Software and AI engineering for enterprises that fits your procurement, your security review and the process you already run.
Senior in-house engineers who work inside your team, your sprints and your tooling. Nothing separate is charged for sourcing, vetting or placing an engineer, so a candidate you turn down costs you the interview and nothing else.
Procurement, a security review and a codebase somebody else wrote are usually harder than the engineering. This page is about all three, and about which engagement model fits which situation.
- 100+Senior in-house engineers, six countries
- 120+Projects delivered across 12 countries since 2012
- 2 to 4 weeksTypical time from signature to start
- ISO 27001Certified security practice, audited by Quay Audit UK
- ISTQBCertified QA inside every sprint
01Overview
What it takes to put outside engineers inside a team that already works
Adding engineering capacity to an organisation that already has engineers is a different purchase from outsourcing a project: the people join a codebase, a change process and a release calendar that all exist already, and the supplier has to clear procurement first. unicrew (founded 2012, formerly Artelogic) supplies senior in-house engineers who work inside those constraints rather than around them. Clients put it in those terms: a German hotel-content platform came to us to "Extend capacities in software development", a building-security software company reports engineers "fully integrated into our teams and workflows", and Interone in Munich ran ours inside its own Scrum team with no unicrew management layer in between.
- Read someone else's codeThe first ticket is never greenfield. It is a system with history, conventions, and a reason behind every odd decision in it.
- Codebase and domain onboarding
- Existing conventions kept
- Questions asked, not assumed
- Clear procurementCertificates, an EU contracting entity and signed paperwork, before anyone is issued a login.
- ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015
- EU entity, Artelogic OÜ
- NDA and contract first
- Pass the security reviewOn a build engagement, least-privilege access agreed with your technical contact and nothing wider.
- Access agreed, then granted
- Read-only where the work allows
- Your cloud where required
- Work in your processYour sprints, your board, your definition of done. Clients run us on their own tooling rather than a portal we impose.
- Your ceremonies and cadence
- Your repo and pipeline
- Your reporting lines
- Change the size laterCapacity that goes up for a release and back down afterwards, without a recruitment cycle on your side.
- Up for a phase
- Down when it eases
- No fee to source or place
02Models
Three shapes this comes in, and who owns delivery in each
The choice is about who owns delivery, not how many people arrive. Named engineers under your leads is one answer; a managed team with a unicrew delivery lead on top is another. If you do not yet know which you should be buying, that is a short technology advisory conversation and we would rather have it first.
| Engineers in your teamTeam extension | A dedicated teamStanding unit | A managed teamWe own the plan |
|---|---|---|
| Best whenYou have leads and a working process, and the gap is capacity or one named skill. | Best whenThe roadmap keeps going and you want a standing unit whose priorities you set. | Best whenThe outcome is defined and your own engineering leadership has no room to run another team. |
| Who owns deliveryYou do. Our engineers take work from your board and report into your leads. | Who owns deliveryShared. The unit runs its own internal process; you own the roadmap and acceptance. | Who owns deliveryWe do. A named unicrew delivery lead owns the plan, the cadence and the reporting. |
| What your side suppliesDay-to-day direction, code review, and someone who answers questions inside a day. | What your side suppliesPriorities, acceptance, and a product owner the unit can reach. | What your side suppliesThe outcome, the constraints, and a decision-maker for scope changes. |
03Capabilities
The roles we staff, and the work each one has already done here
Six roles, each evidenced by published work inside a client's own engineering organisation rather than by a catalogue of everything a large vendor lists.
The most common ask: an existing frontend team that needs more hands on the same conventions.
- On the record
- Goldn's frontend team, extended for a year
Custom features built alongside your own head of software development, in your service boundaries.
- On the record
- An ERP SaaS provider, since September 2022
App rebuilds and new features shipped to production stores under the client's own release process.
- On the record
- Production apps for a building-security vendor
Work that goes from a user-facing feature down to the tagging, embeddings and data underneath it.
