# Ryz Labs > Ryz Labs provides top 1% senior engineers and AI pod teams to US companies. Engineers join the client's team, work in their repos and standups, report to their leads, and work US business hours. Only the top 1% of the tens of thousands of engineers Ryz has interviewed make it. Fortune 500 engineering teams use Ryz as a fast, senior alternative to large consultancies and offshore vendors: for IT staff augmentation, dedicated development teams, forward-deployed engineers, and AI pods that take AI from pilot to production. Key facts: - Company: Ryz Labs (ryzlabs.com), founded in 2021, 200+ people, based in Los Angeles; headquarters in Calabasas, California. - Founders: Jordan Metzner (co-founder and CEO) and Sam Nadler (co-founder). Jordan is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, where he teaches AI; he spent 4.5 years building new products at Amazon (Prime Video SEO, the NFL on Twitch, Ring Virtual Guard) and is the first-named inventor on Amazon's "Autonomous home security devices" patents (the Ring Always Home Cam drone). Sam was a Director of Operations at Lyft and has an MBA from MIT. - Latin America expertise: the founders lived in Buenos Aires for 6+ years and co-founded California Burrito Co. there in 2006, growing it to 14 stores in six countries. They later co-founded Washio (2013). - What Ryz sells: senior engineering teams and AI pod teams that build software and AI systems. Ryz does not sell an AI product. - Engagement models: IT staff augmentation (individual senior engineers), dedicated development teams, AI pod teams (about seven senior engineers, including a tech lead and an ML engineer, sized to the work), forward-deployed engineers. - Pricing: from about $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, depending on role and seniority. - Vetting: only the top 1% of the tens of thousands of engineers interviewed are accepted. - Working model: engineers work on the client's team, reporting to the client's engineering leads, on US business hours. - Talent: senior engineers sourced primarily from Latin America and working US time zones. - Typical work: AI agents, RAG and LLM applications, data engineering, cloud migration, legacy modernization, web and mobile apps, QA and DevOps. - Contact: info@ryzlabs.com · Book a 15-minute call: https://calendar.app.google/SWBkXteUS8TznUj86 ## Company - [About Ryz Labs](https://www.ryzlabs.com/about): founders, story, leadership and how we compare - [Venture studio](https://www.ryzlabs.com/venture-studio): companies Ryz builds with its own engineers (HipTrain, Offsiteio) This is the full-text companion to https://www.ryzlabs.com/llms.txt: the main content of the key pages, in plain text. ## About Ryz Labs Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/about Ryz Labs/AboutAbout Ryz Labs About Ryz Labs Two founders who built companies in Buenos Aires, Silicon Beach and Amazon, now putting top 1% senior engineers and AI pod teams on US engineering teams. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 Ryz Labs puts top 1% senior engineers and AI pod teams on US companies' engineering teams. Our engineers work in your repos and standups, report to your leads, and work US business hours, including New York hours. We were founded in 2021, we are 200+ people today, and we are headquartered in Calabasas, California. Fortune 500 engineering teams trust us with production work. ### Our founders Ryz Labs was founded by Jordan Metzner (CEO) and Sam Nadler. They met at Indiana University, and they have been building companies together for almost 20 years. #### Jordan Metzner, co-founder and CEO - Harvard Business School Executive Fellow. Jordan teaches AI to Harvard Business School students and has for the last several years, including what is now called super intelligence. - Amazon, four and a half years. Jordan built new products at Amazon: he built the product that became the Amazon Influencer Storefront, built the Prime Video SEO team, brought the NFL to Twitch, and built Ring Virtual Guard, which lets professional monitoring agents watch a customer's cameras while they are away. - The Ring drone. Jordan is the first-named inventor on Amazon's "Autonomous home security devices" patents for an indoor flying security camera, the product that became the Ring Always Home Cam, co-invented with Ring founder Jamie Siminoff (US 12,230,117). - Washio. In 2013 Jordan co-founded Washio, an on-demand laundry startup backed by Canaan Partners, which led its Series A. - California Burrito Co. In 2006, with Sam, Jordan co-founded California Burrito Co. in Buenos Aires. #### Sam Nadler, co-founder - Lyft. Before co-founding Ryz Labs, Sam was a Director of Operations at Lyft, based in Nashville. - MIT. Sam earned his MBA at MIT. - Washio. Sam joined Washio as VP of Operations. - California Burrito Co. Co-founder, with Jordan, in Buenos Aires. ### Why we know Latin America After college, Jordan and Sam moved to Buenos Aires and lived there for more than six years. In 2006 they opened California Burrito Co. and grew it to 14 stores in six countries before selling it in 2010. The chain still operates across South America today. Both founders are married to Argentines, and Buenos Aires is still a second home. That is where our hiring judgment comes from. We have hired, managed and worked alongside engineers across the region for two decades, and we know the universities, the companies and the people. It is why only the top 1% of the tens of thousands of engineers we have interviewed make it onto client teams. ### What we do - Senior engineers on your team. Staff augmentation with engineers who join your standups and repos and report to your leads. See staff augmentation and dedicated development teams. - AI pod teams. About seven senior engineers, including a tech lead and an ML engineer, who build AI systems in your cloud and ship them to production. See AI pod teams and forward deployed engineers. - A published price. Typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month. See our rates. - A venture studio. We also build companies with our own engineers, including HipTrain and Offsiteio. See the venture studio. ### How we compare Some of the firms we compete with have been around since the 2000s and employ thousands of people. We started in 2021. What we offer instead is senior people on your own team, a price you can see before the first call, and founders who still work on client teams themselves. Compare us with BairesDev, Toptal and Globant, or see how we vet engineers. ### FAQ #### Who founded Ryz Labs? Jordan Metzner and Sam Nadler founded Ryz Labs in 2021. Jordan, the CEO, is a Harvard Business School Executive Fellow who teaches AI and a former Amazon product leader. Sam is a former Director of Operations at Lyft with an MBA from MIT. They co-founded California Burrito Co. in Buenos Aires in 2006. #### When was Ryz Labs founded? Ryz Labs was founded in 2021. #### How big is Ryz Labs? Ryz Labs has 200+ people and is growing. #### Where is Ryz Labs headquartered? Ryz Labs is headquartered in Calabasas, California. Our engineers work US business hours, including New York hours. #### Why does Ryz Labs know Latin American engineering talent so well? Our founders lived in Buenos Aires for more than six years and built a restaurant company across South America before starting Ryz. We have hired and worked with engineers across the region for two decades. #### Who does Ryz Labs work with? US companies, from startups to Fortune 500 engineering teams, across industries including financial services, media, retail and technology. ## IT staff augmentation Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/staff-augmentation Ryz Labs/Staff augmentationStaff augmentation IT staff augmentation with senior engineers who join your team Add top 1% senior engineers to your team without opening a new entity or running a months-long search. They work in your repos and standups, on US hours. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 IT staff augmentation services are the most direct way to add senior engineering capacity without changing how your team works. Ryz Labs adds top 1% senior engineers to your team: they join your standups, commit to your repos and pick up tickets from your roadmap in their first week. We're trusted by Fortune 500 engineering teams, we've interviewed tens of thousands of engineers, and only the top 1% make it through. ### What IT staff augmentation actually means The term gets stretched to cover almost any outside engineering help, so here's a simple test. Ask two questions: who decides what gets built, and who reviews the code before it merges? In staff augmentation, the answer to both is you. The provider finds and vets the people. Your engineering leaders set priorities, assign the work and hold the bar. You will also hear it called team augmentation or software development team augmentation; the test is the same. That's the difference from outsourcing, where a vendor owns the outcome and you manage a contract instead of a team. Augmentation keeps the knowledge, the architecture decisions and the code ownership in your company. The engineers you add are part of the team, not a separate group you hand requirements to. ### How our staff augmentation company works #### Senior engineers from week one Only the top 1% of candidates make it through our vetting process, so the engineers you meet are senior people who can work without close supervision. They join your standups, repos and roadmap and start shipping in week one, instead of spending a quarter ramping up while your roadmap waits. #### On your team, not beside it Our engineers are on your team for the length of the engagement. They use your Slack or Teams, your issue tracker, your CI and your review rules. There is no vendor project manager standing between you and the person writing the code. If your team does trunk-based development with two approvals per PR, so do they. #### Working hours that overlap with yours Our engineers work on US business hours, including New York hours. A question asked at 10am gets an answer before lunch, and a pull request opened in the afternoon gets reviewed the same day. That overlap is what makes augmentation work; without it, an extra engineer becomes an extra handoff. ### Roles we hire for Most requests are for senior software engineers, but teams also add data, product and design people the same way. Common roles: - Backend and full stack: backend developers, full-stack developers, Java, Python, Node.js and Go engineers. - Frontend and mobile: React developers, iOS and Android engineers. - Cloud and reliability: DevOps engineers, SREs and cloud engineers. - Data and AI: data engineers, machine learning engineers and AI engineers. - Quality and security: QA automation engineers and security engineers. - Leadership and product: tech leads, engineering managers, product managers and product designers. We also place recruiting, sales and marketing people, and run direct-hire placement and executive search when you want to hire someone directly, remote or on-site. ### The process, step by step - Scope the role. We agree on the stack, the seniority, the hours of overlap you need and what a strong first 90 days looks like. A vague brief produces a vague shortlist, so this step gets real attention. - Source and rank. Our recruiters source candidates, and ARC, our in-house ranking system, orders the pipeline so recruiters spend time on the most relevant people first. - Structured interviews. Candidates go through structured NTRVSTA AI interviews. Recruiters review each candidate before and after. AI scores are advisory; people make the decisions. - Shortlist. You get a recruiter-curated shortlist, not a stack of résumés to sort through. - Your decision. You run the final interview and choose who joins. - Onboard. The engineer gets access to your tools and starts on real work, ideally with a scoped first ticket and a pairing session on their first pull request. The full detail is on our vetting process page. ### Software staff augmentation compared with other ways to add engineers Model | Who directs the work | Best for | Main trade-off | Ryz staff augmentation | You | Adding senior capacity to a team with a clear roadmap | You still need a lead who can direct and review the work | Freelancers and marketplaces | You | Short, well-defined tasks | Vetting, continuity and availability fall on you | Development agencies | The agency's project manager | Self-contained builds with a fixed scope | Context and know-how leave when the project ends | In-house hiring | You | Permanent core roles | The slowest route, and the hardest to reverse | Outsourcing firms | The vendor | Non-core work you'd rather not manage | Less visibility into how the work gets done | ### Getting the most from augmented engineers The quality of the engineer matters most, but how you set them up matters too. The teams that get value fastest tend to do a few things: - Grant access before day one. Repo, cloud, SSO and issue-tracker access waiting on the first morning saves a week of idle time. - Give each engineer a named owner. One person on your side who answers questions and reviews early work. - Treat them as the team. Same rituals, same channels, same on-call rotation once they're ready. Separate channels for "the outside engineers" create a second-class team. - Measure output, not hours. Merged pull requests, closed incidents and reviews given tell you more than a timesheet. - Write things down. A short architecture doc and a working local setup guide pay off for every future hire, augmented or not. ### When staff augmentation is not the right fit - Nobody on your side can direct the work. If you need a team that owns a system end to end, look at a dedicated development team or an AI pod team instead. - You want hourly, short gigs or a self-serve trial. A freelance marketplace fits that better. - You need Europe or Asia time zones, or follow-the-sun coverage. A global network will serve you better. Comparing providers? Read our guides to the best IT staff augmentation companies, LatAm staff augmentation companies, staff augmentation for senior engineers and staff augmentation for scaling teams, or see how we compare with BairesDev and Toptal. ### FAQ #### Is staff augmentation the same as outsourcing? No. In outsourcing, a vendor owns the delivery and you manage the contract. In staff augmentation, the engineers join your team and you direct their work, so code ownership and know-how stay with you. #### How do Ryz engineers work with our team? Ryz engineers work on your team, reporting to your leads. Talk to us to scope your team. #### What time zones do your engineers work in? They're based in Latin America and work on US business hours, including New York hours, so reviews and decisions happen the same day. #### Can I add one engineer, or does it have to be a team? One is fine. Many clients start with one or two engineers and add more as the roadmap grows. If you later want a team that owns a whole system, we offer dedicated teams and AI pod teams too. #### How are IT staff augmentation services priced? It's typically $7,000 to $10,000 a month per mid-level engineer and $10,000 to $15,000 for senior engineers; we scope a quote to your team. Before you sign, you get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who would do the work. See rates by role, or model your team in the talent cost calculator. ## AI pod teams Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/ai-pod-teams Ryz Labs/AI pod teamsAI pod teams AI pod teams: senior engineers who build AI with you An AI pod is a dedicated team of about seven senior engineers that builds a production AI system in your cloud, repos and standups, then grows or hands it over. