hire. A few months or a peak: augment.
- Who steers? If you already have a team and a technical lead, staff augmentation adds capacity without changing your organisation.
In practice, many teams combine models: a hired core team, on-demand reinforcements to absorb peaks, and an occasional fixed-price project for an isolated piece of work.
What to check before you sign
- The real seniority of the engineers offered, and whether you can talk to them before they start.
- How soon they can start and how onboarding is organised.
- The terms for scaling the team or ending the engagement.
- Who owns the code and documentation produced.
This is exactly the model we offer at WASLA: a network of senior engineers on demand, embedded in your teams and scaled to your needs.