Your data engine. Always on. Always growing.
Staff-level data engineering, subscription-based. One flat monthly rate, no scope negotiations, no surprises. Your data infrastructure, handled.
What your business looks like after
It's Tuesday afternoon. Your VP of Product is making a roadmap decision. The data is already there - clean, current, trusted. Nobody had to pull it. Nobody had to check it twice. Nobody had to ask engineering to run a query.
Your team ships. Your dashboards don't lie. Your pipelines don't wake anyone up at 2am. That's not what a $500k data engineering hire promises you in year two. That's what your infrastructure looks like when the plumbing is finally done right.
Sound familiar?
The data problems that brought you here
Your only data engineer quit. Nobody else understands the pipelines.
The consultant's code worked great until they left. Now it breaks every week.
Your CEO wants AI, but your data isn't ready for a basic dashboard.
You're spending $15K/month on tools that don't talk to each other.
Two departments show different numbers for the same metric. Nobody knows which is right.
You've been "about to hire a data engineer" for six months. The job posting has 400 applicants and zero good fits.
These aren't people problems. They're plumbing problems. And they don't fix themselves.
The honest math
Before you post the job listing, run the numbers.
A staff-level data engineer isn't just a salary line. Here's what you're actually committing to - and what you're comparing against.
If you hire
One Staff Data Engineer
Base salary
Staff-level, US market - above senior, below principal
Employer payroll taxes
Employer FICA, FUTA, state unemployment
Health, dental & vision
Employer-covered premiums for employee + dependents
401k match (4%)
Standard employer match - scales with salary
Headhunter fee
Base fee + 20–25% of first-year salary - higher because staff-level salaries are higher
Recruiting tools & job postings
LinkedIn Recruiter ($10k/seat/yr), job boards, ATS platform
Coding assessment platform
HackerRank, Codility, CoderPad - required for technical screening
Internal recruiter & outreach time
Staff hours on sourcing, screening, coordinating - not free
Interview panel time
3–5 engineers across 4–5 rounds - real hours at real loaded rates
Equipment & tooling
Laptop, peripherals, software licences, cloud access
Ramp time (3–4 months)
Full staff-level salary paid while output is still partial
Management overhead
3 hrs/week of 1:1s, code reviews, planning at a manager's loaded rate
PTO, holidays & sick days
~35 days/year at staff-level daily rates - nothing ships those days
Training & conferences
Staff-level engineers expect meaningful L&D budgets. Non-negotiable for retention.
Benefits admin & HR overhead
Open enrollment, COBRA, compliance, HR platform costs
Severance if it doesn't work out
1–3 months of staff-level salary - and you still restart the 3–6 month search
Year 1, all-in
One person. One discipline. Locked in for 12 months.
If you subscribe
The Waterworks · Monthly Plan
Monthly rate
Everything included. One number.
Employer payroll taxes
Not your problem
Health, dental & vision
Not your problem
401k match
Not your problem
Headhunter fee
Start this week, not in 4 months
Recruiting tools & job postings
Not your problem
Coding assessment platform
Not your problem
Internal recruiter & outreach time
Not your problem
Interview panel time
Not your problem
Equipment & tooling
Handled entirely on our end
Ramp time
Staff-level output from day one
Management overhead
We manage ourselves
PTO & holidays
We handle our own schedule
Training & conferences
Our investment, not yours
Benefits admin & HR
Not your problem
Severance
Cancel anytime, no conversation needed
Your monthly rate
Data eng + AI/ML + architecture. Cancel anytime.
If you hire
Minimum commitment: 12 months
You're legally and financially obligated from day one. If priorities change, budgets shift, or it's simply not working - you still owe salary, benefits, and severance. There's no clean exit.
If you subscribe
Minimum commitment: 1 month
Start in a month where you need it. Pause if priorities shift. Cancel when you're done. No notice period, no severance, no HR conversation, no legal exposure. One email and you're out.
And compared to the other alternatives
vs. Technical co-founder
Keep your cap table clean
- No equity dilution - 10–25% of your company stays yours
- No co-founder disputes or vesting cliffs to navigate
- Clean cap table that investors actually prefer
- End the engagement cleanly if priorities change
vs. Agencies & consultants
Predictable, not billable
- One flat monthly rate - no $300/hr invoices adding up
- No scope creep negotiations mid-project
- Same staff-level engineer every time, not rotating juniors
- No multi-year contract lock-in
Every plan includes
How we work together
You designate one point of contact
All requests and communication go through one person on your team. No committees, no conflicting priorities. Your team can join the weekly call, but one person owns the relationship.
Initiatives flow through your project board
Submit initiatives, track progress, and manage priorities all in one place. No back-and-forth emails or Slack chaos.
Every submission is reviewed within 24 hours. If an initiative is too large, we'll help break it into smaller cards.
Work happens in two-week sprints
Each sprint has one major priority you set. Focused execution, no context-switching. You always know what's being worked on.
