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Software and AI development for SaaS and ISVs that ships into a product your customers already use.

unicrew is the engineering team a software vendor brings in when the roadmap is longer than the team it has. Our engineers join your product organisation, take an area of the product with its bugs and its support load attached, and ship into a codebase your customers are already using. 100+ senior in-house engineers across six countries, on the market since 2012.

This page is about a product that already has customers on it rather than a first version: shipping roadmap while the platform stays up, and adding AI to something people already pay for.

  • 120+Projects delivered across 12 countries since 2012
  • 100+Senior in-house engineers, six countries
  • 2 to 4 weeksTypical time from signature to start
  • ISTQBCertified QA inside every sprint
  • ISO 27001Certified security practice, audited by Quay Audit UK

01Overview

Buying engineering capacity for a product that already ships

Product engineering for a software vendor is engineering capacity added to a team that already has a product, a backlog and paying customers, so the work is judged by what reaches production rather than by a project plan. unicrew (founded 2012, formerly Artelogic) does that as an embedded team: our engineers work in your repo, on your board, to your definition of done. In this segment we publish an AWS cost reduction for a New York B2B SaaS platform, search and AI engineering for meinUnterricht in Berlin, and a web GUI over an API-only hotel-content application. Most vendors arrive needing one of the four below, not all of them.

  • An area, not a ticket queueWe take a slice of the product end to end, its bugs and its support load included, rather than working through decisions somebody else already made.
  • Inside your processYour repo, your board, your review standards and your release train. No parallel plan to reconcile and no second status report to read.
  • Our own engineersEveryone on an engagement is a unicrew employee rather than a subcontractor found for the job, and nothing is re-brokered onward.
  • Sized to a lumpy roadmapA vendor's year is not flat. Add engineers for a release push, stand them down when it ships, and let the team size follow the roadmap instead of the org chart.

02Capacity

Where the next five engineers come from

Pick by who will still understand this code in two years, not by the hourly rate. A fourth answer the table leaves out is an outsourced project team that takes a walled-off deliverable and hands it back finished, which suits a standalone tool and little inside your main product. Two briefs we turn down: a rewrite you want priced before anyone has read the code, and an embedded engagement with nobody on your side owning the technical decisions.

An embedded team from unicrewunicrew Hiring the roles in-houseIn-house Contractors, hired per roleContract
Time to a start dateMost engagements start within two to four weeks of signature, so the roadmap conversation happens this quarter. Time to a start dateA search, an offer, a notice period and a ramp. Right for the roles you will still need in three years. Time to a start dateFast to sign and fast to stop, which is the appeal, and the reason nobody stays long enough to learn the product.
Who carries the contextA team rather than a person. Holiday, illness and a hand-over are ours to absorb, not a gap in your sprint. Who carries the contextYou do, permanently, which is exactly right for the part of the product you compete on. Who carries the contextThe individual, and it leaves with them. What they learned about your product is written down nowhere you can reach.
When the roadmap movesScale up for a push and back down when it ships. Team extension is billed monthly per team member. When the roadmap movesHeadcount you keep paying through a quiet quarter, or a conversation nobody wanted to have. When the roadmap movesRe-source from scratch each time, and pay for somebody new to read the same code again.

03Scope

Six asks that reach us from an engineering leader with a backlog

Six situations, split by whether the pressure sits on the roadmap or on the platform under it. Every card names work this segment has published.

Run AThe roadmap you are already behind onFeature work inside the product, owned end to end rather than handed over as decisions.
  • Scoping, building, shipping and measuring, in your repo, behind your flags and through your review. Not a queue of tickets somebody else already thought through, which is the arrangement that makes an outside team slower every quarter.

    Looks like
    One engineer or a pod, on your board
  • The classic ISV gap: the API is strong and the people who need it have nothing to use. For a German hotel-content platform we shipped a web GUI over an application that had been API-only.

    Looks like
    A shipped GUI, not a clickable mock
  • unicrew builds and runs its own AI products, Snaplore and Talkmetry, so what we recommend has already run on our own bill. On a German edtech platform the AI tagging and embeddings work set up a move to vector search.

    Looks like
    Behind a flag, then measured
Run BThe platform underneath itCost, legacy and quality: the three that quietly decide how fast Run A can go.
  • Right-sizing, reserved capacity and removing waste, on the platform you already run rather than through a risky re-platform. In our delivery experience the immediate savings sit in the 20% to 40% range, with the exact figure depending on your starting point.

    Looks like
    The same platform, on a smaller bill
  • Refactor in place or rebuild the part that hurts, module by module, while releases keep going out. Booked It's platform was rebuilt on Laravel, and CEO Brad Nobbs records the result as a code base that is "more stable, easier to maintain and easier to add new features".

    Looks like
    Modules replaced, releases uninterrupted
  • ISTQB-certified QA sits inside every sprint rather than a test pass bolted on at the end. Jonathan Muller, CTO of Open Room Inc. in Japan, brought us in for testing alone and records that "our releases took less time and were less stressful".

    Looks like
    Fewer releases you have to babysit

When your roadmap is longer than your team, the temptation is to hand an outside team a queue of tickets somebody else has already thought through. Give them a whole area instead, including its bugs and its support load. A team that only receives finished decisions never learns why the product is the way it is, and never gets faster.

Yaroslav HavrylivSenior Engineering Manager, unicrew

04Proof

What software vendors have published about our work

Three figures below, each one the client's own and stated in their verified Clutch review rather than derived by us from the work. Where a review says Artelogic, that is the brand we traded under before the rebrand.

