Your assigned team
A solutions consultant for requirements and architecture, a project manager, a UX/UI designer and a full-stack developer, named and consistent from sprint to sprint.
Engineering team subscription
A subscription engineering team for the systems you already run
A complete engineering function, priced by the day you use it. A solutions consultant, project manager, designer and full-stack developer assigned to you, with SpotDev's QA, DevOps, security tooling and support behind them. Two-week sprints, a three-month minimum, then 30 days' notice.
Request a Quote
We reply within one business day.
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A subscription engineering team is a standing team that works on your systems every sprint, for a fixed monthly fee, without you hiring, managing or equipping it. It is a third option beside the two most companies know: hiring developers, or handing a project to an agency and waiting for the next one.
SpotDev is an AI and digital transformation consultancy that builds real software. With this subscription you get our team, on our stack and our delivery process, working on what you need: new features, integrations, internal tools, a system a departed developer or agency left behind, or a product that needs a team without the headcount. Many of our clients run on HubSpot. Many do not. The team and the process are the same.
What an engineering function costs to run
Median UK figures from IT Jobs Watch (six months to 20 Sep 2026) and employer rates from gov.uk for 2026/27. Yours will differ; the shape will not.
Without SpotDev
Hiring in-house
With SpotDev
Subscribing
Without SpotDev
One mid-level developer: about £6,300 to £6,800 a month
Median salary £65,000, plus employer National Insurance at 15% above £5,000 and a 3% pension contribution, plus recruitment. One person, one skill set, one point of failure.
With SpotDev
One day a week: £5,000 a month
A day of development each week, plus a solutions consultant, project manager, QA, DevOps, monitoring and security review that are not deducted from your days.
Without SpotDev
Developer, project manager, QA and DevOps: about £23,500 a month
Salary, NI and pension on medians of £65,000, £55,750, £50,000 and £72,500. About £25,500 with recruitment fees spread over two years. No designer yet.
With SpotDev
Dedicated team: £20,500 a month
All five roles including design, with QA, DevOps, security tooling and £2,500 of AI credits included, from the first sprint, on 30 days' notice after three months.
Without SpotDev
A contractor at the median £525 a day
Cheaper than any plan for raw hours. You get one person's time, in your tools, with no QA, DevOps, design, management or cover when they are away.
With SpotDev
Every plan costs more than a contractor's hours
And buys what a contractor cannot provide: a team, a process, tooling, monitoring, an SLA and continuity when people change.
Without SpotDev
Three to six months to recruit, then ramp-up
Before the first useful sprint.
With SpotDev
Two weeks to a working sprint
The team already knows the stack, the process and each other.
A team, not a seat
Your days are development and design time. Everything else on this list is bundled and not deducted from them.
QA as a function
SpotDev's QA team and process test what ships, so your developer's time is spent building rather than checking their own work.
DevOps and delivery
Environments, CI/CD, releases and rollback run on SpotDev's tooling and delivery lifecycle, the same way for every client.
Monitoring and security on every change
Sentry error and performance monitoring hosted in the EU. Every pull request reviewed automatically for bugs and for security issues before it merges. Scheduled scans of the whole codebase and of its dependencies.
AI credits, spent well
A monthly credit allowance covers the compute your team's coding, review and scanning tools use, passed through at cost. Each task is routed to the most cost-effective capable model, and an engineer overrides the routing when they know a specific model suits the job.
Maintenance and support
Proactive dependency and framework updates, changelog reviews before we upgrade, and a support SLA during UK business hours, all included.
Priced by the day, billed monthly
Choose the days a week you need. Every plan includes the full team, QA, DevOps, monitoring, security review and support, and none of that is deducted from your days. Three-month minimum, then 30 days' notice. Prices exclude VAT.
One day a week
£5,000 a month
Keep a system secure, current and improving.
- The equivalent of one engineering day a week, delivered across each two-week sprint
- £500 of AI credits a month
- Assigned solutions consultant, project manager, designer and developer
- QA, DevOps, monitoring and security review included
- Proactive updates, changelog reviews and support SLA
- Best for a system we have built or already onboarded
Two days a week
£9,000 a month
A small feature shipped every sprint.
- Two engineering days a week across each sprint
- £1,000 of AI credits a month
- Assigned solutions consultant, project manager, designer and developer
- QA, DevOps, monitoring and security review included
- Proactive updates, changelog reviews and support SLA
- Room for one improvement or integration per sprint alongside upkeep
- Recommended
Three days a week
£13,000 a month
A steady build programme.
- Three engineering days a week across each sprint
- £1,500 of AI credits a month
- Assigned solutions consultant, project manager, designer and developer
- QA, DevOps, monitoring and security review included
- Proactive updates, changelog reviews and support SLA
- A feature or integration shipped most sprints, with upkeep covered
- Unused days carry into the next sprint
Four days a week
£16,500 a month
A build programme with room for the unexpected.