- On the record
- An embedded engineer on meinUnterricht's search team
ISTQB-certified QA sits inside the sprint on every engagement, not as a pass bolted on at the end.
- On the record
- Automated tests the client could run themselves
The person who turns a stakeholder request into something your team can estimate and accept.
- On the record
- A QC/BA embedded in JewelCandle's IT team
04Vetting
How a candidate reaches your interview, and what your reviewers get
Two halves of one question: how a person gets in front of you and what it costs you to say no, then what your security and vendor review actually receives.
Your requirements shape the profile
A Hamburg ERP SaaS provider had us join its own candidate interviews and refine the profile between rounds until the recommendations matched what it actually needed.
- In practice
- We learn your bar by watching you use it
You interview, and a no costs nothing
JewelCandle's head of IT told Clutch that unicrew "don’t move forward with a candidate who doesn’t meet our requirements", and "They don’t charge us for that part of the service."
- In practice
- Rejections are not billable
No recruitment or placement fee
The engagement is priced monthly, per team or per engineer. Nothing separate is charged for sourcing, vetting or placing an engineer, so scaling up triggers no fee.
- In practice
- Monthly, per team or per engineer
ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015
Information security and quality management, both renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK. Current certificates go to your procurement contact on the first call.
- In the review
- The controls a questionnaire asks about
ISTQB-certified QA inside the sprint
Barrett Values Centre received "working code and automated tests that allowed us to independently QA/UAT the work with a variety of data sets", which is the shape test evidence should take.
- In the review
- Tests your own team can run
Least-privilege access, agreed first
Contracts and NDAs before anyone starts. On a build engagement we work from access agreed with your technical contact, read-only wherever the work allows, and inside your own cloud where required. Rescue and maintenance work is scoped separately.
- In the review
- An access list, not a blanket login
Motivation, not only skill
In an otherwise five-star review, Goldn's CTO wrote that "While pre-screening and selection of project members was overall good, a more thorough evaluation of motivation of candidates would have made the experience even better." Skill is the easy half of vetting, and a supplier who screens only for it will eventually send you somebody competent who does not want the work. Ask us, and everyone else on your list, what they check past the technical interview.
A standard interview finds people who interview well. Inside a large organisation the useful question is different: can this engineer read code someone left behind, sit through your change process, and still be useful in week two. So test against your constraints, not a puzzle, and ask any supplier to confirm the person you interview is the person who starts.
Maria OliinykHead of Recruitment, unicrew05Proof
What this looks like where it has already happened
Three things this page evidences with a client's own words or an attested fact, and nothing that asks you to take a logo wall on faith.
- Engineers inside the client's own team, on the recordA hotel-content platform, Goldn, a building-security software company, meinUnterricht and a climate-tech SaaS platform, each backed by a verified Clutch review. The hotel-content platform's brief was to "Extend capacities in software development"; Goldn's was to "Extend the existing frontend development team".5published embedded engagements
- An outcome the client measured, not one we claimmeinUnterricht's Director of Product & Engineering writes: "Our headline result was a controlled experiment showing a roughly 9 percent lift in search success rate." Our engineer worked on their search and discovery team "scoping, building, shipping, and measuring impact", alongside their own product and engineering leads.9%higher search success rate
- Nothing charged for finding the personTeam extension and dedicated teams are priced monthly, per team or per engineer. Sourcing, vetting and placing sit inside that price, so raising your bar costs interview time on both sides rather than a fee that rewards a fast yes.0recruitment or placement fees
06Client voices
What engineering and IT leaders say
Artelogic anticipates our needs and meets them before we even identify them. My team lead wants to keep both of Artelogic’s developers on the project until the product’s release. We have a backlog of 40 big projects, so I only see Artelogic’s involvement increasing.
Shippable and well received web GUI for previously API only application. The whole team is highly dedicated to the success of the project and delivers the planned artefacts on time. We are very happy to have chosen Artelogic.
