9io.ai / Dedicated team
A whole product team, without hiring one.
The technical lead, engineers, designer, product manager and QA you would otherwise spend a year recruiting — already working together, and available on your build this month.
You pay by the hour for the people on it. Take the whole team, or just the roles you're missing.
The same named people, on your product.
Not a pool of whoever is free that week. The same people stay on the work, so nobody has to rebuild the context every fortnight.
Technical lead
Turns the plan into working stages, reviews everything that ships, and keeps the engineers unblocked. The person who knows the state of the build on any given day.
Senior full-stack engineers
The people writing the product — interface, API, data and the infrastructure it runs on. Senior enough to own a feature end to end and to raise a problem before it becomes a rewrite.
Product designer
Designs screens engineers can actually build, with a design system behind them and accessibility built in, so what ships is what was designed.
Product manager
Holds scope, order and what counts as done — agreed before work starts rather than argued about afterwards.
QA
Tests every checkpoint against the agreed criteria before it reaches you, so your review time goes on judgement instead of finding obvious bugs.
Fractional CTO optional
Where the build needs someone accountable for architecture and security above the team. Not every build does, and we'll say so. More on that role →
Building the team takes a year. The product needs one this quarter.
Instead of hiring
Six roles is six searches, six notice periods and six salaries that start before the product does — run in sequence. This team already exists and already works together.
Instead of freelancers
Five contractors is five ways of working and nobody accountable for the seams between them. Every piece can be defensible while the whole thing isn't.
Instead of an agency
No blended day rate, no account manager sitting between you and the people building, and no contingency buried inside a fixed fee. You see the hours and the names.
Three steps, no surprises.
Tell us what you're building
One email is enough. No forms, and no sales call you have to sit through.
Get a proposal with names on it
Which roles the build needs, who'd fill them, how many hours, and the rate for each. Cut anything you don't want before you sign.
Watch it get built
A staging link early on and a short update every Friday. You're invoiced only for work that's landed, and 10% waits until you've accepted it.
We don't show client logos. We show something we built.
9io Alpha is a market research platform this same team designed, built and runs: data ingestion, an AI research pipeline, a dense operator interface and two broker integrations.
It's useful proof precisely because no single role could have made it. The data and execution layers are engineering, the terminal is interface design under real pressure, and the order things were built in is product management.
Take a look →- Built byThe same roster you'd get: lead, engineers, design, product and QA.
- RunningOn our own infrastructure, with continuous deploys and alerting from day one.
- Still oursWe operate it daily, so we live with the decisions we made — the way you will with yours.
Questions we get a lot.
Can we take only some of the roles?
Yes. Plenty of builds start with a technical lead and two engineers, and add a designer or QA once there is enough work to justify them. The proposal says which roles we think you need and why, and you can cut any of them before you sign.
Can we change the size of the team later?
Yes, at a month boundary with 30 days' notice. Because you pay by the hour for work that is already done, a quieter month is simply a smaller invoice rather than a renegotiation. If you stop altogether there is no retainer to unwind.
How do we know what the hours actually bought?
Every invoice points at checkpoints you can open and look at, and invoices go out twice a month so there is never a long gap between the work and the evidence. On top of that you get a short written update every Friday, and 10% of each invoice waits until you have accepted the milestone.
What does this cost compared with hiring the same team?
Hiring the same roster means several searches, several notice periods and several permanent salaries that start before the product does. Here you pay for the hours the work actually needs, and it stops when the work stops. We don't publish rates because they depend on which roles you need and for how long; they're in the proposal before you commit to anything.
When should we build the team in-house instead?
When the product is the company and you expect a large permanent engineering team inside the year, hire. When the hard part is domain knowledge that has to compound inside people who aren't going anywhere, hire.
This works best while you're still proving what to build, while the work swings month to month, or while you want the product shipped before a hiring plan has even been approved. It also works as a bridge: build now, hire underneath it later, and take over something that already runs.
Tell us what you're building.
Describe the product, where it is today and which roles you're missing. You'll get a straight read on the team it actually needs — including the parts you should keep in-house.
Replies come from the person who'd do the work.