Weekly Loom + call keeps you informed
Every week you get a recorded Loom walkthrough of progress, plus a 30-minute call to discuss priorities and answer questions.
Test-driven development, always
Every deliverable ships with tests. No cowboy code, no "it works on my machine." You get production-ready systems you can trust and maintain.
Requests, not revisions
One request = one deliverable
Submit a request, get a complete deliverable. Simple.
Requirement changes = new request
Scope changes go into the queue. No endless revision cycles.
We'll tell you if it's too big
Large projects get broken into manageable requests.
Example requests
Good request size
- "Add a new data source to our pipeline"
- "Create a dashboard showing weekly sales metrics"
- "Fix the broken Salesforce integration"
- "Add a filter to the executive report"
- "Set up alerts for pipeline failures"
- "Audit our current data warehouse schema"
✕ Too big for one request
- "Build us a complete data warehouse"
- "Create a full BI platform with 20 dashboards"
- "Migrate our entire infrastructure to AWS"
- "Build an AI system from scratch"
These get broken into multiple requests
Example: Custom RAG System
One of our most popular builds. A custom LLM assistant powered by your data sources.
Built with best-in-class tools: This timeline leverages production-ready APIs and libraries (OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, vector databases) - not training custom models from scratch.
Timeline varies by data type: Structured data (APIs, CSVs, databases) = faster. Unstructured data (PDFs, docs, images) requires additional parsing.
Weeks 1-2
Foundation
- Architecture design + data source audit
- Data connectors built (APIs, CSVs, databases)
- Vector database configured
- Initial data ingestion pipeline
Weeks 3-4
Delivery
- RAG pipeline + prompt engineering
- Chat interface or API endpoint
- Automated refresh scheduling
- Documentation + handoff
Why this instead of ChatGPT or Claude directly?
What you walk away with:
Fractional CTO, fixed price
Staff-level engineering. Simple pricing.
No hourly billing. No scope negotiations. No surprises.
Monthly
Maximum flexibility
6 Months
Best for growing teams
+ $34,200 commitment deposit
Due at checkout
$72,200
(deposit + first month)
12 Months
Best value
+ $57,600 commitment deposit
Due at checkout
$89,600
(deposit + first month)
Cloud infrastructure, database fees, AI API usage, and any software licenses are billed directly to you by those providers, not through us. The Data Depot team works within whatever infrastructure you already have or choose to use.
The staff-level multiplier
One staff engineer. The output of an entire team.
A staff-level engineer isn't 20% more productive than a mid-level hire. They're 3–4x more productive - and the gap widens on complex work. They architect systems correctly the first time, anticipate failure modes before they become production incidents, and compress months of junior-team iteration into weeks of focused delivery.
Add in what you're not spending on code reviews, rework, architectural pivots, and the management overhead of coordinating a junior team - and you're looking at a fundamentally different category of output for a comparable total cost.
more productive than a mid-level engineer on complex data systems
Real example: a custom RAG system, delivered in one month.
A knowledge base powered by your own data - the kind of product that can become your core differentiator, unlock new revenue streams, or replace an expensive SaaS tool entirely. At staff level, that's one month of focused work. With a junior-to-mid team, you're looking at three to six months, multiple architectural pivots, and significant rework risk. The difference isn't effort. It's experience.
What faster delivery actually means for your business
Stay bootstrapped longer
Every month you're not hiring is runway preserved. A staff engineer who ships fast lets you do more with what you have - and delay a raise you'd otherwise be forced into.
Raise at a higher valuation
When you do raise, you raise on results - a working product, early users, real revenue signals. That's a fundamentally stronger negotiating position than raising on a roadmap alone.
Faster to the black
The product that generates revenue in month one changes everything. It buys time, creates leverage, and proves the model - before you've spent years and millions building toward it.
Team access
Clear boundaries prevent internal chaos. Here's how your team plugs in.
Who submits requests
Your designated point of contact only. This keeps priorities clear and prevents conflicting asks.
Who joins calls
Anyone on your team. Weekly calls are open to stakeholders who need visibility or have questions.
Who views the board
Your whole team can have view access. Everyone stays informed without creating noise.
What we don't do
Questions
What counts as a "request"?
A request is any discrete deliverable: a dashboard, a pipeline, an integration, an audit, a system design. If it has a clear "done" state, it's one request.
What's the commitment deposit?
The deposit is 15% of your total contract value, charged upfront alongside your first month. It's non-refundable if you cancel early - think of it as locking in your discount.
How does pausing work?
Need to pause? No problem. 6-month plans get 1 month pause, 12-month plans get 2 months. Billing stops, your commitment extends. Use it for holidays, budget freezes, or slow periods.
Who does the work?
You work directly with your dedicated engineer. No committees, no account managers, no telephone games. Direct line to the person doing the work.
Need something built first?
Not ready for a subscription yet? Start with a fixed-scope automation project. No commitment, delivered in 2 weeks.
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