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 An AI pod is a dedicated, cross-functional team of senior engineers that owns one AI system from first design to production. At Ryz Labs, a pod is typically about seven people, including a tech lead, an ML engineer and backend engineers, working as one team in your time zone, in your cloud. Our pods have shipped systems that score invoices for fraud, review regulated marketing material and handle customer conversations at scale. ### What's within an AI pod Every pod is shaped to the system it's building, but most start from the same core: - Tech lead. Owns the architecture, runs code review and works with your engineering and product leaders on priorities and trade-offs. The person you call when something needs a decision. - ML engineer. Chooses and evaluates models, designs retrieval and prompting, builds the evaluation sets that tell you whether a change made things better or worse. - Backend engineers. Build the services, integrations and data flows around the model: connecting to your systems of record, handling failures, queueing, permissions and audit trails in your own logging. - Added as needed. Data engineers when the data needs work, frontend engineers and designers when people will use the system directly, and MLOps or DevOps engineers for deployment and monitoring. The point of the pod is that these people work as one team. Model work, integration work and production work happen together, instead of being handed between groups. ### AI pods vs. agent subscriptions vs. vendor-managed teams Teams trying to get AI into production usually weigh three options. Each has real strengths. | AI pod team | AI agent subscription | Vendor-managed team | What you get | A dedicated team that builds a system for you | Access to pre-built AI agents or tools | A team run by the vendor's managers | Where it runs | Your cloud and repos | Usually the provider's platform | Varies; often the vendor's environment first | Fit to your workflow | Built around it | You adapt to the product | Built around it, through the vendor's process | Speed to first result | Weeks of build before production use | Fastest, if a product fits the task | Depends on vendor onboarding and scoping | Who owns the result | You: code, infrastructure and know-how | The provider owns the product; you own your data | You own the code; know-how sits mostly with the vendor | Best for | Systems specific to your data and workflow | Common, well-defined tasks | Work you'd rather not manage day to day | Pricing | Ryz: quoted per team, typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month | Usually per seat or per use | Usually per team or per project | A fair rule of thumb: if a product already does the job well, subscribe to it. Build with a pod when the system depends on your data, your integrations and your rules, and when you want to own it. ### How an AI pod works with you #### Talk You tell us what you want built and where it has to run. We'll ask about the data it needs, the systems it touches, who will use it and what your security and compliance teams will need to see before it goes live. #### Match We scope a dedicated team to your stack and the problem. You get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who would do the work, so you know exactly who is joining before anything is signed. #### Join The pod joins your repos, CI and standups, works in your cloud through your access controls, and runs weekly demos of working software. Your engineers can review every pull request. We typically work on AWS or Azure, with GitHub, Postgres, and Anthropic or OpenAI models, but the pod builds on what you run. #### Grow Once the first system is in production, you choose what happens next: add people or disciplines and move to the next problem, or hand the whole system over to your own team. Because it already lives in your accounts, handing it over doesn't require a migration. ### What a pod needs from you A pod brings the engineering. A few things have to come from your side, and the projects that move fastest have them lined up early: - A product owner with decision rights. Someone who can say what matters most and accept trade-offs without a committee meeting. - Access to data and systems. Read access to the data the system needs, and a path to the APIs it has to call, approved by whoever owns them. - A security and compliance contact. Bringing them in during design, not the week before launch, avoids the most common late surprise. - Real users willing to test. A handful of the people who will use the system every day, available for short feedback sessions. - A measure of success. Time saved, cases handled, errors caught or revenue protected. Agreeing on it at the start keeps the weekly demos honest. ### Case studies Our pods have systems in production across industries: - Fraud detection for a global fleet company: 244K+ invoices scored at under 30 seconds each, and $5.94M in confirmed fraud, validated by the client's fraud team. - Marketing compliance for a global capital management firm: 8,000+ documents reviewed, turnaround cut from days to hours. - Voice platform: more than 1M outbound calls. - Driver-support agent: 218K conversations a year, in three languages. - Real-estate agent: answering prospects 24/7. ### Why companies choose Ryz for AI pods - Senior engineers only. We've interviewed tens of thousands of engineers, and only the top 1% make it through our vetting process. - Trusted at scale. Fortune 500 engineering teams work with us, across financial services, logistics, real estate, software and other industries. - Your hours. Our engineers work on US business hours, including New York hours, so decisions don't wait overnight. - Built to reach production. Pods work in your cloud and repos, reporting to your leads, and the goal is AI running in production, not another pilot. ### When a pod isn't the right choice - You need one or two specialists, not a team. Add LLM engineers or MLOps engineers to your existing team through staff augmentation. - A product already solves the problem. Buy it. - You want an AI strategy program rather than a working system. A management consultancy is the better fit. - You need follow-the-sun coverage across Europe and Asia. A global network will serve you better. More on our approach: AI engineering at Ryz, enterprise AI teams and forward deployed engineers. Comparing providers? See our guide to AI pod providers and partners that take an AI pilot to production. Want a number before you talk to us? Price a pod by role, seniority and months in our AI development cost calculator. ### FAQ #### What is an AI pod? A dedicated team of senior engineers that owns one AI system from design to production. A Ryz pod is typically about seven people, including a tech lead, an ML engineer and backend engineers. #### Is an AI pod the same as a forward-deployed team? At Ryz, yes. Our pods are forward-deployed: they work in your cloud and repos, alongside your team, rather than building in a separate vendor environment. #### Does every pod have seven people? No. Seven is a typical shape, not a rule. We size each pod to the work, and some start with a lead and a few engineers and grow as the system takes shape. #### Who owns what the pod builds? You do: the code, the infrastructure, the evaluation sets and the documentation all live in your accounts. #### How is an AI pod priced? Pods are quoted per team. Per engineer, it's typically $7,000 to $10,000 a month per mid-level engineer and $10,000 to $15,000 for senior engineers; we scope a quote to your team. Before you sign, you get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who would do the work. See rates by role, or model your team in the talent cost calculator. ## Forward deployed engineers Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/forward-deployed-engineers Ryz Labs/Forward deployed engineersForward-deployed engineering Forward deployed engineers who build in your cloud Senior engineers who sit with your users, work in your infrastructure and ship production systems there, with no product of their own to sell you. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 A forward deployed engineer (FDE) is a software engineer who works directly within a customer's organization, close to the people who will use what gets built, and ships production software in that customer's environment. Ryz Labs provides forward-deployed teams of senior engineers who build AI systems in your cloud and repos, on US hours. Our teams have shipped fraud detection, compliance review and voice systems that run in production today. ### Where the term comes from "Forward deployed" is borrowed from military language, where it describes units positioned close to the front line rather than at headquarters. In software, the job title is most closely associated with Palantir, which built its customer work around engineers who were embedded with client teams instead of handing software over from a distance. In the last few years, as companies try to get AI from demo into daily operations, the role has spread well beyond that origin, and many AI companies now hire FDEs of their own. The common idea is simple: the hard part of enterprise software is rarely the algorithm. It's the messy data, the legacy integrations, the security review and the workflow nobody wrote down. You solve those by putting engineers where the problem is. ### What a forward deployed engineer actually does - Learns the workflow first-hand. FDEs sit with the analysts, agents or operators who will use the system, and watch how the work happens today before writing code. - Connects to real data. They work with your data warehouse, your document stores and your internal APIs, under your access controls, instead of a cleaned-up sample. - Builds and deploys in your environment. Code goes into your repos and runs in your cloud, through your CI and your change-management process. - Closes the loop with users. They ship small, watch how people use it, and iterate quickly, often within the same week. - Owns production. Evaluation, monitoring, alerting and on-call aren't someone else's problem. An FDE stays accountable for the system running, not just for the demo. That mix of skills is why FDEs are hard to hire. The role needs a strong production engineer who is also comfortable in a room with business users. ### Signs you need forward deployed engineers - You have an AI pilot that impressed people in a demo but hasn't been connected to real systems or real users. - The problem depends on your own data and workflows, so no off-the-shelf product fits well. - Your engineering team is committed elsewhere and can't spare people to own a new system. - Security, compliance or data-residency rules mean the system has to run in your own environment. ### Two kinds of FDE It's worth separating two very different setups that share the same title: - Vendor FDEs work for a software or model company and deploy that company's product in your organization. They're useful if you've already bought the product, but their job is to make that product succeed. - Independent FDE teams build on whatever stack you already run. They have no platform to sell you, so the architecture decision, including which models and clouds to use, stays yours. Ryz FDE teams are the second kind. We work with AWS, Azure, GitHub, Postgres, and Anthropic and OpenAI models, and the system we build belongs to you. ### FDEs vs. consultants vs. staff augmentation | Forward deployed engineers | Consultants | Staff augmentation | Main output | Production software, running in your environment | Recommendations, roadmaps, sometimes a prototype | Added capacity on your existing team | Who sets the technical direction | The FDE team, with your engineering leaders | The consultants advise; you decide later | Your engineering managers | Time with end users | High; it's central to the role | Interviews and workshops | Depends on the role | Accountable for | The system working in production | The quality of the advice | Their share of the team's work | Best for | Getting a specific AI system from idea to production | Strategy, operating model and transformation programs | Teams that already know what to build and need hands | With Ryz | AI pod teams. Typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, quoted per team | Not offered | Staff augmentation. Typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, quoted per team | ### How Ryz forward-deployed teams work Our FDEs work as AI pod teams: dedicated groups of senior engineers, typically about seven people including a tech lead, an ML engineer and backend engineers, working as one team in your time zone. #### In your cloud, under your rules The pod gets access through your identity provider, with the permissions your security team approves. Data stays in your accounts. Models are called through your own provider agreements. Nothing you depend on runs in a Ryz environment you can't see. #### Alongside your team The pod joins your repos, CI and standups, and runs weekly demos of working software. Your engineers review the code and can pair with the pod, so knowledge builds up on your side as the system takes shape. #### Built to hand over When the system is stable, you choose: keep the pod on the next problem, add people or disciplines, or hand the whole system to your own engineers. Because everything already lives in your repos and cloud, handover is