We place managed AI development teams into your workflow — or build one for you. From zero process to mature CI/CD pipelines, your engineer meets you where you are and owns every deliverable.
Every engagement deploys a self-contained engineering unit into your development environment. At the top: a dedicated Principal Engineer — your single point of accountability, the human who owns every deliverable. Underneath: a team of specialized AI agents, each operating with defined roles and deep competencies.
This isn't a tool you install. It's a team that shows up.
• Owns all deliverables
• Single point of contact
• Directs agent operations
• Quality & architecture authority
Team composition scales to your needs. Additional agents deploy on demand.
A systematic development process engineered for throughput and quality.
Every piece of work flows through the same rigorous process. Our Assembly Line is a human-directed, agent-executed development workflow designed to match or exceed the output quality of senior engineering teams.
Agent receives assignment from your board — Jira, Azure DevOps, GitHub Issues, Linear, or our system.
Agent generates a structured development plan before writing a single line of code.
Agent executes the approved plan — writing code, creating tests, managing branches.
Every PR passes through automated agent review AND your team's own review process.
Automated validation confirms the work meets all acceptance criteria and passes CI.
Approved code merges to your target branch and flows through your deployment pipeline.
Agent receives assignment from your board — Jira, Azure DevOps, GitHub Issues, Linear, or our system.
Agent generates a structured development plan before writing a single line of code.
Agent executes the approved plan — writing code, creating tests, managing branches.
Every PR passes through automated agent review AND your team's own review process.
Automated validation confirms the work meets all acceptance criteria and passes CI.
Approved code merges to your target branch and flows through your deployment pipeline.
“This isn't a black box.” Every stage has human oversight. Every decision point has a checkpoint. Your Assigned Principal Engineer can intervene, redirect, or escalate at any point in the process. You maintain full visibility through your existing tools.
Our agents don't operate in a separate tool or platform. Your assigned engineer controls what each agent can access and do — sandboxed in your environment, bound by your roles and permissions, with deployment reach defined entirely by you, from full CI/CD access down to zero.
We integrate directly into your existing development infrastructure. Keep your tools, your processes, your team's workflows. Our agents join your system as participants, not replacements.
We deploy our battle-tested Assembly Line framework — a complete development operations system — and train your team on it. As you grow, you keep the process. No dependency on us.
Most AI development tools force you into a specific framework, a specific language, or a narrow definition of what “AI coding” looks like. We don't. Our agents are general-purpose software engineers. If a senior developer can work on it, our agents can work on it.
Backend. Frontend. Full-Stack. Mobile. Infrastructure. Design systems. Data pipelines. Legacy modernization. Your agents adapt to the work, not the other way around.
There's a critical difference. Human-in-the-loop means a human reviews after the fact. Human-in-command means a human directs, decides, and is accountable for every outcome. Your Assigned Principal Engineer isn't monitoring a dashboard — they're running the operation.
Your Assigned Principal Engineer sets priorities, approves development plans, and decides what gets built and how. Agents execute under their direction — not autonomously.
Every line of code, every architectural decision, every PR that merges — your Assigned Principal Engineer is accountable. Real ownership. Real responsibility. A real person you can call.
Complex technical decisions, ambiguous requirements, cross-team coordination — your Assigned Principal Engineer handles the work that requires human judgment, context, and relationships.
Getting started is straightforward. We scope your needs, deploy an engineering unit into your environment, and start shipping code — typically within days, not weeks.
We learn about your tech stack, development process, team structure, and immediate priorities. No lengthy RFP process. A focused technical conversation.
Your engineering unit gets provisioned with access to your repositories, boards, and CI/CD — the same onboarding you'd do for any senior contractor. We configure our Assembly Line to integrate with your existing workflow.
Your Assigned Principal Engineer and agent team begin working real tickets from your backlog. Initial deliverables ship within the first week so you can evaluate quality immediately.
Your engineering unit operates as a persistent part of your development organization. Scaling up or down is as simple as adjusting the engagement scope.
What you're paying today — and what you could be paying instead.
Hiring software developers in the Greater Toronto Area is expensive — and it's not just the salary. Between CPP, EI, benefits, vacation, equipment, and the overhead of recruiting, onboarding, and managing, a single mid-level developer costs your business $10,000–$14,000 per month. A senior engineer runs $14,000–$18,000+. And that's before you account for the 2–4 weeks of ramp time before they're productive.