The project led to the release of our production apps and a prototype showcasing new features. They were reliable, responsive, and consistently addressed our needs very well. We were impressed by their strong technical and interpersonal skills and how smoothly they adapted to our team, processes, and product.
Meeting our deadlines as well as achieving the story points committed to the (end-)client. We were very happy with the contribution and work of Artelogic.
Our headline result was a controlled experiment showing a roughly 9 percent lift in search success rate. The features built are live in production, and the AI tagging and embeddings work set up our move to vector search. What stands out most is their ability to own work end to end, from user-facing search features to the AI and data layer underneath.
07Case studies
Three engagements inside somebody else's engineering team
Three starting points: a capacity extension that shipped a customer-facing GUI, a frontend team extended for a year, and one embedded engineer who owned a search roadmap end to end.
See all case studies- HospitalityA shippable web GUI over an API-only hotel-content applicationunicrew produced a shippable, well-received web GUI over an API-only application.
- Personal CareEmbedding engineers in the team for a personal-care products platform (Goldn)unicrew worked as an integral part of Goldn's internal development teams, from refining stories to deploying epics into production.
08Questions
Questions procurement and engineering ask us
Probably not, and you should hear it from us rather than find out later. The clients behind our 61 verified Clutch reviews run from a handful of people to a few hundred, and the largest sit in the 201 to 500 employee band. What we have, since 2012, is engineers joining teams that already existed, with their own leads, release process and security rules. If your shortlist needs reference logos above 10,000 staff, we are not on it.
Three engagement models: time and materials billed hourly and quoted per project, fixed price quoted per project against an agreed outcome, and team extension billed monthly per team member. Which fits depends on how firm the scope is, and we recommend one at the end of discovery rather than before it. Nothing separate is charged for sourcing, vetting or placing an engineer, and most engagements start within two to four weeks of signature.
No, unicrew is not SOC 2 certified, and we would rather you read that here than find it in procurement. We hold ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015, renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK, the internationally accepted equivalent in most security reviews. If your questionnaire names SOC 2 and will accept nothing in its place, that should end the comparison rather than start it.
Contracts and NDAs are signed before anyone starts. On a build engagement we work from least-privilege access agreed with your technical contact, read-only wherever the work allows, with no write access to production during discovery, and inside your own cloud where your customers or insurers require it. Rescue and maintenance engagements are scoped separately, because taking over a running system needs different access.
You do. Once contractual obligations are fulfilled, full ownership of all intellectual property, source code and technical documentation transfers to your organisation, and the legal framework for that is put in place at the start of the engagement rather than at the end. Documentation is kept current throughout, so moving the work in-house or to another supplier stays a decision you can make.
Tell us early and tell us in writing. Because nothing separate is charged for sourcing, vetting or placing an engineer, changing a person costs you onboarding time rather than a fee, and the same holds before anyone starts. JewelCandle's head of IT described the candidate-stage version: unicrew "don’t move forward with a candidate who doesn’t meet our requirements", which he said saved him time reviewing CVs and conducting interviews.
Those pages describe the delivery models in detail. This one is about whether we can work with an organisation like yours at all: procurement, a security review, an existing codebase, and a change process that will not bend for a supplier. If you know you want a standing unit, read dedicated development team; if you want us to own the plan too, read managed teams.
Send us the constraints, and we will say whether we fit
A call with people who have put engineers inside working engineering organisations, not a sales qualifier. You leave knowing which model fits, what your security review will need, and where we are the wrong answer for you.
What happens after you contact us
- We reply within one business dayA senior engineer reads your message, not a bot.
- A call about your constraintsYour codebase, your change process, and what your security review demands.
- Model and shape, in writingTeam extension, a dedicated team or a managed team, priced as time and materials, fixed price, or monthly per team member.
- You interview, then NDA and accessNothing is charged for the people you turn down. Most engagements start within two to four weeks of signature.