about context, not migration. ### What our forward-deployed teams have shipped - Fraud detection for a global fleet company. More than 244K invoices scored, under 30 seconds per invoice, and $5.94M in fraud confirmed, with results validated by the client's own fraud team. - Marketing compliance for a global capital management firm. 8,000+ documents reviewed, with turnaround cut from days to hours. - An AI voice platform that has placed more than 1M outbound calls. - A driver-support agent handling 218K conversations a year in three languages. Each of these is the kind of system FDEs exist for: specific to one company's data and workflow, and only valuable once it runs every day. More in our case studies. ### Who we work with We're trusted by Fortune 500 engineering teams and serve enterprises across industries, including financial services, logistics, real estate and software. Our engineers are based in Latin America, work on US business hours, and come through a vetting process that only the top 1% of candidates pass. ### When FDEs are not the right fit - You want a strategy engagement or a board-level transformation program. A large consultancy is built for that. - You want a finished AI product off the shelf. Buy it from a platform vendor, and use their FDEs to roll it out. - You need coverage across European and Asian time zones. Comparing providers? Read our guide to forward-deployed engineering firms and partners that take an AI pilot to production, or see how we compare with Tribe AI. ### FAQ #### What is a forward deployed engineer? A software engineer who works within a customer's organization, close to the users, and builds and runs production software in the customer's own environment. #### How are FDEs different from consultants? Consultants mostly deliver advice and plans. FDEs write the code, deploy it in your environment and stay accountable for it running in production. #### Do Ryz FDEs work in our cloud or theirs? Yours. Our teams work in your cloud accounts and repos, through your access controls, and you own everything they build. #### Which models and platforms do your FDEs use? Whatever you run. Our teams commonly work with Anthropic and OpenAI models on AWS and Azure, with GitHub and Postgres. #### How is a forward-deployed team priced? Forward-deployed teams are quoted per team. Per engineer, it's typically $7,000 to $10,000 a month per mid-level engineer and $10,000 to $15,000 for senior engineers; we scope a quote to your team. You get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who would do the work before you sign. See rates by role, or model your team in the talent cost calculator. ## Dedicated development teams Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/dedicated-development-team Ryz Labs/Dedicated development teamDedicated teams Dedicated software development teams that work like your own A senior team, led by its own tech lead, that owns a product area or system end to end, while the code, the backlog and the decisions stay with you. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 A dedicated development team is a group of engineers assigned to your company and nothing else, working as one unit on a product area, platform or system you choose. Ryz Labs builds these teams from senior engineers who work US business hours, including New York hours. We're trusted by Fortune 500 engineering teams, and every person on a team comes through the same vetting that only the top 1% of candidates pass. Most of our engineers are based in Latin America, which is why they share your working day. ### What makes a team "dedicated" Three things separate a dedicated team from a group of freelancers who happen to work on the same codebase: - Exclusivity. The people on the team work only on your product for the length of the engagement. Nobody is splitting their week between you and another client. - Shared ownership. The team owns an outcome, such as a service, a product surface or a migration, rather than a queue of tickets assigned one at a time. - Its own leadership. A tech lead on the team plans the work with your product owner, runs code review and makes day-to-day technical calls, so your managers aren't directing every engineer individually. The result is a team that can take on a whole piece of your roadmap while your existing engineers stay focused on theirs. ### Common team shapes We size every team to the work, so these are starting points rather than packages: - Product squad. A tech lead, three or four full-stack or backend and frontend engineers, a QA automation engineer and, when the work is user-facing, a product designer. Good for owning a customer-facing product area. - Platform team. A tech lead with backend, DevOps and site reliability engineers. Good for internal platforms, cloud migrations and reliability work. - Data team. A lead with data engineers and analytics engineers. Good for pipelines, warehouses and reporting that several teams depend on. - AI pod. About seven senior engineers, including a tech lead, an ML engineer and backend engineers, building AI systems in your cloud. See AI pod teams. ### Dedicated team vs. staff augmentation vs. project outsourcing All three put outside engineers on your work. They differ in who leads, what the team is accountable for, and what you're left with at the end. | Dedicated development team | Staff augmentation | Project outsourcing | Unit of work | A product area or system | Individual roles on your team | A defined deliverable | Day-to-day leadership | The team's tech lead, aligned with your product owner | Your engineering managers | The vendor's project manager | Where the work lives | Your repos, CI and cloud | Your repos, CI and cloud | Often the vendor's environment until handover | Scope changes | Reprioritize the backlog | Reassign the work | Change requests against the contract | Management load on you | Low to medium | Medium to high | Low during delivery, higher at handover | At the end | Keep growing the team, or hand the system to your engineers | Engineers continue or roll off | You receive the deliverable and the documentation | Pricing with Ryz | Typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, quoted per team | Typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, quoted per team | Not offered by Ryz | If you want individual engineers to slot into teams you already run, staff augmentation is the better fit. Our guide to dedicated teams vs. staff augmentation goes deeper on the choice. ### Governance: how you stay in control A dedicated team has its own lead, but it isn't a black box. The governance model is the same one you'd use for an internal team: - Your repositories. Code lives in your GitHub or GitLab organization from the first commit, under your branch protection and review rules. You own the code. - Your access controls. Engineers sign in through your SSO, with the permissions you grant. Cloud access follows your least-privilege policies, and you can revoke it at any time. - Your backlog. Your product owner sets priorities. The tech lead turns them into a plan and flags trade-offs early. - Daily standups. Held on US hours, open to anyone on your side who wants to attend. - Weekly demos. Working software, not status slides. You see what shipped and what's next. - Your definition of done. Tests, documentation, observability and security review follow your standards, not ours. ### Keeping a dedicated team healthy over time Most dedicated teams run for many months, and the habits that keep them productive are the same ones that keep any long-lived team productive: - Plan together each quarter. Bring the tech lead into roadmap planning, so the team understands why the work matters and can push back on scope early. - Keep your engineers in the review loop. At least one of your engineers reviewing the team's pull requests keeps architecture consistent and spreads context in both directions. - Track delivery, not activity. Lead time, deploy frequency, change failure rate and incidents tell you how the team is doing better than hours or story points. - Write decisions down. Short architecture decision records in the repo mean that anyone, including your future in-house team, can see why the system looks the way it does. ### Dedicated development team services: how a Ryz team gets started - Talk. You describe the product area, the stack and the outcome you want. We ask about constraints: compliance, legacy systems, who the team will work with. - Match. We propose a team shape and the specific people. You get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who would do the work, and you can interview them. - Join. The team joins your repos, CI, standups and demos, and starts on the first slice of the roadmap. - Grow. Add people or disciplines as the scope expands, or hand the whole system to your own engineers when you're ready. ### When to choose a dedicated team A dedicated team is usually the right call when: - You have a clear piece of the roadmap, such as a new product line, a rebuild or a platform migration, that your current team can't take on without dropping something else. - Your engineering managers are already at capacity and can't absorb five more direct reports. - The work will run for many months and benefits from a stable group that builds up deep context. - You want the option to bring the system fully in-house later, with the code and documentation already in your repos. It's usually the wrong call when the work is a single role, when it's a few weeks of well-defined tasks, or when you need coverage in European or Asian time zones. See our guide to dedicated development team providers for enterprises, or how we compare with Globant and EPAM. ### FAQ #### Who manages a dedicated development team? The team's tech lead handles day-to-day technical leadership. Your product owner sets priorities, and your engineering leadership keeps final say over architecture and standards. #### Who owns the code a dedicated team writes? You do. The work happens in your repositories and your cloud from the first commit. #### Can we change the team's size or makeup? Yes. Teams grow, add disciplines such as design or data, or shrink as the work changes. Tell us what's shifting and we'll scope the change with you. #### What happens when the project ends? You can keep the team on the next piece of the roadmap or hand the system over to your engineers. Because the code, CI and documentation already live with you, the handover is a transfer of context, not of assets. #### How is a dedicated team priced? Teams are quoted per team. Per engineer, it's typically $7,000 to $10,000 a month per mid-level engineer and $10,000 to $15,000 for senior engineers; we scope a quote to your team. You see the plan, the price and the names of the people before you sign. See rates by role, or model your team in the talent cost calculator. ## Nearshore software development Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/nearshore-software-development Ryz Labs/Nearshore software developmentNearshore Nearshore software development in Latin America Senior engineers in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and across the region, working US business hours on your team. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 Nearshore software development means working with engineers in a nearby country whose working day overlaps with yours. For US companies, that means Latin America. Ryz Labs brings decades of LatAm expertise to it: we've interviewed tens of thousands of engineers across the region, only the top 1% make it through, and Fortune 500 engineering teams trust us to put them on their teams. ### Why US companies go nearshore Offshore development promised lower costs, and for some work it delivers. But many teams found the savings eaten by the cost of not being awake at the same time: a question asked in the afternoon answered the next morning, a broken build that waits overnight, design reviews squeezed into a 7am call. Nearshore development keeps most of the reasons to look abroad and removes most of that friction. - Real-time collaboration. Our engineers work on US business hours, so standups, pairing and code review happen during your working day, not at its edges. - Same-day feedback loops. A pull request opened before lunch can be reviewed, revised and merged the same afternoon. Across a quarter, that compounds. - Travel when it matters. Major US hubs have direct flights to most of the region's tech cities, so an on-site kickoff or planning week is practical. - A deep, senior talent pool. Latin America has large engineering communities in every major stack, from Java and .NET to Python, React and cloud infrastructure, with plenty of people who have spent years on US product teams. ### Time zones, country by country Here's how local clocks compare with New York. Most of Latin America doesn't observe daylight saving time, so the gap shifts by an hour when the US changes its clocks. Our engineers keep US business hours regardless of where they live. Country | Local time (UTC) | Daylight saving | vs. New York, Mar to Nov | vs. New York, Nov to Mar | Mexico (Mexico City) | UTC−6 | No (ended 2022) | 2 hours behind | 1 hour behind | Costa Rica | UTC−6 | No | 2 hours behind | 1 hour behind | Colombia | UTC−5 | No | 1 hour behind | Same time | Peru | UTC−5 | No | 1 hour behind | Same time | Chile (Santiago) | UTC−4 / UTC−3 | Yes, Sept to Apr | Same time to 1 hour ahead | 2 hours ahead | Brazil (São Paulo) | UTC−3 | No (ended 2019) | 1 hour ahead | 2 hours ahead | Argentina | UTC−3 | No | 1 hour ahead | 2 hours ahead | Uruguay | UTC−3 | No | 1 hour ahead | 2 hours ahead | For West Coast teams, Mexico and Costa Rica are the closest match: one hour ahead of Pacific time in summer, two in winter. For East Coast teams, Colombia and Peru line up almost exactly. For East Coast and Central teams, the US working day falls within or close to normal local hours everywhere in the region. To check the exact shared hours between your office and any engineering city on a given date, daylight saving included, use our time zone overlap calculator. ### Nearshore vs. offshore vs. onshore | Nearshore (Latin America) | Offshore (Asia, Eastern Europe) | Onshore (US) | Working-hour overlap with US teams | Full or near-full day | Limited; often a few hours or none | Full day | Collaboration style | Real-time: standups, pairing, same-day review | Mostly asynchronous, with handoffs | Real-time, and in person if co-located | Cost | Below US rates | Often the lowest hourly rates | Highest | Travel | Direct flights to most tech hubs | Long-haul, multi-day