Staff augmentation
Staff augmentation is a vendor placing an engineer on your team for as long as you keep them. Staff augmentation companies price that seat as an hourly or monthly rate that includes a markup on the engineer's pay. A staff augmentation pricing model is how that markup becomes the invoice. On the Arca.ph marketplace, you hire and pay the engineer directly, and you pay a one-time 15% fee of first-year pay, only if you hire.
Staff augmentation means the vendor places an engineer on your team. You direct the work. The vendor bills you for that person for as long as the person stays. In Staff Augmentation Pricing Model: The 4 Ways Vendors Charge You (Matt Watson, Full Scale, October 26, 2026), Matt Watson describes a staff augmentation vendor as selling a person embedded on your team, not a deliverable with an end date. A project shop sells the deliverable. Staff augmentation sells the person.
How staff augmentation differs from project outsourcing is in staff augmentation and project outsourcing. Other ways companies hire are on alternatives.
The engineer in a staff augmentation seat works on your team. The invoice still comes from the vendor. The vendor's price is the engineer's pay plus a markup, packaged as a rate. How that package is written down is the staff augmentation pricing model.
Watson's October 26, 2026 article defines a staff augmentation pricing model as the way a vendor turns developer pay plus a markup into the invoice. He names four. Only the hourly model changes what you are buying. The other three are the same math, developer pay plus a markup, shown with more or less detail.
Those four are Watson's account of how staff augmentation companies price the work.
On the cost-plus model, Watson says the markup for IT and software roles is usually 30 to 50 percent over the developer's pay. He points to staffing industry markup data for that range, and he says general staffing runs a wider 30 to 75 percent. The article does not name the study behind those ranges. They are his summary of that data, not a rate card for every firm, and not Full Scale's own markup stated as a percentage.
He then shows the percentage with an example. He says: take a developer salary of $3,000 a month. A 30 percent margin is a $900 fee that month. Raise that pay to $3,500 and the fee in his example grows to $1,050. The words he uses are "say" and "give that developer a raise." The $3,000, the $900, and the $1,050 are an illustration in Staff Augmentation Pricing Model: The 4 Ways Vendors Charge You. They are not an invoice, and they are not a salary survey.
The fee in that example is charged again the next month. It is not a one-time charge. If the developer's pay rises, the percentage margin rises with it.
A monthly or hourly rate can also rise on a schedule. In Staff Augmentation Contract: The Terms That Actually Matter (Matt Watson, Full Scale, August 31, 2026), Watson says every staff augmentation contract Full Scale signs has a rate escalator of 6% a year, applied as two increases of 3%, one every six months. That 6% is Full Scale's published contract term. It is not the 30 percent in the example above, and this page does not combine the two into one bill.
Arca.ph is a network of remote engineers from around the world. Your own AI agent, such as Grok, Claude, or ChatGPT, searches and sorts that network. You choose who to meet. On the marketplace, you hire and pay the engineer directly. Arca.ph does not bill a monthly rate for as long as the engineer stays.
On the marketplace, the fee is a one-time 15% of first-year pay, charged only on hire, and only if you hire someone Arca.ph introduced. A developer paid $3,000 a month earns $36,000 a year, so the fee is $5,400, once. If the hire is not the right fit, there is a 3-month free replacement. Profiles are free to view once you sign up and sign the Arca.ph Client Agreement. See pricing.
Set Watson's example next to that marketplace example. Both use $3,000 of monthly pay, and they are still two different examples. His $3,000 is a salary inside a cost-plus illustration. The marketplace $3,000 is the pay in Arca.ph's fee example, and you pay that amount to the engineer. The lines below are arithmetic. They are not invoices Watson collected, and they are not a quote for a role that pays a different amount.
Done for you is the other way to hire an engineer. You bring the job. The Arca.ph team finds the people. Proctored English, cognitive and coding tests are included. The fee is 35% of first-year pay, charged once on hire. You still hire and pay the engineer directly. There is a 3-month free replacement. How a one-time fee compares with a monthly markup is in Staffing agency markup rates: how to hire your developer directly. How much recruiters charge is a different bill, in How much do recruiters charge, and are recruiter fees worth it.
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To see what to know about a developer before you hire, read Vetted software developers: what to know before you hire. To tell if a developer can code without AI, read How to tell if a developer can code without AI, and how AI interview cheating detection works. To hire developers for a startup the cheapest way, read How to hire developers for a startup: the cheapest way without lowering the bar.
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This is paid. A real person watches. It is proctored English, cognitive and coding tests with or without AI, the AI-build hackathon, the pair-programming Fire Drill, and recorded reference checks. You pay for the tests you order.
On the marketplace, you search with your own AI agent. Profiles are free to view once you sign up and sign the Arca.ph Client Agreement. You pay for the tests you order. If you hire someone Arca.ph introduced, you pay a one-time 15% fee of first-year pay, charged only on hire. A developer paid $3,000 a month earns $36,000 a year, so the fee is $5,400, once. You hire and pay the engineer directly. If the hire is not the right fit, there is a 3-month free replacement. See pricing and Staffing agency markup rates: how to hire your developer directly.
Done for you is 35% of first-year pay, charged once on hire. On the $36,000 example, that fee is $12,600. You still hire and pay the engineer directly. There is a 3-month free replacement. The fee does not come back the next month.
Create your account and start looking. Profiles are free to view once you sign up and sign the Arca.ph Client Agreement.
Staff augmentation means a vendor places an engineer on your team, and you direct the work. The vendor bills you for that person. Matt Watson, writing for Full Scale on October 26, 2026, calls it a person on your team, not a project with an end date. On Arca.ph you hire and pay the engineer directly.
A staff augmentation pricing model is how a vendor turns developer pay plus a markup into the invoice. Matt Watson, writing for Full Scale on October 26, 2026, names four: hourly, fixed monthly all-in, cost-plus, and salary plus a fixed fee. He writes that only the hourly model changes the unit. The other three are pay plus a markup.
An hourly staff augmentation price is one rate for hours worked, billed monthly. A monthly price is one number per developer, with pay and markup together. Matt Watson, writing for Full Scale on October 26, 2026, says an IT markup is usually 30 to 50 percent over pay. He cites staffing industry markup data and does not name the study.
Matt Watson's October 26, 2026 article uses an example, not a rate card. He says a $3,000 monthly salary with a 30 percent margin is a $900 fee that month. If pay rises to $3,500, the fee in his example rises to $1,050. That fee is charged again the next month. It is his illustration of cost-plus math.
On the marketplace, pay of $3,000 a month is $36,000 a year, so the fee is $5,400, once, only if you hire. You hire and pay the engineer directly. Six months of the $900 markup in Watson's example is also $5,400, and that markup continues. This is arithmetic on his example and on this pay example, not an invoice.
On the marketplace, Arca.ph charges a one-time 15% fee of first-year pay, only if you hire someone it introduced. A developer paid $3,000 a month earns $36,000 a year, so the fee is $5,400, once. Done for you is 35% of first-year pay, charged once on hire. You hire and pay the developer directly. There is a 3-month free replacement.
Profiles are free to view once you sign up and sign the Arca.ph Client Agreement.