Monthly retainer
Salvage Partner
Senior engineering behind your team, on retainer
- Price
- $2,500/month
- Turnaround
- Monthly, rolling
- Availability
- Taking work
When this is the right call
- You sell software but have no one senior to escalate to
- Your best developer is also your only architect, and they're tired
- You bid work you're not certain you can deliver
- Nobody reviews the technical side of a proposal before it goes out
- You need senior depth without carrying a senior salary
What you get
- Ten hours each month, used how you need them — further hours at $300
- Unused hours roll over for up to three months, then expire
- Architecture and technical-approach review before you commit to a bid
- Code review on the parts that matter
- Escalation for problems your team has run out of road on
- Mentoring for mid-level developers, which is usually the cheapest fix available
- Priority scheduling ahead of one-off work
What this isn't Not staff augmentation and not a set number of features per month. You are retaining judgement and availability, not a headcount.
Most agencies do not need another developer. They need one person who has seen this go wrong before.
The retainer exists because the expensive problems are decided early, in a meeting, by someone who has not built this particular thing before — and by the time it surfaces as a technical problem it has already been sold, scheduled, and half-built.
What agencies use it for
Before the bid. Twenty minutes on a proposal is the highest-leverage time in the whole relationship. Wrong technology choice, wrong estimate, wrong integration assumption — all cheap to catch here and brutal to catch in month four.
When something is on fire. A senior escalation path that is already familiar with your work, rather than a stranger starting from zero on your worst day.
Reviewing the work that matters. Not every pull request. The auth flow, the payment path, the data migration, the thing that will be in production for six years.
Making your mid-level developers better. A retainer that quietly raises the floor of your whole team is worth more than the hours on paper.
White-label by default
You keep the client relationship. Salvage does not need to be named, does not contact your customers, and does not sell around you — in writing, if you want it in writing. Plenty of engagements run entirely behind an agency’s own name.
Why it costs less per hour
Because predictable revenue is worth a discount, and because the alternative for you is a six-figure hire. Two or three retained partners is a full book — this is not a service that scales by adding logos, and it is priced accordingly.
Start with Salvage Partner
Describe the situation in whatever detail you have. If a different service is the better fit, you'll be told that before anyone talks about money.
First reply usually within a few business days, from a person