trips | Domestic | Best for | Product engineering that needs tight, daily collaboration | Well-specified work and follow-the-sun coverage | Roles that must be on-site or US-based | Offshore is still the better choice in some cases: if you want around-the-clock coverage across Europe and Asia, or your work is well specified and runs mostly asynchronously, a global network will serve you better. If you're moving away from an offshore setup, our guide to nearshore alternatives to offshore teams covers the options. ### How Ryz does nearshore development Our nearshore software development services come in two shapes: senior engineers who join your team, and dedicated teams or AI pods that own a system end to end. Either way they work US business hours, in your repos and standups. #### Vetting built for the region Our recruiters know the engineering communities in each country. They source candidates, ARC (our in-house ranking system) orders the pipeline, and candidates complete structured NTRVSTA AI interviews, with recruiters reviewing every candidate before and after. AI scores are advisory; people make the decisions. Details are on our vetting process page. #### One team, regardless of country A team might include engineers in São Paulo, Bogotá and Buenos Aires. They still work as one team: the same vetting bar, the same US hours and the same standards, so where each person lives never shows up in the work. #### On your team, not beside it Nearshore only pays off if the engineers are truly part of the team. Ours work in your repos, your CI and your standups, on US hours. You can add them one role at a time through staff augmentation, as a dedicated development team that owns a product area, or as an AI pod team that builds AI systems in your cloud. ### Common nearshore mistakes Nearshore teams fail for predictable reasons, and most of them are on the buyer's side: - Treating nearshore like offshore with better hours. If the team gets tickets through a separate channel and never joins planning, you've paid for overlap and not used it. - Buying on rate instead of seniority. A cheaper junior engineer who needs constant review often costs more in your senior engineers' time than they save. - Forgetting the holiday calendar. Each country has its own public holidays, and they don't match the US calendar. Brazil's Carnival, for example, falls on different dates each year. Put local holidays on the team calendar when you plan releases. - Skipping the in-person kickoff. A few days together at the start of a long engagement builds the trust that makes remote work run smoothly afterwards. ### What to look for in a nearshore partner Whoever you work with, these questions separate strong partners from weak ones: - Can you meet the actual engineers before signing? You should see names and interview people, not approve a role description. - How senior is the team, really? Ask for years of experience and the systems each person has shipped, not a seniority label. - Whose repos and cloud does the work live in? The answer should be yours, from day one. - What hours will the team keep? "Nearshore" means little if the team works local hours that only overlap with yours in the morning. - What happens if you want to bring the work in-house? A good partner makes that easy. For a side-by-side look at providers, see our guides to LatAm staff augmentation companies, nearshore developers for New York companies and nearshore AI engineering teams, or compare us with BairesDev and Nearsure. ### FAQ #### What does nearshore software development mean? It means working with engineers in a nearby country whose working hours overlap with yours. For US companies, that usually means Latin America. #### Which countries do your engineers work from? Across Latin America, including Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. We match people on skills and seniority first, and on location if you have a preference. #### Will the team work US hours? Yes. Our engineers work on US business hours, including New York hours, so standups and code review happen during your day. #### How do Ryz engineers work with our team? Ryz engineers work on your team and report to your leads. Talk to us to scope the team you need. #### Is nearshore cheaper than hiring in the US? Generally, yes, though price shouldn't be the only reason to choose it. Ryz pricing is typically $7,000 to $10,000 a month per mid-level engineer and $10,000 to $15,000 for senior engineers; we scope a quote to your team, and you see the people before you sign. See rates by role, or model your team in the talent cost calculator. ## Software outsourcing Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/software-outsourcing Ryz Labs/Software development outsourcingOutsourcing Software development outsourcing, without handing over control Outsourcing hands your software to a vendor. We put senior engineers on your team, reporting to your leads, so the code, the context and the decisions stay in your company. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 Software development outsourcing means paying another company to build software for you. Companies outsource software development to add capacity, move faster or reach skills they lack, and outsourced software development ranges from a one-off build to a long-running team. It's been a standard move for decades, and for the right work it still makes sense. But "outsourcing" now covers several very different arrangements, and the differences decide whether you end up owning your software or renting it. This page is our honest take, including the cases where traditional outsourcing beats what we do. ### Is Ryz a software outsourcing company? Where we fit Strictly speaking, Ryz Labs isn't an outsourcing firm. We don't take a spec and return a finished product. We put top 1% senior engineers on your team, as individuals or as dedicated teams, and you direct the work. The code lives in your repos, the team joins your standups, and the knowledge stays in your company when the engagement changes. We're trusted by Fortune 500 engineering teams, and only the top 1% of the engineers we interview make it through our vetting. If you're searching for outsourcing because you need more engineering capacity, that model is often a better fit. If you need someone else to own a deliverable end to end, read on, because real outsourcing may be what you want. ### The four models people call outsourcing #### 1. Project outsourcing You define a scope; the vendor delivers it, usually for a fixed price or on time and materials. The vendor manages the team, the process and often the environment. You review milestones and accept the result. #### 2. Managed teams The vendor supplies a whole team and its management, and works through your backlog over a longer period. You set priorities, but the vendor's managers decide who does what and how. Your visibility depends on the reporting they choose to give you. #### 3. Staff augmentation The vendor finds and vets engineers who join your existing team. You manage them like anyone else on the team. This is where Ryz started; see staff augmentation. #### 4. Dedicated teams A team assigned only to you, with its own tech lead, owning a product area in your repos and governance. You set direction; the team's lead handles day-to-day technical decisions. See dedicated development teams, and AI pod teams for the version that builds AI systems. ### The trade-offs side by side | Project outsourcing | Managed team | Staff augmentation | Dedicated team | Who directs the work | Vendor, against a contract | Vendor managers, against your priorities | You | You set direction; the team's lead runs the day to day | Where the code lives | Often the vendor's systems until handover | Varies by vendor | Your repos | Your repos | Who holds the know-how | Mostly the vendor | Mostly the vendor | Your team | Shared, documented in your systems | Changing direction | Change requests and renegotiation | Possible, through the vendor | Immediate | Reprioritize the backlog | Your management effort | Low during delivery | Low to medium | Medium to high | Low to medium | Main risk | Getting what you specified, not what you needed | Dependence on the vendor | Needs strong internal leadership | Needs a clear area to own | Offered by Ryz | No | No | Yes. Typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, quoted per team | Yes. Typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, quoted per team | ### When traditional outsourcing is the better choice We'd rather point you elsewhere than sell you the wrong model. Classic project outsourcing tends to win when: - The scope is fixed and won't need maintaining. A one-off marketing site, an event app, a data migration that runs once. Nobody needs to own it next year. - You have no engineering leadership and don't plan to build any. Someone has to direct engineers who join your team. If no one will, a vendor that owns delivery is safer. - You need a contractual commitment to a fixed price for a fixed result. Some budgets and procurement rules require it. - The work is far from your core. If the software isn't part of how you compete, owning the know-how matters less. - You want a management-consulting or strategy engagement. Large consultancies are built for that; see our guide to alternatives to big consultancies if you're weighing the two. When the software is core to your business, will keep changing, and your team will have to live with it, adding a team you direct usually costs less over its lifetime, because you're not paying to re-learn your own system every time a vendor contract ends. ### Costs to check before outsourcing software development The headline rate is rarely the full cost of outsourcing. Before signing, look closely at: - Change-request pricing. Software requirements shift. Find out how changes are priced and approved, because that's where fixed-price projects often grow. - IP and handover terms. Make sure the contract says you own the code, the infrastructure definitions and the documentation, and that the vendor must hand them over on exit. - Environment lock-in. If the software is built and hosted in the vendor's accounts, moving it later is a project of its own. - Team continuity. Ask how the vendor handles people moving off your project, and whether you'll be told before it happens. - The cost of leaving. Estimate what it would take for someone else to pick the system up. If the answer is "start over," that's a cost you're already carrying. ### How to move off an outsourcing vendor Plenty of companies come to us after years with an outsourcing vendor, wanting the work back under their own control. The switch goes smoothly when you plan it in this order: - Inventory what you own. List every repo, cloud account, domain, CI pipeline, third-party license and credential. Confirm which are in your name and which sit with the vendor. Check your contract for IP and handover terms. - Move assets into your accounts first. Repos into your GitHub or GitLab organization, infrastructure into your cloud accounts, secrets into your vault. Do this while the relationship is still cooperative. - Ask for the knowledge that isn't in the code. Architecture notes, runbooks, deployment steps, known issues and the reasons behind odd decisions. - Run an overlap period. Bring the new engineers in while the vendor is still engaged, so they can ask questions, shadow deploys and pair on incidents. - Transfer ownership in slices. Hand over one service or area at a time, starting with something low-risk, rather than one big cutover. - Close out access. Revoke vendor credentials and rotate secrets once each area is fully handed over. Our engineers can join during step four, working in your repos alongside the outgoing vendor. Comparing vendors? See how we stack up as an alternative to EPAM, Globant and Softtek, or compare us with Encora. Our guide to LatAm staff augmentation companies covers the staff augmentation model in more depth. For classic outsourcing vendors, see the best software development outsourcing companies. ### FAQ #### Is Ryz Labs a software outsourcing company? Partly. Most of our work puts senior engineers on your team, reporting to your leads, so you direct the work and keep the know-how. When you want a team to own delivery of a scoped system, our software development outsourcing services cover that too: a dedicated Ryz team builds it in your repos and cloud, so you own the code from day one. We don't take a spec away and hand back a black box. If you're comparing software development outsourcing companies, see our list of the best software development outsourcing companies. #### What's the difference between outsourcing and staff augmentation? With outsourcing, the vendor owns delivery and you manage a contract. With staff augmentation, engineers join your team and you manage the work, so the code and the know-how stay with you. If you are outsourcing developers rather than a whole project, staff augmentation is usually the better fit. #### Who owns the code your engineers write? You do. Our engineers commit to your repositories and deploy to your cloud accounts, so there is nothing to hand back when an engagement ends. #### Can you take over from our current outsourcing vendor? Yes. Our engineers can join during an overlap period, learn the system alongside the outgoing vendor, and take ownership one area at a time. #### How is it priced? It's typically $7,000 to $10,000 a month per mid-level engineer and $10,000 to $15,000 for senior engineers; we scope a quote to your team. Before you sign, you get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who would do the work. See rates by role, or model your team in the talent cost calculator. ## Vetting process Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/vetting-process Ryz Labs/Vetting processVetting process How Ryz vets engineers: only the top 1% make it Tens of thousands of engineers interviewed. Recruiters, our in-house ARC ranking system and structured NTRVSTA AI interviews, with people making every decision. