Prepaid engineering hours
Senior Engineering Block
Some backlogs change too quickly for one fixed deliverable. A Senior Engineering Block gives you a prepaid pool of senior cloud, network, and security hours to use on the work you choose: investigations, reviews, debugging, changes, and small pieces of implementation.
Tell us what’s going onAt a glance
- Best for
- A changing backlog in a known technical area
- Purchase
- A prepaid block of senior engineering hours
- Good uses
- Investigations, reviews, changes, debugging, and small builds
- Boundary
- Not 24/7 operations or emergency on-call coverage
When a block of engineering hours fits
Common situation: the backlog mixes an outage investigation, a pull-request review, a networking fix, and the next security decision. Writing a new project scope for every item would cost more effort than the work. A block fits when the domain is clear but the order and exact mix of tasks will change as your team learns.
What the block can produce
- Working changes, reviewed pull requests, fixes, and small implementations completed from the agreed backlog.
- Investigation notes that state the cause, evidence, decision, and recommended next action.
- Runbooks, diagrams, and decision notes created while doing the work — stored with your systems, not in a private portal.
- A shared work log showing the items taken on, artifacts changed, time used, and hours remaining.
Not a subscription, staff-augmentation seat, managed-service retainer, or promise of emergency response.
How the block runs
- 01
Set the block
We agree the technical area, initial priorities, block size, approval path, and reporting cadence in writing.
- 02
Choose the next item
Your team selects the next useful investigation, review, change, question, or small implementation from the backlog.
- 03
Do the work
We work directly in the agreed systems and repositories, leaving each item reviewable and documented.
- 04
Keep the record visible
The work log shows what changed, decisions made, time used, and the hours still available for the next item.
Block shape
We agree the size of the prepaid block, the initial backlog, how new items are approved, and how usage is reported before work starts. Hours are used only on work you ask us to take on. The block can stand alone or follow any fixed-scope project.
A prepaid block, with its working rules agreed in writing.
- The initial backlog, approval path, and usage reporting are set before work starts.
- Hours are used only for items your team asks us to take on.
- Defects in work we ship are covered by the 90-day warranty, not deducted from the block.
- This is not 24/7 monitoring, emergency response, or a managed-service retainer.
An illustrative example of the format
# Senior Engineering Block — work log
Block: 40 hours prepaid
Used: 13.5 hours
Left: 26.5 hours
## Completed
### Investigate intermittent VPN drops — 4.0 h
Cause: two sites advertising the same failover route at equal priority.
Changed: network/bgp/site-b.tf, runbooks/vpn-failover.md
Result: route preference is explicit; failover tested with the client team.
### Review production IAM change — 2.5 h
Decision: reject wildcard resource scope; split deploy and read roles.
Changed: decision-notes/2026-07-iam-review.md
### Add expiring-credential alerting — 7.0 h
Changed: monitoring/entra-credentials/, runbooks/key-rotation.md
Result: owners now receive an alert 30, 14, and 7 days before expiry.
## Next items proposed by the client
- Trace slow DNS resolution from the warehouse VLAN
- Review the next landing-zone pull request
- Pair with the platform team on the first account migrationFAQ
Questions about the block
How does pricing work?
Defined projects are fixed scope and fixed price, agreed in writing before we start. Most prices depend on the footprint and constraints, so we do not publish a universal price list. One useful anchor: most first Cloud Security Reviews are $8,500–$15,000 CAD. For a changing backlog, a Senior Engineering Block gives you a prepaid pool of hours to use on agreed work. Tell us what is going on and we will propose the appropriate shape and price; then you decide.
What about availability and capacity?
We run a small number of engagements at once so each gets senior attention. That can mean waiting for a start slot; we give you a written start date before you commit. Fixed-scope projects have an agreed scope and timeline. Engineering Blocks have an agreed size, initial backlog, approval path, and usage model. If your real need is round-the-clock operational coverage, that is a managed-service retainer — which is not us — and we will say so rather than overpromise.
What access do you need, and how do you handle our data and credentials?
Discovery normally uses scoped, read-only IAM roles that you create and can revoke — not long-lived keys handed to us. Where possible, implementation runs inside your tenancy and CI. Any exports, working copies, retention, deletion, data location, and required service providers are scoped for the engagement and agreed before access is granted. You can inspect the public site too: cookie-free self-hosted analytics, a clean CSP, no session replay, and no advertising trackers.
Can we keep you around after the engagement?
Yes. A Senior Engineering Block is a prepaid pool of hours for agreed investigations, reviews, changes, debugging, questions, or small pieces of implementation. It can follow a project or stand on its own. It is not a subscription, managed-service retainer, or emergency on-call service. Hands-on training is also available on your real environment rather than generic courseware. Neither is required; project handovers are designed so your team can run the result without us.
What if something breaks after you’ve handed over and left?
Work we ship includes a 90-day warranty: if it does not behave as documented, we fix it at no charge — that is a defect, not new scope or time deducted from an Engineering Block. The code and documentation use standard tools your team or another engineer can maintain. If you want us back, the follow-on can be another defined project or a prepaid block of hours.