Start a conversation

How we work

No discovery theatre. A plan in week one.

Supporting development only works if the support arrives before the deadline does. Here is the whole shape of it, including the parts most agencies leave to the contract.

The first two weeks

What actually happens.

  1. Day 0

    Intro call

    Thirty minutes. What is the date, what is blocking it, who owns the decisions. If we are wrong for it, you find out here.

  2. Day 1–3

    Read the code

    Access to the repository and a short look at the architecture, the pipeline, and how you deploy. Paid if it takes more than a day.

  3. Day 3–5

    Written plan

    The slice we would take, the sequence, the risks we spotted, the fee, and what we need from your side to keep moving.

  4. Week 2

    First pull request

    Something real, reviewed by your team, merged. Small on purpose — it proves the loop works before we lean on it.

  5. Ongoing

    Daily written updates

    What moved, what is blocked, what we need. In your Slack, in writing, so nobody has to attend a meeting to find out.

  6. End

    Hand back

    Docs merged, a walkthrough recorded, decisions written down. Your team keeps going without a call to us.

Engagement models

Four shapes. Each one has an end date.

We would rather be re-hired than renewed by inertia, so every model below is written to finish.

01 2–6 weeks, fixed scope

Sprint rescue

A date you cannot move and a backlog that says otherwise.

We take a defined slice of the remaining work and finish it alongside your team. Scope and price are agreed up front so the engagement cannot quietly become open-ended.

  • Scoping call, then a written plan before anyone writes code
  • Daily written updates; your standup if you want us in it
  • Fixed fee, fixed end date
02 Monthly, part or full time

Embedded engineers

Sustained capacity without a six-month hiring cycle.

One or two senior engineers join your repository, your Slack and your rituals, and work as part of the team. Same review standards, same on-call expectations if that is how you run.

  • Your process, your tooling, your definition of done
  • Rolling monthly term, one month notice either way
  • Named engineers — you know exactly who is on your code
03 Project, milestone-based

Build & hand-off

A system you need built once and then want to own.

We design and build the thing, then deliberately hand it over: documentation, a walkthrough, and a support window while your team takes the wheel.

  • Milestones with acceptance criteria written before the work starts
  • Documentation and architecture notes as a deliverable, not an afterthought
  • Hand-off session plus 30 days of support included
04 1–2 weeks

Technical due diligence

Investing in, acquiring, or inheriting a codebase.

A structured read of the codebase, infrastructure and delivery process, ending in a written report you can hand to a board: what is solid, what is debt, what it costs to fix, and what would worry us.

  • Architecture, code quality, security posture and key-person risk
  • Cost and scalability review of the current infrastructure
  • Written report with severity-ranked findings and remediation estimates

Principles

The four we will not trade away.

01

Senior only, on the actual work

The people on the call are the people in the pull requests. No pyramid, no handover to a junior bench after the contract is signed.

02

We embed, we don’t colonise

Your repository, your standards, your review process. We adapt to how your team already works instead of importing a methodology.

03

Write it down

Decisions, trade-offs and runbooks land in your docs as we go. When the engagement ends, the knowledge stays behind.

04

Make ourselves unnecessary

A good engagement ends with your team faster than before. We would rather be re-hired for the next hard thing than quietly become load-bearing.

Practicalities

The boring, important parts.

Contract & IP
You own the code and all IP from the first commit. NDA on request, signed before access.
Access
We work inside your access model — your SSO, least-privilege roles, your device policy. No shadow tooling.
Hours & overlap
CET / CEST. Full working-day overlap with the UK and EU, morning-to-early-afternoon with US East.
Billing
Fixed fee for scoped work; monthly in advance for embedded engineers. One month notice either way.
Communication
Your Slack or Teams, daily written updates, and your standup if you want us in it. Meetings inside your hours.
Exit
Documentation and a recorded walkthrough are deliverables, not favours. Thirty days of support after hand-off.

Questions

Everything clients ask first.

If yours is not here, ask it directly — we answer scoping questions for free whether or not it turns into work.

What kind of software do you build?
All of it — web applications, mobile apps for iOS and Android, desktop software, backends and APIs, data platforms, and machine-learning and LLM systems. Data and AI is where we are most specialised, but it is a practice inside a general software engineering company, not the whole of what we do.
How quickly can you start?
Usually within one to two weeks of a signed scope, sometimes sooner for a short rescue. If we cannot staff you with the right people in a timeframe that helps, we will tell you that instead of taking the work.
How do you charge?
Sprint rescues and due diligence are fixed fee against a written scope. Embedded engineers are a monthly rate per engineer, billed in advance, with one month notice on either side. No hidden onboarding fees, no minimum term beyond the first month.
What timezone do you work in?
We are in Novi Sad, Serbia — CET / CEST. That is a full working-day overlap with the UK and Europe, and a solid morning-to-early-afternoon overlap with US East Coast teams. We keep meetings inside your working hours, not ours.
Who owns the code?
You do, from the first commit. Work is done in your repositories under your licence, with IP assigned to you in the contract. We keep nothing back.
Can you sign an NDA and work under our security requirements?
Yes. NDAs are routine, and we work inside your access model — your SSO, your least-privilege roles, your device requirements. If you need background checks or a specific data-handling regime, raise it in the first call so we can confirm before you spend time on scoping.
We are not sure what we need yet. Is that a problem?
No. A lot of engagements start with a short paid discovery — a week of reading the code and talking to your team — which ends in a written plan you can execute with us or without us.
Do you take over-the-wall projects with no technical contact?
Rarely, and we will say so honestly. Supporting development works because there is someone on your side to make decisions. If nobody has capacity for that, a build-and-hand-off engagement with clear milestones is usually the better shape.

Next step

Tell us what has to ship, and by when.

One call, no deck. If we are not the right team for it we will say so, and usually point you at who is.

Start a conversation branislav@thrivee.io

Typical reply within one business day · CET / CEST (UTC+1 / UTC+2)