- Four engineering days a week across each sprint
- £2,000 of AI credits a month
- Assigned solutions consultant, project manager, designer and developer
- QA, DevOps, monitoring and security review included
- Proactive updates, changelog reviews and support SLA
- Capacity to absorb urgent work without stopping the roadmap
- Unused days carry into the next sprint
Dedicated team: £20,500 a month
A product or platform team without the hiring. Five engineering days a week across each sprint, £2,500 of AI credits a month, and the full team: solutions consultant, project manager, UX/UI designer and full-stack developer, with SpotDev's QA and DevOps. Unused days carry into the next sprint. Compare it with the in-house figures above: four hires cost about £23,500 a month before a designer, recruitment or tooling. Out-of-hours support cover can be quoted separately. Request a Quote
Included in every plan and not deducted from your days: solutions consulting, project management, QA, DevOps, monitoring, security review and scans, changelog reviews, proactive updates, support SLA.
Try it for one sprint
Two weeks at the one-day-a-week rate, £2,500, with the full team and process. If you continue on any plan within 30 days, the £2,500 is credited against your first month. If you do not, you keep everything we built and documented.
How the team works
The same two-week cycle on every plan. Your days set how much moves each sprint; the process does not change.
- 01
Onboarding sprint
Access, environments, repositories, monitoring and a shared backlog set up in the first two weeks, with your solutions consultant documenting the systems as they are.
- 02
Sprint planning
Your project manager and solutions consultant agree the sprint's scope with you, sized to your days, with requirements written before code starts.
- 03
Build
Your developer and designer work in Cursor, SpotDev's development platform, with OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code as further coding tools, under the AI rules below.
- 04
Review on every change
Every pull request is reviewed by an engineer and checked automatically for bugs and security issues before it merges.
- 05
Test
SpotDev's QA team tests against the sprint's requirements. You accept the work before release.
- 06
Release
Deployed through SpotDev's CI/CD to your environments, with rollback ready.
- 07
Monitor
Sentry watches errors and performance, hosted in the EU. Alerts raised in business hours are handled under the SLA; those raised out of hours are picked up the next business morning.
- 08
Maintain
Dependency and framework updates are reviewed against their changelogs before they are applied, and scheduled scans of the codebase and its dependencies catch issues that predate the sprint.
A dedicated team with modern processes and a clear SLA
This is not staff augmentation
We do not place developers inside your tools, your backlog or your conventions. You get our team, running on our stack, our QA and our security process, the same way for every client we work with. That consistency is the point: it is why a two-week sprint means the same thing whichever plan you are on, and why the quality does not depend on which individual we assign.
How we use AI, and what the credits cover
- Tools. Cursor is our development platform. OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code are used alongside it.
- Your code is not training data. SpotDev's Cursor Teams account runs with Privacy Mode enabled and locked, so client code is not used to train Cursor's or its model providers' models. Claude Code is used under Anthropic's commercial terms and Codex under OpenAI's business terms, neither of which trains on customer content.
- Routing. Each coding task is routed automatically to the most cost-effective model capable of it. Our engineers override that choice when they know a particular model suits the work.
- Review. Bugbot reviews every pull request for bugs and code quality before it merges. Cursor's Security Reviewer checks every pull request for vulnerabilities, authentication regressions and data-handling risk. A scheduled scan checks the whole codebase for vulnerabilities independently of pull requests. GitHub's Dependabot watches dependencies.
- Credits. Your plan's AI credits cover the compute used by these coding, review and scanning tools, billed at the providers' own usage rates and passed through at cost. Unused credits roll into the following month. Usage beyond your allowance and any rolled-over credits is billed weekly in arrears, at cost.
- Accountability. Every line that ships is reviewed by a SpotDev engineer, tested by SpotDev's QA team and covered by the same terms as code written by hand.
Support SLA
UK business hours, Monday to Friday 09:00 to 17:30, excluding bank holidays. "Respond" means a named owner has acknowledged the issue and told you the plan.
| Severity | Means | We respond | We aim to |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 Critical | System unusable for its users, or a live security incident, no workaround | Within 1 business hour | Work continuously in business hours until mitigated. Raised out of hours, picked up at 09:00 next business day |
| P2 High | A key feature down or badly degraded, or a security issue with a workaround | Within 4 business hours | Fix or workaround within 2 business days |
| P3 Medium | One feature or a limited group affected, workaround exists | Next business day | Schedule into the current or next sprint |
| P4 Low | Cosmetic issue, minor request or question | Within 2 business days | Address in routine sprint work |
Your code, your IP
Identical to our bespoke software terms: IP assigned to you outright as it is paid for, source code in a repository you control, documentation and handover included, escrow on request. Ending the subscription does not affect your ownership of anything already delivered.
Systems our team has built and run
Peregrine Finance: broker portal
A standalone web application for an asset finance broker: proposal builder, regulated and unregulated quote calculator, lender-ready PDFs and a governed sync into HubSpot.
Superior: TAC scheduling portal
A portal coordinating thousands of equipment-upgrade appointments during US bank mergers, which went on to become a profitable business unit for the client in its own right.
