Dedicated development teams,
without the hiring.
Senior engineers who join your roadmap, your stand-ups and your repository — as a complete dedicated team, or to augment the one you have. From £450 a day, monthly rolling.
What is a dedicated
development team?
A dedicated development team is a group of software engineers who work exclusively on your product for as long as you need them, billed monthly rather than per project. Magora provides dedicated teams and individual senior engineers (IT staff augmentation) to UK companies from its London office, at £450–£720 per engineer per day, with a minimum of four weeks and full IP transfer on payment.
| Dedicated team | Staff augmentation | Fixed-price project | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who manages the work | Magora (tech lead / Product Owner) | Your engineering lead | Magora |
| Best for | A product or roadmap that runs for months | An existing team that needs more senior capacity or a missing skill | A well-defined scope with a fixed end |
| How it is priced | Day rate per engineer, monthly | Day rate per engineer, monthly | Agreed price for an agreed scope |
| Changing scope | Re-prioritise the backlog any sprint | Your backlog, your call | Change request |
| Commitment | Minimum four weeks, monthly rolling | Minimum four weeks, monthly rolling | Until the scope is delivered |
Not sure which model fits? The difference between contractors, outsourced teams and in-house hiring is set out in IT contractors vs outsourcing teams.
Dedicated teams
and staff augmentation.
Whole teams when you need an outcome delivered; individual senior engineers when you already have the process and need more hands inside it. Either way they are Magora's own engineers — not candidates we still have to find.
Dedicated product team
A self-contained team — engineers, QA and a tech lead or Product Owner — that owns delivery of your product end to end and reports progress in weekly demos.
IT staff augmentation
One or more senior engineers joining your existing team: your backlog, your stand-ups, your code review. Seniority you would otherwise wait months to hire.
Mobile app developers
iOS / Swift, Android / Kotlin, React Native and Flutter engineers who have shipped apps through the store review, not just built screens.
Web & back-end developers
Laravel and PHP, Node.js, Python, and React, Vue or Angular on the front end.
QA & DevOps
Test engineers and DevOps who keep releases boring: automated tests, CI/CD pipelines, staging that matches production, and monitoring your team can read.
AI & data engineers
Engineers from our AI & ML practice for LLM features, RAG pipelines, agents and data work — added to a team for as long as the AI work lasts.
Staff augmentation,
without the body shop.
The risk with any outsourced development team is that you are buying CVs. These three rules are how we make sure you are buying a team.
Our engineers, not recruits
Everyone we propose already works at Magora and has shipped with us. You meet the actual people before the contract, and the people you meet are the people who start.
Your process, our standards
The team works in your tracker, your repository and your ceremonies — while code review, testing and seniority stay our responsibility, with weekly demos you can hold us to.
Nothing locked in
NDA on day one, code in your repository from the first commit, IP transferred on payment and a monthly rolling agreement. You stay because it works, not because leaving is hard.
What a dedicated team
costs in the UK.
Published rates, not a quote you have to chase. A three-person team of senior engineers typically runs at about £27,000–£43,000 a month; the exact figure depends on roles, seniority and full- or part-time allocation. More detail on our UK software development pricing page.
£450 – £720 / day
Rate set by seniority, not by language. Minimum four weeks, monthly rolling, full-time or part-time — roughly £9,000–£14,400 a month per full-time engineer.
£0
A real, clickable working prototype of your core idea before any paid engagement — the fastest way to judge a team is to see its work.
From £3,000
Two weeks with a senior Product Owner and Solution Architect: scope, architecture, estimate, and the team size you actually need. About Discovery.
£3,500 – £9,000 / month
A maintenance retainer when the build is done: support with SLAs and iterative development, without keeping a full team on.
How to hire
a dedicated team.
From a first call to engineers committing to your repository — and the prototype that lets you judge them before you pay.
Scoping call
30 minutesA free call with a senior engineer: what you are building, what your team already covers, and whether you need a whole team or two extra pairs of hands.
Free working prototype
5 – 10 working daysBefore you pay anything we build a working prototype of your core flow — so you judge the engineers on real code, not on CVs.
Team proposal
Before contractNamed engineers, their roles and seniority, the day rate for each, and how the team plugs into your process — written down, not promised on a call.
Discovery sprint (optional)
2 weeksWhen the scope is still open, a senior Product Owner and Solution Architect turn it into an architecture, a backlog and an estimate first. From £3,000.