  • Infrastructure cost on a decade-old platformPatrick W., Founder and President of a New York B2B SaaS company, on Clutch: unicrew helped "reduce our AWS costs by 30% or more" after streamlining how the platform used AWS and Heroku. He is candid about the commercial shape of it in the same review. The pricing "was higher than I had hoped", and because the work went faster, "the team wound up costing us less or at least the same".
    30%+lower AWS costs, in the client's own figure
  • A controlled experiment the client ranDaniel Siebenson, Director of Product & Engineering at meinUnterricht GmbH in Berlin: "Our headline result was a controlled experiment showing a roughly 9 percent lift in search success rate." Our engineer worked "as an embedded engineer on our search and discovery team", owning features "end to end: scoping, building, shipping, and measuring impact", and the AI tagging and embeddings work set up the platform's move to vector search.
    9%lift in search success rate, meinUnterricht's own measurement
  • Capacity the in-house team could not reachThe Head of Development at a German hotel-content platform states this page's premise in one sentence: unicrew (then Artelogic) "help us leveraging projects that exceed inhouse development capacities but are demanded by internal and external stakeholders and customers". What he records as the outcome is a "Shippable and well received web GUI for previously API only application". The CPO of a German security and building-management software vendor asked for the same thing, and found our engineers "fully integrated into our teams and workflows".
    Since 2023The engagement, still running, on Clutch's own record

05Delivery

How an outside engineer becomes useful in your codebase

Four stages, and the first two exist to earn the right to touch the part that matters. The order is deliberate: read before you change, change something small before you own an area, own an area before anyone talks about a second engineer.

  1. Read the product, then the codeThe engineer works through the product as a user, then the area they are joining: what it does, what it owes, and where the risk sits. Written down and sent to you, so you can correct it before it hardens into an assumption.You getA written read of the area, its debts and its risks
  2. One small change, all the way outA real change through your own review, your own CI and your own release path. Small enough that being wrong costs nothing, real enough that both sides learn how your pipeline actually behaves.You getA merged change, released the way you release
  3. Take the area, support load includedScoping, building, shipping and measuring, with the bugs and the questions that come attached. This is the point of the arrangement: an area rather than a queue, so the engineer learns why the product is the way it is.You getAn owned area, with its bugs and its support questions
  4. Grow it, or stand it downAdd a second engineer when the area justifies one, or release the team when the push ships. Team extension is billed monthly per team member, so the size of the team is a monthly decision rather than an annual one.You getA team shaped to the roadmap, month by month

06Client voices

Product and engineering leaders, in their own words

See our client reviews
5.0 unified ratingacross 61 verified client reviewsRead them on Clutch

08Questions

Questions engineering leaders ask before the first sprint

By giving them an area rather than a queue. The engineer reads the product and the code first, ships one small change through your own review and release path, then takes an area end to end including its bugs and its support load. That is how the search work at meinUnterricht ran: scoping, building, shipping and measuring, on the client's own team rather than beside 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. We recommend one at the end of discovery. There is no recruitment or placement fee on a dedicated team or team extension, and fixed-scope work carries a post-launch warranty whose length is agreed in the contract. Most engagements start within two to four weeks of signature. We publish no project price band.

Whatever you already measure, and we ask for that access early. At meinUnterricht the work was judged by a controlled experiment the client ran, showing a roughly 9 percent lift in search success rate. Not every product yields that kind of number. An executive at a UK SaaS company put the limit plainly: their service "isn’t consumer-focused enough to provide standard results such as customer base growth". We report against your definition, not a dashboard of ours.

No. unicrew holds ISO 27001:2022 for information security and ISO 9001:2015 for quality management, both renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK, and ISTQB-certified QA sits inside every sprint. 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. If your enterprise buyers require SOC 2 of your suppliers, say so on the first call.

Yes, and most work here starts that way. A New York B2B SaaS platform had been live over a decade when we became its programming team, and its founder credits us with helping them "have a smooth transition". Booked It's system had grown for years without a framework, so the work opened with "review, audit and understand the current system". We read the code before quoting a rewrite, and sometimes the answer is not to rewrite it.

Ask, and you do. On a German ERP SaaS product we joined the client's own candidate interviews and helped refine the hiring profile. A German SaaS CTO says we come back with "two or three high-quality developers" when another resource is needed. People do change across a long engagement and we will not pretend otherwise. What stays constant is that the team carries the context, so a hand-over is ours to absorb, not a gap in your sprint.

When the work has to happen in your office, because our engineers work from Ukraine, Poland, Estonia and the UK. When you need one contractor for six weeks, where the overhead of a standing team buys you nothing. And when the product direction itself is undecided, because an embedded team will keep shipping in whatever direction it is pointed, and pointing it is your job rather than ours.

Tell us which part of the roadmap is stuck

A call with a senior engineer who has joined a live product before, not a sales qualifier. Bring the area you are behind on and what you have already tried. If an embedded team is the wrong shape for it, you will hear that on the call.

Let's talk

What happens after you contact us

  1. We reply within one business dayA senior engineer reads what you sent, not an autoresponder.
  2. A call about the product, not the briefThe area you are behind on, who owns it today, and what is in the way.
  3. A team shape and an engagement model, in writingHow many engineers, in what shape, billed as time and materials, fixed price or team extension.
  4. NDA and contracts, then a start dateMost engagements start within two to four weeks of signature.

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