Icon Solutions: learning portal
A learning management portal delivering courses and progress tracking to payments teams at major banks worldwide, replacing manually run client enablement with self-service.
Wolsey Hall Oxford: family portal
A self-service portal consolidating admissions, student progress and parent communications into one system for a distance-learning school, its families and partner schools.
“5.0 from 38 client reviews: see our case studies
What clients say about working with our engineers
Brilliant service from real professionals. What really stands them out is how clearly they explained the problems with no fuss or drama.
Peter CraneGunnebo
Certified, accredited and reviewed
SpotDev is a UK software engineering firm with an in-house engineering team.
We are an OpenAI Select Partner, are Certified in the Claude Partner Network, hold Cyber Essentials Plus, and are a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner with Custom Integration and Onboarding accreditations.
5.0from 38 client reviews
Cyber Essentials Plus
Security controls tested by an independent assessor
OpenAI Select Partner
Recognised in OpenAI's partner programme at Select tier
Custom Integration Accredited
Accredited by HubSpot for complex systems integrations
Independently verified
- Cyber Essentials Plus certified
- OpenAI Select Partner
- Certified in the Claude Partner Network
- HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner
Engineering team subscription: questions we are asked
What is included in the subscription?
An assigned solutions consultant, project manager, UX/UI designer and full-stack developer; SpotDev's QA and DevOps; Sentry monitoring; automated bug and security review on every change and scheduled codebase scans; proactive updates and changelog reviews; a business-hours support SLA; and a monthly AI credit allowance. Your plan sets the engineering days a week. Everything else is bundled and not deducted.
Why is it priced by the day and not by the hour?
Hours turn a team into a timesheet. Days set a sprint's capacity, which is what you actually plan against, and they let us bundle the management, testing and tooling around the work without metering every conversation.
What happens to a day we do not use?
Your days are scheduled by SpotDev across each two-week sprint, so in normal running there are no unused days: the team works the plan's capacity on your backlog. On plans of three days a week and above, if you cannot supply work or access for a sprint, that sprint's unused days carry into the next one. On the one and two day plans, days are used within their sprint.
What happens to unused AI credits?
They roll into the following month. Credits are passed through at cost, and any usage beyond your allowance and rolled-over credits is billed weekly in arrears, also at cost.
Who is on our team, and do the same people stay?
You are assigned a named solutions consultant, project manager, designer and developer, and we keep them consistent from sprint to sprint. When someone changes, the handover happens inside our team, on our documentation and process, not on your time.
Is this staff augmentation?
No. We do not place people inside your tools, backlog or conventions. You get our team on our stack and process, which is what makes quality consistent across every plan and every client.
What if our priorities change mid-sprint?
Tell your project manager. Work not yet started is re-planned at no cost. Where work has already started, the time spent on it stands and only the remaining time is re-planned.
Do we have to use SpotDev's tech stack?
Yes, for what we build and run. That is the trade for consistent quality, bundled QA and DevOps, and a fixed monthly price. Where you have existing systems, we integrate with them rather than adopting their toolchain.
What do the AI credits cover?
The compute used by the coding, review and scanning tools on your work: Cursor, Codex and Claude Code usage, Bugbot and Security Reviewer runs, and scheduled vulnerability scans. Billed at the providers' usage rates and passed through at cost.
Is our code used to train AI models?
No. Our Cursor Teams account runs with Privacy Mode enabled and locked. Claude Code is used under Anthropic's commercial terms and Codex under OpenAI's business terms, neither of which trains on customer content.
How do QA and security work if we are not running them?
Every pull request is reviewed by an engineer and checked automatically for bugs and security issues before it merges. SpotDev's QA team tests each sprint's work against its requirements, and you accept it before release. Sentry monitors production, and scheduled scans check the codebase and its dependencies.
What if we want to leave or bring the work in-house?
Give 30 days' notice after the three-month minimum. Everything delivered is yours: IP assigned, source in a repository you control, documentation and a handover session. Escrow is available on request.
Is there a minimum term, and can we try it first?
Three months, then 30 days' notice. You can start with a two-week trial sprint at £2,500, credited against your first month if you continue within 30 days.
How does the cost compare with hiring?
On UK medians from IT Jobs Watch and gov.uk, one mid-level developer fully loaded is about £6,300 to £6,800 a month, and a developer, project manager, QA engineer and DevOps engineer together about £23,500 a month before recruitment or a designer. The dedicated team is £20,500 a month with all five roles. For raw hours a contractor is cheaper than any plan; what the plans buy is the team, process, tooling and continuity around those hours.
Do we have to be a HubSpot customer?
No. Many of our clients run on HubSpot and we hold HubSpot's Diamond partner tier, but the subscription is the same team and process whatever systems you run.
Related services
The subscription sits beside our fixed-scope work and our other recurring plans. These are the ones buyers compare it with.
Tell us what the team should work on first
Describe the systems and the backlog, not the plan you think you need. We will recommend one, or tell you a fixed-scope project is the better fit. We reply within one business day.