A Managed AI Engineering Unit from EngineerForAI delivers more throughput at 40–60% less than the equivalent human engineering capacity — with a dedicated human Principal Engineer accountable for every deliverable.
| Full-Time Employee | Contractor | EngineerForAI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base compensation | $85K – $110K/yr | $50 – $65/hr | — |
| Employer CPP + EI | ~$6,500 – $7,500/yr | N/A | — |
| Benefits package | ~$8K – $15K/yr | N/A | — |
| Vacation / stat days | ~$4K – $6K/yr | Billed anyway | — |
| Equipment + tools | ~$3K – $5K/yr | ~$1K – $2K/yr | — |
| Recruiting cost | ~$8K – $20K (once) | Agency fee 15–20% | — |
| Ramp time | 2 – 4 weeks | 1 – 2 weeks | Days |
| Effective dev hours per week † | 25 – 32 hrs | 30 – 35 hrs | 25 – 32 hrs ‡ |
| Effective monthly cost | $10,000 – $13,500 | $8,500 – $11,500 | Starting at$5,500 – $7,500/mo |
| Full-Time Employee | Contractor | EngineerForAI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base compensation | $110K – $150K/yr | $70 – $100/hr | — |
| Employer CPP + EI | ~$7,000 – $7,500/yr | N/A | — |
| Benefits package | ~$10K – $18K/yr | N/A | — |
| Vacation / stat days | ~$6K – $9K/yr | Billed anyway | — |
| Equipment + tools | ~$3K – $5K/yr | ~$1K – $2K/yr | — |
| Recruiting cost | ~$15K – $30K (once) | Agency fee 15–25% | — |
| Ramp time | 2 – 4 weeks | 1 – 2 weeks | Days |
| Effective dev hours per week † | 25 – 32 hrs | 30 – 35 hrs | 25 – 32 hrs ‡ |
| Effective monthly cost | $13,500 – $18,000 | $12,000 – $17,500 | Starting at$7,000 – $10,000/mo |
All figures in CAD. Employee costs include Ontario employer obligations (CPP, EI, EHT, WSIB) and standard benefits. Contractor rates reflect current Greater Toronto Area market rates. EngineerForAI pricing reflects managed engineering unit retainers — contact us for a custom quote.
† Effective development hours = time spent writing, reviewing, and shipping code. Excludes standups, sprint ceremonies, Slack, context switching, 1:1s, onboarding meetings, and other coordination overhead. Industry research places this at 60–80% of paid/billed hours for human developers.
‡ Equivalent output to a full-time developer at the corresponding experience level — delivered at higher consistency and code quality, with no onboarding lag, no context-switching loss, and no availability gaps.
When you hire a developer, the salary is just the beginning. With an EngineerForAI unit, your retainer covers everything. No surprises. No add-ons.
Claude, GPT, compute infrastructure — all included in your retainer. You never see an API bill.
Code assistants, review tools, orchestration platforms — we bring our own stack. Zero software costs for you.
Prompt engineering, agent configuration, workflow scaffolding — we build and maintain all of it.
No 2–4 week ramp period. No senior dev time lost to code walkthroughs and environment setup.
No laptop to buy, no monitors, no peripherals, no refresh cycle. Our agents run on our infrastructure.
No desk, no seat, no office lease pressure. No facilities cost. Nothing physical.
No employer CPP contributions, no EI premiums, no extended health, no dental, no RRSP matching.
No recruiter fees, no job postings, no interview loops, no counter-offers, no replacement costs.
Your agents are managed, reviewed, and kept on track by an assigned EngineerForAI engineer. Solo founders and small teams who need to ship faster but can't justify another full-time hire.
More complex work, faster turnaround. your assigned engineer is hands-on daily with architecture and code quality. Growing teams that need to burn down their backlog without the overhead of 2–3 additional hires.
A senior engineer embedded in your team full-time, accountable for every deliverable. Run parallel feature tracks or clear tech debt — always reachable, always in context.
Every tier includes direct access to the engineer who knows your system. Slack, phone, email — your preferred channel, your familiar point of contact. No support tickets, no strangers.
Estimates based on Greater Toronto Area market rates. Actual savings vary by engagement scope.
No long-term contracts. Start monthly. Scale up or down with 30 days' notice. First deliverables ship in Week 1 — evaluate quality on real work before committing to anything.
Canadian company, Canadian accountability. EngineerForAI is based in Toronto, Ontario. Your Assigned Principal Engineer is a Canadian professional. Your invoices are in CAD. Your data stays in your environment.
Tell us about your tech stack, your team, and what you need built. We'll scope an engagement and have your first deliverables shipping within a week.