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 Every engineer you meet through Ryz Labs has been through the same process. Our recruiters source candidates, ARC, our in-house ranking system, orders the pipeline, and candidates complete structured NTRVSTA AI interviews. Recruiters review every candidate before and after the interview, and you get a recruiter-curated shortlist. We've interviewed tens of thousands of engineers this way, and only the top 1% make it. It's the reason Fortune 500 engineering teams trust us with senior roles. ### The short version - Recruiters source. People who know the engineering communities across Latin America find the candidates. - ARC ranks. Our in-house ranking system orders the pipeline, so recruiters spend their time on the most relevant people first. - NTRVSTA interviews. Every candidate goes through a structured AI interview, so each person is assessed the same way. - People decide. AI scores are advisory. Recruiters review candidates before and after the interview and build the shortlist. - Only the top 1% make it. Out of tens of thousands of engineers interviewed. ### Step by step - Scope the role with you. We agree on the stack, the seniority, the hours of overlap you need and what a strong first few months look like. A vague brief produces a vague shortlist, so this step gets real attention. - Source and rank. Our recruiters source candidates for the role, and ARC ranks the pipeline. Ranking decides where recruiters look first. It doesn't decide who moves forward. - Recruiter review. Before anyone is interviewed, a recruiter reviews the candidate's background against the brief: the systems they've worked on, the stack, the seniority and their availability on US hours. - Structured NTRVSTA AI interview. Candidates complete a structured interview built for the role. Because every candidate answers the same kind of questions, results can be compared fairly across a large pipeline. - Second recruiter review and shortlist. A recruiter reviews each candidate again after the interview, alongside the scores, and decides who goes on the shortlist. You get a recruiter-curated shortlist, not a stack of résumés. - You meet the candidates. You talk to the shortlisted engineers, run the final interview and choose who joins. From there, the engineer gets access to your tools and starts on real work. ### What we test for Seniority isn't a title, so we look for evidence. Every stage of the process feeds into four questions. #### Technical depth Can this person design, build and maintain the kind of system you run? We look past the list of technologies to the work behind it: what they built, the trade-offs they made and what they would do differently. Senior engineers should be able to work without close supervision from week one. #### Communication Remote engineering work runs on writing and conversation: pull request descriptions, design discussions, standups and questions asked early instead of late. We look for engineers who explain their thinking clearly and work comfortably with US teams. #### Ownership The engineers who add the most value treat your product as their own. They follow work through to production, flag risks before they become incidents and pick up the unglamorous tasks that keep a codebase healthy. We look for that track record. #### Time-zone fit Our engineers are based in Latin America and work on US business hours, including New York hours. We confirm that each candidate can keep the hours your team needs, so standups, pairing and code review happen during your day. ### AI in our process We use AI to make vetting more consistent, not to replace judgment. ARC ranks the pipeline, and NTRVSTA runs structured interviews. Both produce scores, and those scores are advisory. People make the decisions: our recruiters review every candidate before and after the interview and decide who goes on the shortlist, and you decide who joins your team. The way we handle candidate data and AI is governed. We follow GDPR and CCPA/CPRA, and ARC, our recruiting AI, is governed under the EU AI Act's requirements for high-risk systems. Details are on our compliance page. ### What you get #### A shortlist A recruiter-curated shortlist of senior engineers who match the brief you scoped with us, with the names of the people before you sign anything. #### Time with the candidates You meet each shortlisted engineer and judge them on your own terms: how they think, how they communicate and how they'd fit with your team. #### A fast start The engineer you choose joins your standups, commits to your repos and picks up tickets from your roadmap in their first week. Grant access before day one and they can start on real work immediately. ### Where vetted engineers work The same process feeds every way we work. Add engineers one role at a time through staff augmentation, browse roles, stacks and countries on our hire page, or bring in an AI pod team: a dedicated team of senior engineers that builds a production AI system in your cloud and repos. To see what those teams have shipped, read our case studies. ### FAQ #### What does "top 1%" mean? Only the top 1% of the engineers we interview make it through our process. We've interviewed tens of thousands of engineers, so the people on your shortlist come from a large, well-tested pool. #### Does AI decide who gets hired? No. ARC and NTRVSTA produce scores, and those scores are advisory. Recruiters review every candidate before and after the interview and build the shortlist, and you choose who joins your team. #### What hours do your engineers work? They're based in Latin America and work on US business hours, including New York hours, so reviews and decisions happen the same day. #### How do you handle candidate data? We follow GDPR and CCPA/CPRA, and ARC is governed under the EU AI Act's requirements for high-risk systems. See our compliance page for details. ## Staff augmentation rates and pricing Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/rates/staff-augmentation rz-article h1.cs-title'),p=t&&t.parentElement;if(!p||!p.querySelector(':scope>.rz-crumbs'))return;p.classList.add('ryz-hx');function f(){p.style.setProperty('--ryz-x',p.getBoundingClientRect().left+'px');p.style.setProperty('--ryz-w',H.clientWidth+'px')}f();addEventListener('resize',f)}if(d.readyState==='loading')d.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded',w);else w()}catch(e){}})(); - Custom code > Inside . Uses the site's foundation tokens so light/dark both work. --> RYZ LABS - Meet Ryz - Talent - Careers - Work - Why Ryz - Case studies Ryz Labs/Rates/Staff augmentation Rates Staff augmentation rates and pricing (2026) What IT staff augmentation costs per engineer per month in 2026, what moves the price, and how to budget a team, with our own published rates. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 Short answer: Ryz staff augmentation rates typically run $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month. Mid-level engineers (comparable to Amazon L5) are $7,000 to $10,000 a month, senior engineers (comparable to Amazon L6) are $10,000 to $15,000, and leads start at $15,000, quoted per team. To budget a project, multiply team size by duration by the monthly rate. Most staff augmentation firms do not publish a rate card. You fill in a form, take a call and get a number later. We publish ours because a buyer comparing vendors should be able to do the arithmetic before the first meeting. This page explains what the monthly rate covers, what moves it up or down, how to turn it into a budget, and what other vendors publish about their own pricing. We're Ryz Labs. Our senior engineers work on your team, on US business hours, and only the top 1% of the tens of thousands of engineers we interview make it. Many of them are based in Latin America, which is what gives you real-time overlap with US teams. ### Staff augmentation rates at a glance These are our typical monthly prices per engineer by seniority. Every engagement is a custom quote, scoped per team, so treat these as the range your quote will usually land in. Level | Typical Ryz price per engineer | Comparable seniority | What the level usually means | Junior | Ask us for a quote | n/a | Needs close review; we price these case by case | Mid-level | $7,000 to $10,000 per month | Amazon L5 (SDE II) | Owns features end to end inside an existing design | Senior | $10,000 to $15,000 per month | Amazon L6 (Senior SDE) | Owns systems, makes design calls, reviews others' code | Lead | $15,000+ per month, quoted per team | Tech lead or staff level | Sets technical direction for a group of engineers | Annual equivalent | $84,000 to $180,000 per engineer per year | Mid-level to senior | Monthly range × 12 | "Comparable to Amazon L5 and L6" is a seniority benchmark, not a claim about where our engineers worked. For reference, Levels.fyi's self-reported total pay for Amazon software engineers runs from about $253K (25th percentile) to $364K at L5 and from $350K to $523K at L6 (October 2026). ### What drives the cost #### Seniority Seniority moves the rate more than anything else. A senior engineer costs more per month than a mid-level one, but usually needs less review, unblocks themselves and makes design decisions your leads would otherwise make. For a team with a thin bench of senior people, adding one senior engineer often does more than adding two mid-level ones. #### Stack and specialization Our quotes are scoped by seniority, stack, team size and duration. A React or Node.js engineer joining a mature codebase is a different search from an engineer who has run Kafka at scale, migrated a mainframe batch job or shipped an LLM retrieval pipeline to production. Narrower experience takes longer to find and tends to sit higher in the range. #### Team size and shape One engineer joining an existing squad is the simplest case. Once you add several people, you usually need someone to hold the technical thread, which is why leads are quoted per team rather than per head. A team of four senior engineers with no lead and a team of four with a lead are priced differently because they do different jobs. #### Duration Duration does not change the monthly rate on its own, but it changes the total. It also changes what you should buy: for a three-month push, senior people who ramp fast are worth the premium; for a long engagement, a mix of senior and mid-level engineers is often the better value. #### Time zone overlap A low hourly rate from a team eight hours away can cost more in practice. Pull requests wait overnight, questions take a day to answer and standups happen at someone's midnight. Our engineers work US business hours, including New York hours, so you get same-day code review and real-time overlap with US teams. #### What is included Compare what each quote covers, not only the headline number. Our monthly rate covers sourcing, vetting and a free replacement if an engineer isn't the right fit. The client owns all code and IP our engineers produce, we sign your NDA before we share profiles or start work, and engineers work in your accounts (repos, cloud, tools), so you control access and can revoke it at any time. ### How to budget a staff augmentation team The arithmetic is simple: total cost = team size × duration in months × monthly rate per engineer. Work it out per level, then add a lead if the team needs one. Worked example. You need two senior back-end engineers and two mid-level full-stack engineers for six months. - Senior: 2 × $10,000 to $15,000 = $20,000 to $30,000 per month. - Mid-level: 2 × $7,000 to $10,000 = $14,000 to $20,000 per month. - Team per month: $34,000 to $50,000. - Six months: 6 × $34,000 to $50,000 = $204,000 to $300,000. Add a lead at $15,000+ a month and the monthly total becomes $49,000+, or $294,000+ over six months. A single senior engineer for three months is 1 × 3 × $10,000 to $15,000 = $30,000 to $45,000. Plug your own headcount into the talent cost savings calculator to compare it with an in-house hire. ### Hiring options compared Staff augmentation is one of several ways to add engineering capacity. The cost structures differ, so compare the total cost of getting the work done, not the headline rate. Option | How you pay | Who does the work of hiring | Best for | Freelance marketplace | Hourly rate the freelancer sets, plus any platform fee | You: scoping, management, continuity | Short, well-defined tasks | Staffing agency | Hourly or monthly rate with a markup, or a placement fee | Agency: sourcing; you: management | Filling a seat quickly | In-house hire | Salary plus benefits, taxes, recruiting and equipment | You: everything | Core roles you want long term | Staff augmentation | Monthly rate per engineer covering sourcing, vetting and replacement | Vendor: sourcing and vetting; you: day-to-day work | Adding senior people to your team on your hours | Dedicated team | Monthly rate for a whole team, often with a tech lead | Vendor: team structure and delivery support | A system that needs several roles | The in-house comparison is the one most buyers make. BLS's June 2026 Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release shows wages at 68.5% of total compensation for private-industry management, professional and related workers, so a salary is roughly two thirds of what an employee actually costs before recruiting time and empty-seat weeks. #### What other vendors publish Most of our competitors do not publish a rate card. These are the figures they do publish, quoted as their own claims. We have not verified them, and they are not like-for-like with each other or with us. Vendor | What the vendor publishes | Measure | Revelo | Senior back-end developers $7,200 to $10,700 per month; mid-level $5,800 to $7,500 | All-in monthly cost to the client including Revelo's margin, LatAm back-end roles | Andela | $6,500 to $8,500 per month on a sample Senior Data Analyst profile | Illustrative sample profile on andela.com; no rate card | Toptal | A $79 flat monthly subscription fee for talent matching; hourly rates not published | Toptal FAQ | BairesDev | No rate card; says staff augmentation typically runs 30 to 50% less than the fully loaded cost of a local hire | Savings claim on its staff augmentation page | Arc | $82 to $130 per hour in the US and Canada; $35 to $75 per hour in Latin America | Freelance hourly rates from a survey of Arc freelancers, 2026 | Ryz Labs | Mid-level $7,000 to $10,000; senior $10,000 to $15,000; lead $15,000+ per month | Typical price per engineer per month; custom quote scoped per team | For a side-by-side of each vendor, see our guide to IT staff augmentation companies and the pricing breakdowns for Revelo, Toptal and BairesDev. ### How Ryz pricing works Ryz typically charges $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, mostly for mid-level to senior people. Every engagement is a custom quote, scoped per team. - You tell us what you need: roles, stack, seniority and timing. - Before you start, you get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who would do the work. - Engineers join your standups, repos and roadmap and report to your leads. - If an engineer isn't the right fit, we