Onboarding
First sprintAccess to your repository, tracker and chat; the team joins your ceremonies or runs its own. Code lands in your repository from the first commit.
Scale and review
MonthlyMonthly rolling: add a specialist for a release, step up before a launch, or move to a maintenance retainer once the product is live.
Who can join
your team.
Senior engineers across mobile, web, back end, QA, DevOps and product — combined into a team or added one at a time.
- React / Next.js
- Vue.js
- Angular
- TypeScript
- PHP / Laravel
- Node.js
- Python
- REST & GraphQL APIs
- Manual & exploratory QA
- Automated tests
- Regression suites
- Release checks
- AWS
- Google Cloud
- Docker
- CI/CD pipelines
- Monitoring
- Product Owner
- Solution Architect
- Business analysis
- UX / UI design
When a dedicated team
is the right call.
It is not the answer to everything. This is how we would decide if we were in your seat.
A roadmap, not a one-off
Your product has months of work ahead and priorities that will change. A team that stays with it learns the domain once and gets faster every sprint.
A gap in your own team
You run engineering already but are missing a skill — iOS, DevOps, AI — or need senior capacity for a launch without a hiring cycle.
A small, fixed scope
If the job is well defined and ends, a fixed-price MVP or project is simpler. For a few days of help, a contractor is cheaper than our four-week minimum.
What clients
say.
Independently verified on Clutch — 4.9 out of 5 across 60+ reviews, from clients including Danone, Unilever, Toyota, Cisco, AstraZeneca and Grant Thornton.
Rather than choose the flattering ones, we point at all of them. Every review on our Clutch profile is verified with the client, including the projects that ran harder than expected.
Products our
teams have built.
Four from the wider portfolio — each built and grown by a Magora team working alongside the client.
Dayinsure
The temporary car insurance app for one of the UK's leading short-term insurance providers.
See case study → AI · SaaSEmpath AI
A vocal-biomarker SaaS platform that detects caller vulnerability in real time for call centres.
See case study → Pharma · EnterprisePharmCard
Enterprise software for the field sales staff and management of an international pharma group.
See case study → Enterprise · DataRollio
Enterprise data automation that turns records from business systems into plain-language answers.
See case study →The honest
questions.
A dedicated development team is a complete, self-contained product team — engineers, QA and a tech lead or Product Owner — that works only on your product and takes responsibility for delivering it. Staff augmentation adds individual engineers to a team you already run: they join your stand-ups, work from your backlog and report to your engineering lead.
Both are billed on the same day rates. The choice is about who manages the work: pick a dedicated team when you need an outcome delivered, and augmentation when you already have the process and need more senior hands inside it.
Magora's published rate for a senior engineer is £450–£720 a day, set by seniority rather than language, with a minimum engagement of four weeks. At 20 working days that is roughly £9,000–£14,400 a month per full-time engineer, so a three-person team typically costs about £27,000–£43,000 a month.
Part-time allocation is available. Before any paid work you get a free working prototype, and if the scope is still open a two-week Discovery sprint from £3,000 turns it into a written plan and team size. Full benchmarks are on our UK software development pricing page.
The first step is a free 30-minute call with a senior engineer. We then build a free working prototype of your core idea — usually in 5–10 working days — so you see how the proposed engineers think and code before you sign anything.
The paid engagement starts once you have approved the team and the plan. Because the engineers are Magora's own staff rather than candidates we still have to recruit, there is no sourcing period in between.
You do. We sign an NDA on day one, the work is committed to your repository as it is written, and full ownership of source code, designs and IP transfers to you on payment. Nothing is held back in a vendor account or delivered as a zip at the end.
Yes. Engagements are monthly rolling, full-time or part-time, so you can add a specialist for a release, move from two engineers to five for a launch, or step down to a maintenance retainer (£3,500–£9,000 a month) once the product is live.
Magora is a UK software development company — Thinking Fish Ltd, registered at Companies House (03637036) — with its office in Shoreditch, London, and has been delivering software since 2010. You contract with the UK company, work in UK business hours, and UK or EU data residency is available for regulated projects.
Need engineers
who can start on your roadmap?
30-minute call with a senior engineer. Tell us what your team covers today — we'll tell you whether you need a dedicated team, two extra engineers, or neither.