View
Fintech
AI Marketplace Platform
UI/UX DesignFull-stack Development+3
The flagship
A product team that runs with the work.
Engineers, a designer and a PM as the work needs them, led by a named US product lead who owns the result rather than the ticket. Inside your process, your repos and your standups.
A monthly team rate, set by the squad you need. Month to month, so the team always matches the work.
EMBEDDED PRODUCT TEAMA NAMED LEADYOUR BACKLOGBILLED MONTHLYUS TIME-ZONE OVERLAPSCALE WITH THE WORKEMBEDDED PRODUCT TEAMA NAMED LEADYOUR BACKLOGBILLED MONTHLYUS TIME-ZONE OVERLAPSCALE WITH THE WORKEMBEDDED PRODUCT TEAMA NAMED LEADYOUR BACKLOGBILLED MONTHLYUS TIME-ZONE OVERLAPSCALE WITH THE WORK
WHAT YOU GET
A team, and someone accountable for it
- 01
A named product lead
One senior person who owns the outcome, sits in your planning, argues with you about priorities, and is answerable when something goes wrong. This is the difference between hiring a team and hiring capacity.
- 02
A squad sized to the work
Engineers, a designer and a PM in whatever mix the roadmap needs. Every person is a senior practitioner, and the person who scoped the work is on the work.
- 03
Inside your process, not beside it
Your repos, your CI, your board, your definition of done. The knowledge the team builds stays connected to your organisation instead of leaving with an invoice.
- 04
Real time-zone overlap
US-led, with senior delivery engineers overlapping your working day. Questions asked in the morning are answered the same morning.
- 05
Month-to-month terms
Scale up when the roadmap grows, scale down when it does not. The commitment renews monthly, so staying is a decision you make rather than a contract you are stuck in.
- 06
A start that is small if you want it
You can begin with the product lead alone, one or two days a week, and add the squad once you know the fit is right. Plenty of teams have.
THE RHYTHM
What a month with us actually looks like
The question that decides a monthly contract is not whether we can build it. It is whether this is still working in month nine. Here is the machinery that keeps it working, written down so you can hold us to it.
Every day
Your standup, your Slack, your board
The team joins your standup, not a separate one. Questions get answered in your channels by the person writing the code, with no account manager in between.
Every week
A written progress note from the lead
What shipped, what moved, what is blocked and what we would change about the plan. Short enough to read, specific enough to forward to a board.
Every two weeks
Demo and re-prioritisation
Working software, not slides. You reset priorities against what you learned since the last one, and the team picks the new order up the next morning.
Every month
The team decision
Terms renew monthly, so once a month you decide whether the shape is right. Add a seat, drop one, or change the mix. No renegotiation cycle and no lock-in to argue your way out of.
Every quarter
A step back with the lead
Where the product is going, what the architecture will not support much longer, and what we would do differently. This is the part a staffing arrangement cannot give you.
WHY THIS SHAPE
Why an embedded team beats the alternatives
Hiring senior engineers takes months and concentrates risk in individuals. A marketplace gives you capacity with no continuity. This sits between them, and it is the shape our longest relationships have taken.
Someone owns the result
Staffing arrangements hand you people and leave the thinking to you. The lead here owns outcomes, which means telling you when the plan is wrong, not just executing it faster.
Continuity you can plan around
The team that builds your product is the team that keeps it running. Context compounds instead of resetting every engagement, which is where most of the speed actually comes from.
Senior-only, no bait and switch
The people who scope the work do the work. You are not sold a principal and delivered juniors.
Faster than hiring, reversible unlike hiring
A full squad in weeks rather than quarters, and if the shape is wrong you change it next month instead of running a performance process.
US-led and accountable
A US company, a US contract and a US product lead in your time zone. Not a remote-only shop borrowing an address.
A deliberate concentration ceiling
We hold no single client above roughly a quarter of our revenue. It protects you from a vendor whose survival depends on your account, and it is why we will sometimes route work elsewhere.
HOW WE STAFF
US-led, with senior engineers across your working day
Design Key is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, registered in Florida, and the founder lives here. We are not a remote-only shop borrowing a city name. Your product lead is US-based and your contract is with a US company.
The delivery engineers are senior practitioners in Europe and Latin America. The European side overlaps the US working day through early afternoon Eastern, the Americas side covers through the evening, so there is no handoff gap where your questions sit overnight.
We put this here rather than in the headline on purpose. Where an engineer sits is a reasonable question and we answer it plainly. It is not the reason to hire us.
Accountability
A named US product lead, in your time zone, answerable for the result.
Delivery
Senior engineers across Europe and Latin America, overlapping your day rather than trailing it.
Contract
A US entity, a US agreement, and an NDA before scoping if you want one.
TEAM TOOLKIT
Stacks our teams work in
Whatever your codebase runs on, the team you get has shipped production code with it before.
React
Next.js
TypeScript
Node.js
NestJS
.NET
Flutter
PostgreSQL
AWS
AzureDocker
Kubernetes
GraphQL
Case studies
Real projects we've shipped
Products our teams built and then kept building, in production and serving real users.
HOW ENGAGEMENTS START
Three ways to work with us
Most engagements start on the first rung and grow. You are not committing to the destination by taking the first step.
Start here
Product & Architecture Review
You have a system that is straining, or a build you are about to commit to, and you want an honest read before you spend.
Two to three weeks, fixed price, credited in full against the build if you go ahead.
Fixed price, quoted before we startCredited toward the build
Product & Architecture ReviewThe flagship
You are hereEmbedded Product Team
You have product work every month and no team that can just run with it, or you are carrying a vendor who cannot.
A senior squad and a named US product lead who owns the outcome, inside your process, billed monthly.
A monthly team rate, set by the squad you needMonth to month
This pageFixed scope
Product Build
You know what needs to exist, and you need a team that will get the strategy right before it starts writing code.
Strategy and architecture first, then the build, ending in a team engagement rather than a handoff.
$150,000 to $400,00020 to 32 weeks
Product BuildYou do not have to pick the last one to start. A review or a prototype from $5,000 is how most of our longest relationships opened, and both are credited toward whatever you build next. Where those relationships ended up is the embedded team, years later.
FAQ
Embedded team questions, answered
What people ask before putting a team on a monthly contract.
Ready to get started?
Talk to the person who would run it
Thirty minutes with the product lead, not a salesperson. Bring the problem you are trying to unblock rather than a requirements list.
NDA Protected
100% Satisfaction
Dedicated Team
Reply in 1 Business Day
Also known as a dedicated development team or team extension. See the full capability list.