Who is RG INSYS not the right fit for?

Heavily regulated workloads requiring an active ISO 27001 or SOC 2 report today. Our SOC 2 Type 1 audit is in active progress with a CPA firm, target completion Q4 2026; Type 2 follows after that. ISO 27001 is on the 2027 roadmap. We are also not the right fit for pure staff augmentation with no architecture oversight, on-site-only engagements, or 24x7 NOC operations. We partner for those.

How does RG INSYS compare to hiring an in-house UK senior engineer?

Approximately £24 per hour vs £75 per hour fully loaded. Around £42,000 per year vs £100,000 (salary plus 33% on-costs). 1-2 weeks to start vs 8-16 weeks of recruitment. Replaceable in two weeks via our continuity engineer; in-house typically requires 3-6 months of notice and handover.

How does RG INSYS differ from a freelancer or Upwork hire?

Senior pair-programming interview plus a two-week trial vs platform reviews. A pod with a backup engineer for continuity instead of a single point of failure. Dedicated PM included. 80%+ test coverage as standard. IP assigned via MSA, not platform terms.

How does RG INSYS differ from traditional offshore firms?

Minimum one engineer vs typical 5-10 person teams. Month-to-month commitment vs 6-12 month MSAs with ramp. AI-native modern stack vs legacy-heavy and waterfall-influenced. Per-engineer rate $25-30/hr vs $40-60/hr including bench overhead. PM and senior engineer on call within four hours, no hierarchical escalation.

RG INSYS vs In-House, Freelance & Offshore

What we don't do

What we are not the right partner for, today:

Heavily regulated workloads needing an active SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report today. Our SOC 2 Type 1 audit is in progress with a CPA firm, target Q4 2026; Type 2 follows, and ISO 27001 is on the 2027 roadmap. If procurement requires a current report to sign, we are not the fit yet; see our compliance page.
Pure "staff aug" fire-and-forget headcount. Our engineers come with a senior reviewer and a PM attached by default; you cannot peel those away and pay less.
On-site-only engagements. We are remote-first, working from India. We fly in for kick-offs, quarterly reviews, or critical incidents, not daily on-site presence.
24×7 NOC operations. We run on-call rotations for software we build, including out-of-hours incident response, but we are not a 24×7 network operations centre; we partner with specialists for that.

If any of these describes your need, we'll flag it on the first call or recommend a partner who fits better.

RG INSYS vs hiring an in-house UK senior engineer

Fully-loaded UK senior cost, not just salary, so the numbers match your accounts.

Dimension	In-house UK senior	RG INSYS senior
Hourly cost	~£75/hr fully loaded	~£24/hr
Annual cost	~£100,000 (£75k salary + 33% on-costs: employer NI, pension, equipment, office, recruitment amortised)	~£42,000
Time to start	8–16 weeks recruitment	1–2 weeks
Replaceable in 2 weeks	No (typical notice + handover 3–6 months	Yes) continuity engineer ready
AI tooling included	Varies (depends on hire's habits and your licensing	Yes) Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot standard
PTO & sickness backfill	No (work stops	Yes) continuity engineer covers
Performance ramp	Standard 90-day plan, hard to exit early	2-week trial; exit at any point with 2 weeks notice
Where they sit	Your office (or fully remote, depending on contract)	Remote, embedded in your standups and tooling

Where in-house still wins: tacit knowledge from being in the room. That gap is real, but for most engineering work it's smaller than the cost gap.

RG INSYS vs a freelancer or Upwork hire

Marketplaces work for one well-specified deliverable; they struggle when continuity, IP, and quality matter.

Dimension	Freelancer / Upwork	RG INSYS
Vetting	Platform reviews, hard to verify code quality	Senior pair-programming interview + 2-week free trial
Continuity	Single point of failure if they disappear	Pod with backup engineer, knowledge documented as standard
Project management	Your responsibility entirely	Dedicated PM included, no extra cost
QA & test coverage	Varies wildly; sometimes none	80%+ coverage standard, enforced in CI
IP & code ownership	Depends on platform terms; often messy at handover	Assigned outright via signed MSA
Compliance support	Varies wildly per individual	GDPR / UK GDPR / HIPAA-aware, DPA available
Security practice	Often no SAST, no secret scanning, no dependency review	Semgrep + Snyk + Trivy + gitleaks in CI
Handover at end	Often none; knowledge walks out the door	Full documentation, README, runbooks, video walkthrough

Where freelancers still win: small jobs you can define in a paragraph and review in-house. For anything that ships to production and runs for years, the economics flips.

RG INSYS vs a traditional offshore firm

Large offshore firms (TCS, Infosys, Wipro) are structured differently, and it shows in your bill and delivery speed.

Dimension	Traditional offshore (TCS/Infosys-style)	RG INSYS
Minimum team size	Typically 5–10 engineers + leads + PM + tester	1 engineer
Minimum commitment	6–12 month MSA, plus ramp-up period before billing settles	1 month, month-to-month
Engineering culture	Legacy-heavy stacks, waterfall-influenced delivery, ticket-driven	AI-native, modern stack (Node, TS, React, Go, Python), trunk-based
Decision velocity	Hierarchical escalation: dev → lead → manager → account → you	PM + senior engineer on call within 4 hours, founder reachable
Per-engineer rate	$40–60/hr (includes bench overhead and management layers)	$25–30/hr
Tooling	Often locked to internal frameworks, slow to adopt new tools	Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, modern open-source by default
Lock-in	Typical 12-month MSAs, exit clauses with notice + handover fees	Month-to-month; code & credentials are yours, no exit fees
People you actually talk to	Account manager + delivery manager; engineers behind a wall	Engineers, PM, and founder directly in your Slack

Where traditional offshore still wins: multi-year, thousand-engineer programmes with deep regulatory sign-off or mainframe interop. If that's your shape of work, we're happy to refer.

How to choose

Short heuristic:

🏢

Pick in-house when

Permanent, core-product roles where you can wait 3+ months. Founding engineers, tech leadership.

🧑‍💻

Pick a freelancer when

Small jobs (under ~2 weeks), tightly specified, with an in-house engineer to review.

🏛️

Pick traditional offshore when

50+ engineer programmes, current SOC 2 Type 2 or ISO 27001 certificates today, or mainframe integration at scale.

⚡

Pick RG INSYS when

Ship or modernise a real product in months, not years. Senior engineers with AI tooling, month-to-month pricing, an MSA you can read in 20 minutes.

RG INSYS vs the alternatives