replace them at no extra cost. Ryz engineers work on your team, reporting to your leads. Talk to us to scope your team. Read how staff augmentation with Ryz works, or browse senior software engineers by role. #### When Ryz isn't the right fit If you want a self-serve freelance marketplace, hourly short gigs or a trial before talking to anyone, a marketplace will suit you better. If you need engineers in European or Asian time zones, or follow-the-sun coverage, look at global networks. ### Related - IT staff augmentation services - Best IT staff augmentation companies - Engineering manager rates and cost to hire - Full-stack developer rates and cost to hire - Talent cost savings calculator - All developer rates by role ### FAQ #### How much does IT staff augmentation cost per month? With Ryz, typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month: $7,000 to $10,000 for mid-level engineers and $10,000 to $15,000 for senior engineers, with leads from $15,000 quoted per team. Other vendors price differently and most do not publish rates, so compare what each quote includes. #### How do I estimate the total cost of a staff augmentation project? Multiply team size by duration in months by the monthly rate for each level, then add a lead if the team needs one. Two senior engineers for four months is 2 × 4 × $10,000 to $15,000, or $80,000 to $120,000. #### Is staff augmentation cheaper than hiring in-house? It depends on the role and how long you need it. A salary is only part of an employee's cost: BLS data puts wages at 68.5% of total compensation for professional workers, before recruiting time and empty-seat weeks. Staff augmentation removes the hiring work and lets you scale up or down, which matters most for projects with a clear end date. #### Who owns the code our augmented engineers write? You do. The client always owns all code and IP our engineers produce, engineers work in your accounts, and you control and can revoke their access at any time. We will sign your NDA before we share profiles or start work. ### Sources - Levels.fyi, Amazon SDE II (L5) pay and Senior SDE (L6) pay: self-reported total compensation percentiles, checked October 2, 2026. - US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (June 2026): wages vs benefits share of total compensation. - Revelo, hire back-end developers: Revelo's published all-in monthly ranges. - Andela: sample talent profile with a monthly range. - Toptal FAQ: subscription fee and billing terms. - BairesDev, staff augmentation: BairesDev's published savings claim. - Arc.dev, freelance developer cost guide (2026): Arc's published regional hourly ranges. Vendor figures were checked on October 2, 2026. Ryz prices are typical ranges by seniority; your quote is scoped per team. ## Enterprise software development Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/services/enterprise-software-development rz-article h1.cs-title'),p=t&&t.parentElement;if(!p||!p.querySelector(':scope>.rz-crumbs'))return;p.classList.add('ryz-hx');function f(){p.style.setProperty('--ryz-x',p.getBoundingClientRect().left+'px');p.style.setProperty('--ryz-w',H.clientWidth+'px')}f();addEventListener('resize',f)}if(d.readyState==='loading')d.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded',w);else w()}catch(e){}})(); - Custom code > Inside . Uses the site's foundation tokens so light/dark both work. --> RYZ LABS - Meet Ryz - Talent - Careers - Work - Why Ryz - Case studies Ryz Labs/Services/Enterprise software development Services Enterprise software development by senior engineering teams Senior engineering teams that build software for large organizations: SSO, audit trails, legacy integrations, data residency and security reviews built in. By the Ryz Labs team · Updated October 2026 Ryz Labs is an enterprise software development company that builds systems for large organizations through senior engineering teams that work on your team, in your repos and cloud accounts. Only the top 1% of the tens of thousands of engineers we interview make it, they work US business hours, and Fortune 500 engineering teams trust them. They build the parts enterprise systems actually fail on: identity, audit, integration with SAP, Oracle and mainframe systems, data residency and change management. ### What we build Enterprise software development is less about the features than about the constraints around them. The users sit behind an identity provider, the data has to stay in a region, the system of record is a twenty-year-old ERP, and nothing ships until security and procurement sign off. - SSO and access control: SAML 2.0 and OIDC sign-in through Okta, Microsoft Entra ID or Ping, SCIM provisioning and deprovisioning, and role-based or attribute-based access mapped to your directory groups. - Audit trails: append-only event logs that record who changed what, when and from where, with retention rules and exports your internal audit and compliance teams can use. - ERP and legacy integration: services that read and write SAP (BAPI, IDoc, OData), Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle databases, and mainframe systems exposed through z/OS Connect, MQ or batch file transfers. - Internal platforms and portals: operations, partner and employee portals that pull data from several systems of record into one permissioned view. - Workflow and approval engines: multi-step approvals with segregation of duties, delegation, escalation and a full history of every state change. - Data residency and tenancy: region-pinned storage and processing in AWS or Azure, per-tenant encryption keys, and data flows mapped for GDPR and similar regimes. - API layers over old systems: REST or GraphQL facades with gateways, rate limits and contract tests, so new applications stop talking to the ERP directly. Replacing a system rather than extending it? See legacy application modernization and cloud migration. ### How an engagement works - Talk. We map the system landscape first: identity provider, systems of record, data classification, deployment rules and who has to approve a release. - Match. We propose a team scoped to the work, usually a tech lead plus senior back-end and integration engineers, with names and a monthly price. - Join. The team works in your repos, CI and cloud accounts, joins your standups and change-advisory process, and demos working software every week. - Grow. Add people or disciplines as the scope widens, or hand the system to your own engineers with runbooks and architecture records. Week 1 usually goes to access requests, environment setup, reading the integration contracts and answering the first round of security questions. Month 1 typically produces a thin slice running in a non-production environment behind real SSO, with one real integration connected. By month 3, the core workflow is in production or in user acceptance testing, with monitoring, audit logging and rollback in place. The pace depends heavily on how fast access and approvals move on your side. ### The stack our teams work in Layer | Tools we use | Notes | Identity | Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Ping, SAML 2.0, OIDC, SCIM | Group-to-role mapping owned by your IAM team | Back end | Java (Spring Boot), .NET, Node.js, Python | Matched to what your platform team already runs | Integration | SAP BAPI/IDoc/OData, Oracle EBS, IBM MQ, z/OS Connect, Kafka, MuleSoft, SFTP | Idempotent writes and reconciliation reports | Data | Postgres, SQL Server, Oracle Database, Snowflake | Versioned migrations with Flyway or Liquibase | Cloud | AWS, Azure, Terraform, Kubernetes | Deployed in your accounts and regions | CI/CD and quality | GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, SonarQube, Snyk | Gates your change process can review | Observability | Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk, OpenTelemetry | Audit and application logs kept separate | ### How we get enterprise software through security and procurement Most enterprise projects that stall do not fail on code. They stall in security review, break an upstream system nobody mapped, or launch to users who were never told it was coming. These are the failure modes a senior team plans for. - Vendor security reviews. Expect a questionnaire (SIG, CAIQ or your own), an architecture review and a pen test before go-live. Our engineers have experience working within SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI DSS standards, and they write the data-flow diagrams and control descriptions reviewers ask for. - Access and IP. Engineers work in your accounts (repos, cloud, tools), so you control access and can revoke it at any time. You own all code and IP our engineers produce, and we will sign your NDA before we share profiles or start work. - Identity done late. Bolting SSO on at the end breaks session handling and permissions. We integrate with your identity provider in the first slice and test deprovisioning, not only login. - Legacy integrations that fail quietly. SAP and mainframe interfaces time out, lock records and change field meanings between releases. We build retry queues, dead-letter handling, contract tests and a daily reconciliation report, so a failed sync is visible the same day. - Data residency surprises. Logs, backups and third-party APIs leak data across regions more often than databases do. We map every data flow, including telemetry, before the first deploy. - Change management. Releases go through your change-advisory board with rollback plans, feature flags and staged rollouts. We plan training, release notes and a support handoff with the business owners, because an unused system is still a failed project. The same habits show up in our production work. For a global capital management firm, a Ryz team built a marketing compliance platform that replaced a manual three-team review handoff with one workflow and a full audit record: 8,000+ materials a year, 700+ reviewed monthly, and reviews that took days now take hours. For a global fleet company, a team built fraud detection on Azure and SQL Server with a real-time scoring API wired into the client's existing maintenance systems: 244K+ invoices scored, decisions in under 30 seconds and $5.94M in confirmed fraud, validated by the client's own fraud team. The same client's driver support agent runs on Azure with Entra ID and Dynatrace and covers about 218,000 calls a year in three languages. More in our case studies. ### Team shapes and cost Typical Ryz cost is $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, mostly mid-level to senior: mid-level (comparable to Amazon L5) at $7,000 to $10,000, senior (comparable to Amazon L6) at $10,000 to $15,000, and leads at $15,000+, quoted per team. - Integration team: 2 senior integration engineers. 2 × $10,000 to $15,000 = $20,000 to $30,000 per month. Fits one ERP or mainframe integration with an API layer. - Enterprise application team: a tech lead plus 4 senior engineers. 4 × $10,000 to $15,000 = $40,000 to $60,000, plus the lead at $15,000+, so $55,000+ per month. - Platform program: a tech lead, 4 senior and 2 mid-level engineers. 4 × $10,000 to $15,000 plus 2 × $7,000 to $10,000 = $54,000 to $80,000, plus the lead, so $69,000+ per month. Total project cost is team size × duration × monthly rate: the integration team for 5 months is 2 × 5 × $10,000 to $15,000 = $100,000 to $150,000. You get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people before you start. See engineer rates by role. ### Dedicated team or staff augmentation? A dedicated development team fits when you need a group to own a scoped system, such as an approval platform or an SAP integration layer, and report progress to a sponsor. The team runs design, build, testing and the change process with your IT and security leads. Staff augmentation fits when your platform group already owns the architecture and needs senior hands. Senior Java developers, .NET developers or security engineers work on your team, under your tech lead, in your process. Many are based in Latin America, which gives real-time overlap with US teams. ### When Ryz isn't the right fit If you want a board-level transformation program, a management-consulting engagement or a proprietary platform licensed to you, a large consultancy or platform vendor is the better choice. If you need engineers in European or Asian time zones, or follow-the-sun coverage, look at global networks. ### Related - Software development services - API development services - Legacy application modernization - Financial services software development - Best software development companies ### FAQ #### What is enterprise software development? It is building and extending software for large organizations, where the hard parts are the constraints: SSO through your identity provider, audit trails, integration with ERPs and mainframes, data residency, security reviews and a formal change process. The engineering is familiar; working within those rules is what takes experience. #### How much does an enterprise software development team cost? Typical Ryz cost is $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, with leads from $15,000 quoted per team. A tech lead plus 4 senior engineers runs $55,000+ per month. Total cost is team size × duration × monthly rate, and you get a plan, a price and names before you start. #### Is Ryz SOC 2 certified? We don't claim certifications. Our engineers have experience working within SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI DSS standards, they work in your accounts under your security controls, and they prepare the architecture and data-flow material your vendor security review asks for. #### Who owns the code, and can we control access? You own all code and IP our engineers produce. Engineers work in your repos, cloud and tools, you control and can revoke their access at any time, and we will sign your NDA before we share profiles or start work. #### How fast can an enterprise team start? After the scoping call we propose a team with names and a price. Most of the timeline after that depends on scope and your onboarding: access requests, security review and environment setup usually set the pace. ## Case study: AI marketing compliance Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/case-studies/ai-marketing-compliance 03 / 05 •GLOBAL CAPITAL MANAGEMENT AI Marketing Compliance From days to hours — compliant documents without the back-and-forth. CLIENT Global Investment Manager AUM Trillion-Dollar Scale TEAM 0 → 3 Engineers STATUS Live — Expanding Across Teams 8,000+ Materials per year 700+ Reviewed monthly 3 Teams One workflow $100Ks Licensing saved 01 ### The challenge A publicly traded global investment manager produces 8,000+ marketing materials a year. Each must clear compliance across three teams, varying by jurisdiction and document type. 700+ documents a month — slow, manual, and expensive. 