Extend Your Team With
Experienced Developers
Staff augmentation for Australian teams: experienced engineers embedded into your team, working in your timezone, using your tools, aligned to your engineering culture. No agency overhead. No offshore communication delays. Every engineer is matched honestly to the seniority you need. Engineers who show up ready and deliver.
Three Steps to Your Extended Team
Experienced developers who join your team on agreed terms. We agree the role, the terms and the start date with you before anyone starts.
Brief Us
Tell us what you need: the role, the tech stack, the team context, the engagement length and when you want to start. We do not need a formal job description, a conversation with Andy is enough. We ask the questions other agencies don't: what does your team culture look like? What's the biggest delivery challenge? What does failure look like in this role?
Match Engineers
We put forward experienced developers we work with, not CVs from a database, whose code we have reviewed and whose working style we can vouch for. You interview them. If none are right, we keep looking. No fee until you say yes.
Embed and Deliver
Your new engineer joins your Slack, your GitHub, your sprint ceremonies and your team calls. They operate as a member of your team, not a contractor who disappears after a ticket is closed. We stay in the background: monthly check ins, performance oversight and rapid replacement if something is not working.
Every Engineering Role You Need
Experienced developers across the full software development lifecycle, who join your team on agreed terms.
Staff Augmentation vs Direct Hire
Neither is always right. Here is an honest comparison to help you decide what fits your situation. If the gap is senior technical direction rather than extra hands, a fractional CTO may fit better.
Our Five Step Engineer Vetting Process
Every developer we put forward has been through this process. Every candidate is matched honestly to the seniority you asked for.
Application Screening
CV and portfolio review against senior engineer benchmarks. We filter on genuine commercial experience, not credentials. FAANG or startup, what matters is shipped production code in demanding environments.
Technical Assessment
A take home assessment calibrated to the role, not a whiteboard algorithm test. Frontend engineers build a real component. Backend engineers design a system. We assess code quality, decisions made and what was asked about edge cases.
Live Code Review
A live session of about an hour: reviewing real production code they have written, discussing the decisions made and what they would change. This reveals far more about engineering judgment than any prepared exercise.
Cultural Fit Interview
A structured conversation about how they work in teams: how they give feedback, handle technical disagreements, communicate blockers and approach ambiguous requirements. Senior engineers must communicate, not just code.
Trial Project
For placement, a short paid trial project with our team before client placement. This validates performance under real conditions, not interview conditions, and helps the engineer contribute early in your engagement.
Flexible Engagements Built Around Your Needs
Three engagement models to fit different team structures and project types.
Ideal for augmenting your team with specialised expertise you need consistently but not full time. Common for: DevOps support, QA oversight, UI/UX design or AI/ML capability that doesn't warrant a full time placement.
- Consistent weekly availability, not ad hoc
- Joins standups and sprint ceremonies
- Terms agreed before anyone starts
A dedicated engineer embedded fully into your team. Attends all team ceremonies, integrates with your culture and operates as an equivalent member to your permanent staff. The most productive model for sustained delivery velocity.
- Full time, your core hours
- Sydney business hours, reply within 1 business day
- Full sprint participation + ownership
- Dedicated to one client only
- Terms agreed upfront, extend as needed
When you have a clearly defined deliverable with a clear scope and timeline. We assemble a small, focused team, typically two to four engineers, and deliver to the agreed spec. Best for migrations, specific feature builds or legacy system replacements.
- Defined scope, timeline and acceptance criteria
- One fixed price for the agreed scope, set out in a Schedule of Work
- Dedicated team for duration
- Full handover and documentation
Based in Australia, Connected Globally
AWLabs engineers work Sydney business hours, on Sydney time. This places us in full overlap with teams on the east coast, and a shared working day with Perth (two to three hours behind).
UK and US teams have little or no overlap in normal business hours. For those clients we schedule a regular call at the edge of each day (early morning or evening Sydney time) and run the rest of the work through written, asynchronous handoffs.
We work in the tools your team already uses. If you use Jira, we use Jira. If you prefer Linear, we use Linear. Communication happens in your Slack or Teams workspace, not ours.
Staff Augmentation, Frequently Asked Questions
Experienced developers join your team on agreed terms. Pricing depends on the role, the skills and how long you need them, so it is set after a conversation with Andy, and the terms are written down before anyone starts. For a defined project, we start with the Discovery Audit (a fixed fee, credited in full against your build) and you receive one fixed price for the agreed scope.
This is the most important question to ask any augmentation provider and most cannot answer it honestly. Our benchmark is clear: real commercial experience shipping production software, genuine technical ownership (not junior tasks), able to independently design and implement features end to end, and capable of reviewing code and mentoring others. If we recommend an engineer, it is because we would put them on our own internal projects.
It is agreed with you before anyone starts. We usually suggest a period long enough to get past the ramp up, because learning your codebase, team conventions and domain context means the first weeks of any placement are below peak contribution. That protects both sides: it gives the developer time to add genuine value and gives you enough of a run to assess fit and performance fairly.
We have a 30-day performance review built into every new placement. If, after a reasonable period, the engineer is not working out, we will replace them at no additional placement cost. We ask for honest, documented feedback so we can brief the replacement correctly. Our vetting process and the matching conversation before placement are designed to prevent mismatches in the first place.
It depends on the role. Common roles (frontend, backend, React, Flutter) are usually quicker to match. Specialist roles (AI/ML engineering, solutions architects, highly specific tech stacks) take longer to find the right person. We will tell you honestly when we cannot move fast enough for your timeline rather than rushing a poor placement.
Yes. Full time placements are dedicated to a single client. Part time placements may have one other client engagement, but their committed hours are yours and we ensure there is no capacity conflict. We do not run engineers across multiple concurrent clients. It degrades performance and focus, and we would rather have fewer, more effective placements.
Work our developers create for you is assigned to you once the fees for it are paid. We also provide mutual NDAs for all engagements as standard, with no additional negotiation required. Confidentiality extends to any proprietary code, business logic, data or product information the engineer encounters.
Yes. Project based engagements typically involve teams of two to four engineers, a tech lead and optionally a QA engineer, working together on a defined deliverable. For larger programmes we can scope an embedded squad with a lead, engineers and an architect working together. Brief us on the team shape you need and we will scope accordingly.
Staff augmentation is adding external engineers to your own team for a period, where they work under your direction, in your tools and processes, alongside your employees. You get the skills and capacity you need without a permanent hire, and you keep control of the product and the roadmap.
With staff augmentation you manage the work and the augmented engineers are part of your team. With outsourcing, or a project based engagement, the provider takes responsibility for delivering an agreed outcome and manages the team itself. Augmentation suits teams with strong internal leadership that need capacity; outsourcing suits a defined project you want delivered end to end. We offer both.
Yes. Our fractional CTO service gives you a named senior member of the AWLabs leadership team on a fixed monthly retainer, usually part time, owning technology strategy, architecture, vendor decisions and security. That suits a business that needs leadership rather than coding capacity. If you need a hands on tech lead working inside your team day to day, that is a staff augmentation placement, agreed on written terms before anyone starts.