02 ### Tech stack - Anthropic + OpenAI - Proprietary PDF/PPT SDK - PowerPoint Plugin API - Azure 03 ### What we built - AI compliance platform that ingests, types, routes, and returns review-ready documents — with automated reviewer notifications. - Section-by-section review against internal rule sets (embeddings + LLM): flags missing disclaimers, unqualified claims, and jurisdiction issues. - Compliance action interface: accept, approve, deny, decline, edit, generate — no technical overhead for reviewers. - Runs as a PowerPoint plugin — creators trigger compliance checks without leaving their authoring environment. - Visual diff between document versions. - Proprietary PDF/PPT SDK replacing a costly external license. 04 ### Impact & results #### Days → Hours Reviews that took days now take hours. One automated compliance layer replaces a manual three-team handoff chain — with a full audit record. #### Platform Leverage Proprietary document SDK removed a $100K+ external dependency and is now reusable across all enterprise projects. 05 / Outcome ### Outcome 8,000+ materials/year under automated compliance review. External editing license eliminated. More work ## Case study: AI fraud detection Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/case-studies/ai-fraud-detection 05 / 05 •FLEET MANAGEMENT — FRAUD AI Fraud Detection Fraud that has learned to look ordinary — surfaced, evidenced, and stopped. CLIENT Leading Global Fleet Co. FLEET 1M+ Vehicles VENDORS 50,000+ Repair Partners STATUS Live in Production $5.94M Confirmed fraud caught 100% Analyst-validated findings 244K+ Invoices scored < 30s Per-invoice decision 01 ### The challenge Fifty thousand repair vendors. A million vehicles. Millions of invoices flowing in every year — most of them legitimate, a few of them not. The dangerous ones look exactly like the good ones on their own. A single shell vendor sent five thousand invoices over seventeen months, one at a time, none out of the ordinary — because no one was watching the whole picture across vendors, vehicles and time. 02 ### Tech stack - Azure + SQL Server - FastAPI + React - Azure OpenAI - Google Places + NHTSA VIN - Azure Blob Storage 03 ### What we built - An intelligence engine that scores every maintenance invoice against 45 signals and returns a decision in under thirty seconds — approve, review, or hold for payment — with plain-language reasoning for every decision. - A Findings mechanism that connects the dots across the whole book of business: it detects the pattern that ties orders, vehicles and shops together, then delivers a finished case to the analyst instead of one flagged invoice at a time. - Independent context that reduces noise: every invoice is checked against the vehicle’s real specifications, the vendor’s real footprint, and national-account pricing benchmarks — so reviewers spend their time on actual risk, not on the invoices that only looked odd. - An analyst workspace with an executive risk view, a tiered review queue, a network map of vendor collusion, and a full audit trail on every disposition. - A real-time scoring API embedded inside the client’s existing maintenance systems, so risky invoices can be held at the moment they are created — before payment leaves. 04 ### Impact & results #### $5.94M Confirmed, Not Estimated Two cases delivered so far: a $3.89M shell-vendor pair (5,000+ invoices across 400+ vans over 17 months) and a $2.05M tow-billing ring (530 orders across 22 shops and 321 vehicles). Every dollar validated by the client’s own fraud analytics team. Three vendor profiles shut down as a result. #### Ready-Made Cases, Not Alerts Reviewers open a finished case with the orders, vehicles and shops already linked — instead of chasing patterns across hundreds of thousands of separate invoices. Every score explainable, every disposition audit-trailed end to end. 05 / Outcome ### Outcome $5.94M in confirmed fraud identified and stopped, 100% validated by the client’s fraud analytics team. Real-time invoice gating going live next — catching fraud before payment leaves rather than after. More work ## Case study: AI voice platform Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/case-studies/ai-voice-platform 01 / 05 •LEGAL TECH & CIVIC OUTREACH AI Voice Platform Real-time outbound calling at scale — from cold lead to qualified handoff. INDUSTRY Immigration Law / Civic Tech ENGAGEMENT End-to-End Build TEAM 0 → 12 Engineers STATUS Live in Production 1M+ Calls in a single day 1.5M Statewide campaign calls 8x Agent conversion uplift $6M+ Seed capital raised 01 ### The challenge A high-volume immigration law firm needed to qualify thousands of leads daily — but agents were spending their entire day on cold calls, reaching fewer than two qualified people per day. Built during the nascent era of AI voice, with no proven playbook. 02 ### Tech stack - ElevenLabs - Deepgram - OpenAI - Redis - AWS / Amplify 03 ### What we built - Real-time outbound AI phone system handling Spanish and English qualification flows for immigration legal intake. - Automated pipeline determining immigration eligibility through structured legal compliance questions — no human intervention required. - Handoff architecture routing only pre-qualified leads to agents — eliminating dead-end calls entirely. - Integrated with the client's existing legal case management infrastructure. - Scaled to process 1.5M records for a major statewide political outreach campaign. 04 ### Impact & results #### 8x Agent Conversion Agents moved from cold qualification to high-intent closing only — throughput improved 8x, per-agent revenue increased dramatically. #### Production at Scale 1M calls in a single day. 1.5M campaign calls completed within days. Client raised $6M+ in seed capital post-deployment. 05 / Outcome ### Outcome Client raised $6M+ in seed capital following deployment. More work ## Case study: AI driver support agent Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/case-studies/ai-driver-support-agent 04 / 05 •FLEET MANAGEMENT — VOICE AI Driver Support Agent Fuel PINs, shop locations, policy questions — resolved instantly, in three languages, at any hour. CLIENT Leading Global Fleet Co. FLEET 1M+ Vehicles CHANNELS Voice & SMS (A2P) STATUS Live — Pilot Expanding 218K/yr Calls covered ~95% Per-call cost reduction 3 Langs One agent, no rebuild 24/7 Always answered 01 ### The challenge A 24/7 call center serving a multilingual driver base. Three call reasons alone — fuel PIN retrieval, mechanic search and vehicle policy questions — drive around 218,000 calls a year and roughly $1.9M in call-center operating cost. Drivers wait on hold. Agents burn through their day on the same repetitive requests. 02 ### Tech stack - Azure + Azure AI Foundry - LiveKit real-time voice - Twilio (voice + A2P SMS) - React / Kubernetes - Dynatrace + Entra ID 03 ### What we built - A natural-voice agent named “Alex” that answers calls end to end for the three highest-volume driver requests — authenticates the driver, finds a shop, interprets the policy, or issues a fuel PIN — and hands off cleanly to a human when a call needs one. - One agent across English, Latin American Spanish and Canadian French. No separate build per market or per language. - Sounds like a person, not a menu tree. Handles interruptions, corrections and back-and-forth like a call-center agent would. - SMS mirror for drivers who prefer text, on the same authenticated flows as voice. - Built on modular architecture where voice, reasoning and tools stay separated — the underlying AI can be upgraded without touching the call flow, so the client is never locked into a single vendor. 04 ### Impact & results #### ~95% Per-Call Cost Reduction About $4 per call-hour on the AI agent versus about $87 on the human queue, on ~218,000 covered calls a year. Scales to zero between calls, so idle infrastructure costs nothing. #### One Agent, Three Languages Callers get instant answers in-language, day or night. No hold times, no menus, no separate build per market — and a clean transfer to a human whenever the call really needs one. 05 / Outcome ### Outcome Live in production since August 2026. Client pilot in flight with three enterprise fleet customers; full production release scheduled for late October. More work ## Case study: AI real estate agent Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/case-studies/ai-real-estate-agent 02 / 05 •REAL ESTATE & PROPTECH AI Real Estate Agent Every listing. Every call. Answered instantly. INDUSTRY Residential Real Estate ENGAGEMENT Product Strategy + Build TEAM 0 → 8 Engineers STATUS Live — Market Validated 24/7 Always available 0s Response vs 2-5 day callback 100% Lead capture rate Voice+SMS Dual-channel 01 ### The challenge Every listing has a phone number — the agent behind it almost never picks up. Buyers call in real time, get no answer, and move on. Leads vanish silently. The moment no one picks up is exactly where the sale is lost. 02 ### Tech stack - ElevenLabs Agent Kit - OpenAI - Twilio - AWS - Property Data APIs 03 ### What we built - AI agent on the listing's phone number — answers calls and texts instantly, 24/7. - Answers buyer questions in real time: price, days on market, schools, commute, pool, nearby services. - Books open house visits and private showings directly in conversation — no human needed. - Captures all lead info formatted for CRM and text-based follow-up. 04 ### Impact & results #### Zero Missed Leads Every inbound call answered, regardless of time or agent availability — buyers get immediate answers and convert at dramatically higher rates. #### Market Validated Endorsed at a major U.S. proptech trade show by residential builders and brokerages of all sizes. 05 / Outcome ### Outcome Demonstrated at a major U.S. proptech trade show. Strong demand from builders and brokerages. More work ## Ryz Labs vs BairesDev Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/vs/bairesdev Ryz Labs/ComparisonsComparisons •Staffing Ryz Labs vs BairesDev: cost, rates and fit (2026) What BairesDev costs per engineer per month, what Ryz costs, and what you get for the price. By the Ryz Labs team · Checked October 2026 Heads up: we're Ryz Labs, so we have skin in this game. This is the case we make to buyers on calls. Every number about BairesDev below comes from a public source, linked at the end, and we label estimates as estimates. ### The short answer BairesDev doesn't publish a price. Its Clutch listing shows $50 to $99 an hour, which works out to about $8,000 to $15,840 a month for one full-time engineer at 160 hours. Ryz publishes ours: typically $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, with senior engineers (Amazon L6 comparable) at $10,000 to $15,000. For that price you get top 1% senior engineers working on your team, to your leads, on US business hours, plus AI pod teams that ship to production when you need AI built. Before you sign, you see a scoped plan, a price, and the names of the people who would do the work. If you want a vendor to run a whole project with its own PMs, BairesDev is built for that. If you want senior people on your team at a published price, pick Ryz. Get a Ryz quote for the same roles and compare. ### Cost side by side | Ryz Labs (us) | BairesDev | Published price | Yes: $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month | No. BairesDev says cost "depends on your stack, team size, and project scope." | Listed hourly band | Priced monthly, per engineer | $50 to $99/hr (Clutch listing) | Per engineer per month (160 hrs) | $7,000 to $15,000 | About $8,000 to $15,840 (Clutch band x 160 hrs, our math) | Mid-level | $7,000 to $10,000 (Amazon L5 comparable) | Estimate: $50 to $80/hr, about $8,000 to $12,800/month (Howdy, a competitor, from client reports) | Senior | $10,000 to $15,000 (Amazon L6 comparable) | Estimate: $80 to $130/hr, about $12,800 to $20,800/month (same Howdy estimate) | Lead or specialist | $15,000+, quoted per team | Estimate: $100 to $180/hr (same Howdy estimate) | Minimum | Scoped to the team you need | $50,000+ minimum project size (Clutch listing) | BairesDev's own cost claim | Not applicable | Engineers "typically run 30-50% less than the fully loaded cost of a local hire" | What you see before you sign | A scoped plan, a price and the names of your engineers | A call with sales | Hourly estimates from third parties disagree, and the Howdy figures come from a company that competes with BairesDev (as we do). Treat them as a range to test, not a quote. The fair comparison is a written monthly quote from each vendor for the same roles at the same seniority. ### What you get for the price - Senior engineers on your team. They join your standups, your repos and your roadmap from week one, and work to your leads. That is the whole model, not one option among several. - Top 1% vetting you can see. We've interviewed tens of thousands of engineers, and only the top 1% make it. Recruiters source, our in-house ARC system ranks the pipeline, every candidate takes a structured NTRVSTA AI interview, and recruiters review before and after. AI scores are advisory; people decide. See our vetting process. - US business hours, including New York hours. Code review and pairing happen the same day. - AI pod teams that ship to production. About 7 senior engineers, including a tech lead and an ML engineer, in your cloud and repos with weekly demos. One pod's fraud detection has scored 244K+ invoices and surfaced $5.94M in fraud confirmed by the client's fraud team. See our case studies. - Your code, your accounts. You own all code and IP our engineers produce. They work in your repos, cloud and tools, and you can revoke access at any time. We'll sign your NDA before we share profiles. ### Side by side | Ryz Labs (us) | BairesDev | What you get | Senior engineers on your team, plus AI pod teams that build AI systems in your cloud and ship them to production | Staff augmentation, dedicated teams and full outsourcing across 100+ technologies | Who manages the work | Your leads | Depends on the model. Dedicated Teams are "focused pods handling full builds with BairesDev tech PMs driving delivery." | Working hours | US business hours, including New York | BairesDev says its engineers "work your hours." | Vetting | Top 1%, with every step published | BairesDev says it hires fewer than 1% of 2.5 million+ annual applicants | Who makes the hiring call | You do, from a recruiter-curated shortlist | Not specified publicly | Best for | Teams that want senior engineers or an AI pod on their own team | Buyers who want a vendor to run a whole project with its own PMs | ### Why Ryz is the better value A price you can plan around. Our range is published and every quote names the people. You can put a number in a budget before the first call. Senior people, not a project package. We scope to the team you need, from one senior engineer up to an AI pod, rather than to a project-sized minimum. Trusted by Fortune 500 engineering teams, across industries. Our recruiting AI is governed under EU AI Act high-risk requirements, and we follow GDPR and CCPA/CPRA, so security and procurement get clear answers. ### Switching from BairesDev - Send us your current roles. Stack, seniority and hours for each engineer. If you can, note your current monthly cost per engineer so the comparison is like for like. - Get a scoped plan. You get a price and the names of the people who would do the work, with a proposed start date. - Meet the engineers. Interview them and review their work before anyone starts. - Plan the handover. Check the notice terms in your current contract, then overlap or stage the move role by role so nothing ships without an owner. - Start in your repos. Our engineers work in your accounts from day one. If someone isn't the right fit, we replace them free. How long it takes depends on the roles and your current notice period, so the start date goes in your scoped plan rather than a generic promise. ### When BairesDev might make sense - You want a vendor to own a full outsourced project, managed by its own PMs. - You need a niche technology from a catalog of 100+ under one contract, and your budget is above the $50,000+ minimum on its Clutch listing. ### Pricing BairesDev publishes no rate card. Its staff augmentation page says cost "depends on your stack, team size, and project scope." Clutch lists $50 to $99 an hour and a $50,000+ minimum project size. Those are directory figures, not a BairesDev price list. Our BairesDev pricing page has every public data point. Our typical cost is $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month: mid-level $7,000 to $10,000, senior $10,000 to $15,000, leads $15,000+ quoted per team. ### Who should pick which - If you want a published price and senior engineers on your team, pick Ryz. - If you want an AI pod team that builds in your cloud and ships to production, pick Ryz. - If you want to see names and a price before you sign, pick Ryz. - If you want a vendor to take a whole project off your hands with its own PMs, BairesDev is built for that. Still comparing? See BairesDev alternatives and the best Latin American staff augmentation companies. ### Questions #### How much does BairesDev cost? BairesDev doesn't publish prices. Its Clutch listing of $50 to $99 an hour works out to about $8,000 to $15,840 a month for one full-time engineer at 160 hours, with a $50,000+ minimum project size. Ryz publishes $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month. #### What is BairesDev's hourly rate? Clutch lists $50 to $99 an hour. Howdy, a competing firm, estimates $50 to $80 for mid-level, $80 to $130 for senior and $100 to $180 for specialists, based on client reports. Ask BairesDev for a written rate by role. #### Is BairesDev worth it? It can be if you want one vendor to run a whole project. If you want senior engineers on your own team at a published price, compare a written BairesDev quote with ours at the same seniority. #### What are the best BairesDev alternatives? For senior engineers on your team on US hours, we think it's Ryz. Our BairesDev alternatives page compares more options. #### Is Ryz cheaper than BairesDev? Our range ($7,000 to $15,000) sits at or below the monthly equivalent of BairesDev's Clutch band. Get both quotes in writing for the same roles and compare line by line. ### Sources - BairesDev: bairesdev.com / staff augmentation - BairesDev: bairesdev.com / about us - BairesDev: clutch.co / bairesdev - Howdy: howdy.com / bairesdev review (updated August 13, 2026) Everything here was checked against public sources in October 2026. Monthly figures are our math at 160 hours. Vendors change terms often, so confirm before you sign. ## Ryz Labs vs Toptal Source: https://www.ryzlabs.com/vs/toptal Ryz Labs/ComparisonsComparisons •Staffing Ryz Labs vs Toptal A global freelance network versus senior engineers who join your team on New York hours. Here's why US engineering teams choose Ryz. By the Ryz Labs team · Checked October 2026 Disclosure: we're Ryz Labs, and we compete with the companies on this page. Here's why we think we're the right call for most teams, with sources for every fact about the others. ### The short answer For most US engineering teams, Ryz Labs is the better choice. You get top 1% senior engineers who join your standups, your repos and your roadmap from week one, on US business hours. When you need AI built, you get an AI pod team that works in your cloud and ships to production. Before you sign, you see a scoped plan, a price, and the names of the people who would do the work. Fortune 500 engineering teams trust us for exactly this. Toptal is a global network of freelancers (developers, designers, finance experts, product and project managers) that you hire individually, hourly, part-time or full-time, and manage yourself. It fits a short, self-serve gig with one specialist. If you want senior engineers who work as part of your team, pick Ryz. ### Side by side | Ryz Labs (us) | Toptal | What you get | Senior engineers working on your team (staff augmentation), plus AI pod teams that build AI systems in your cloud and repos and ship them to production | Individual freelancers (developers, designers, finance experts, product and project managers), hired hourly, part-time or full-time | Who manages the day-to-day work | Your leads. Our engineers work in your standups, your repos and your roadmap. | You do. Freelance model: you direct and coordinate each freelancer. | AI teams | Forward-deployed pods (for example, about 7 senior engineers including a tech lead, an ML engineer and backend engineers) in your repos, CI and standups, with weekly demos | Individual freelancers with AI and data skills | Talent based in | Latin America | Global. Toptal describes a "globally distributed network." | Time-zone overlap with New York | US business hours, including New York hours. Same-day code review. | Depends on the individual freelancer | How engineers are vetted | Recruiters source, our in-house ARC system ranks the pipeline, structured NTRVSTA AI interviews, recruiter review before and after. AI scores are advisory; people decide. Only the top 1% make it. | Toptal says fewer than 3% of 200,000+ yearly applicants are accepted, after a communication interview, a skill review, live screening and a 1-3 week test project. | Who makes the hiring call | You do, from a recruiter-curated shortlist. | You choose from matched freelancers; Toptal lets you trial up to three per position. | Pricing | $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, scoped per team | Hourly rates not published. $79 flat monthly subscription for matching. Clutch lists $100-$149/hr. | Minimum engagement | Scoped to the team you need | Clutch lists a $50,000+ minimum project size. | What you see before you sign | A scoped plan, a price, and the names of the people who would do the work | Rates come after matching, per freelancer | Best for | US companies that want senior engineers, or an AI pod team, on their own team on US hours | One specialist for a short, self-serve gig | ### Why Ryz is the better choice Team members, not freelancers. Our engineers join your standups, your repos and your roadmap from week one. They work to your leads, own parts of your system, and the knowledge stays with your team. With a freelance network, you assemble and coordinate individuals yourself. New York hours, every day. Our engineers work on US business hours. Standups, pairing and code review happen the same day. With a global network, overlap depends on who you're matched with. Top 1% vetting you can see. We've interviewed tens of thousands of engineers, and only the top 1% make it. Recruiters source candidates, our in-house ARC system ranks the pipeline, and every candidate goes through a structured NTRVSTA AI interview. Recruiters review each candidate before and after. AI scores are advisory, and people make the decisions. You get a recruiter-curated shortlist and run the final interview yourself. Our vetting process page walks through every step. AI pod teams that ship to production. Our second business is dedicated pods of senior engineers that build AI systems in your cloud, repos and CI, in your standups, with weekly demos. A typical pod is about 7 people, including a tech lead, an ML engineer and backend engineers, working in AWS, Azure, GitHub, Postgres, and Anthropic and OpenAI models. Fraud detection for a global fleet company has scored 244K+ invoices in under 30 seconds each, with $5.94M in fraud confirmed by the client's own fraud team. A marketing-compliance system for a global capital management firm took review of 8,000+ documents from days to hours. An AI voice platform has made 1M+ outbound calls. See our case studies. You see the team before you commit. After a first conversation you get a scoped plan, a price, and the names of the people who would do the work. Trusted by Fortune 500 engineering teams, across industries. We work with US enterprises in every industry, including financial services, and bring decades of LatAm expertise. Our recruiting AI is governed under EU AI Act high-risk requirements, and we follow GDPR and CCPA/CPRA, so your security and procurement teams get clear answers. We also run direct-hire placement and executive search when you want to hire someone outright. ### How Toptal works Toptal was founded in 2010 and operates as a fully remote company. It says it has served 35,000+ clients in 140+ countries. Clients hire individual freelancers from a global network, hourly, part-time or full-time, at a fixed weekly price per person. Toptal says its average time to match is under 24 hours, offers a trial of up to two weeks, and says full-time conversion is possible "for the most part." ### When Toptal might make sense - You want a self-serve freelance hire for a short, hourly or part-time gig. - You need a designer or finance expert rather than an engineer. - You need someone in a Europe or Asia time zone. ### Pricing #### What Toptal costs per engineer vs Ryz Here is every public price signal we found, checked October 2026. Most firms in this market don't publish a rate card, so we show the hourly band on their Clutch listing and convert it to a monthly figure for one full-time engineer. Provider | Publishes prices? | Public price signal | Per engineer per month (160 hrs) | Ryz Labs (us) | Yes | Mid-level $7,000 to $10,000; senior $10,000 to $15,000; leads $15,000+, quoted per team | $7,000 to $15,000 | Toptal | No | Clutch: $100 - $149/hr, $50,000+ minimum project | About $16,000 to $23,840 | Third-party estimate: Index.dev (Elena Bejan), a competitor, says "Toptal is the premium vetted network, running $60 to $250+ an hour with heavy screening before anyone reaches you." (2026-08-24). Treat estimates as a range to test, not a quote. Monthly figures are our math at 160 hours a month. Directory bands are entered by the firms themselves and are not quotes, so ask each vendor for a written monthly price for the same roles at the same seniority. Toptal doesn't publish hourly rates. Its FAQ lists a $79 flat monthly subscription fee for talent matching, with billing twice a month on Net 10 terms. Its pricing page describes a fixed price on a weekly basis and a $0 recruiting fee. Clutch lists Toptal at $100-$149/hr with a $50,000+ minimum project size. For the full breakdown, see Toptal pricing. Our typical cost is $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month (mid-level $7,000 to $10,000, senior $10,000 to $15,000, leads $15,000+ quoted per team), and every quote is scoped per team. With the quote you get a scoped plan, a price, and the names of the people who would do the work, before you sign anything. You're paying for top 1% senior engineers on New York hours, or an AI pod team that ships to production, and you know exactly who they are. ### Who should pick which - If you want top 1% senior engineers on your team, working to your own leads, pick Ryz. - If you want same-day collaboration on New York hours, without screening each person for time zone, pick Ryz. - If you want a dedicated AI pod team building an AI system in your own cloud and shipping it to production, pick Ryz. - If you want to see a scoped plan, a price and the names of your engineers before you sign, pick Ryz. - If your Toptal freelancer has quietly become a full-time member of your team, pick Ryz. - If you want one freelancer for a short hourly gig, Toptal is built for that. Still comparing? See our list of Toptal alternatives, our Toptal vs Upwork comparison, and our roundup of nearshore developers for New York companies. ### Questions #### Is Toptal cheaper than Ryz Labs? Our typical cost is $7,000 to $15,000 per engineer per month, so ask for a written quote for the same roles and hours and compare. Clutch lists Toptal at $100-$149/hr plus the $79 monthly matching fee. With our quote, you also get the names of the people who would do the work and a scoped plan for the team. #### Can a Toptal freelancer replace an engineer on your team? For a scoped, short task, a freelancer can work. For ongoing work on your core systems, you want someone in your standups every day, on your hours, who owns part of the roadmap. That's what our engineers do. #### Can Ryz Labs build AI systems, not just staff engineers? Yes. Our AI pod teams build in your cloud and repos and ship to production, from fraud detection that has confirmed $5.94M in fraud to an AI driver-support agent handling 218K driver questions a year in three languages. If you want a pod that builds in your stack, talk to us. #### How do Ryz engineers work with our team? Ryz engineers work on your team, reporting to your leads, in your standups and repos from week one. Talk to us to scope your team. ### Sources - Toptal: toptal.com - Toptal: toptal.com / faq - Toptal: clutch.co / toptal - Toptal: toptal.com / pricing - Upwork: upwork.com - Upwork: upwork.com / client - Index.dev (Elena Bejan): estimate Last checked October 2026. Pricing, trials and services move fast in this market, so verify the details with each vendor.