The pilot is the pitch. Three steps.
Agency owners have heard every offshore promise. We would rather you judge one to two weeks of real commits than a deck.
Pick the pilot task
Something real from your backlog that takes a senior engineer one to two weeks: a feature, an integration, a migration, an LLM feature with an eval harness. You choose it, we scope it and fix the price in writing within 48 hours.
We ship it in your repo
A named engineer works in your repository, your cloud and your standups, with four hours of guaranteed overlap on your timezone. You see commits daily and a demo at the end of each week.
You judge the code
If it is not the standard you would ship to your own client, you owe nothing beyond the pilot and you keep the code. If it is, we agree a monthly rate for the engineer or pod and you mark the work up to your client.
- You quoted a project you cannot staff this quarter
- A senior engineer just left mid-engagement
- You are a design or product studio that does not build in-house
- A client wants an AI feature and your team has not shipped one to production yet
- You have been burned by offshore once and want to test on a small task before trusting anyone again
- You need twenty engineers on Monday. We scale a pod at a time, deliberately
- The work requires US-persons-only handling (ITAR, CMMC, most defence). We will say so on the first call
- You want the cheapest hourly rate on the market. We are not it, and the pilot is how we prove the difference
What you get, in writing.
- A named senior engineer, not a rotating bench
- US-led accountability in California, with a founder who will get on a call or a plane
- Four hours of daily overlap with your team, in the contract
- Your repos, your cloud, your tooling, so nothing leaves your client’s environment
- White-label by default; disclosed if your client asks
- IP assignment to you under US law, written into the pilot agreement
- An NDA and non-solicitation of your clients in the partner agreement, or we sign yours instead
- Weekly demos and writing-first communication, so you are never chasing status
Zain Ali, Founder & CEO, Mountain View, California. About Zain
Proof you can click on: Edge, a staffing company whose production site our team shipped in 48 hours, is in the case studies, alongside work for Google, Microsoft and National Instruments. If you would rather hire engineers directly into your own team, see staff augmentation. For the economics of subcontracting, read how white-label development economics work.
For agency owners: what to settle before you subcontract.
The questions that come up on first calls, written up in full: how to vet a partner, margins, who owns the code, tax paperwork, privacy contract terms and time zones.
How to vet a global software development partner
Offshore delivery is normal now. The questions that separate a good partner from an expensive lesson are about data, contracts and overlap hours.
White-label software development: the economics
Agencies subcontract constantly and rarely discuss the numbers. Here is how the markup works, where it goes wrong, and what a fair arrangement looks like.
Who Owns Code a Subcontractor Writes for Your Agency
Software a subcontractor writes is not work made for hire by default, and in California the clause can make them your employee. Use a signed assignment.
Do You File a 1099 for an Offshore Contractor?
A 1099-NEC is for US payees. For an offshore subcontractor the IRS asks where the work was performed first. Collect the right form before you pay.
CCPA Subcontractor Contract: What Agencies Must Sign
If your agency touches a California client's customer data, the CCPA says the contract has to reach every subcontractor you bring in. Here is the text.
Overlap Hours Between US and Offshore Dev Teams
A 9-to-5 against a 9-to-5 gives a Pacific agency zero shared hours with Lahore. Here is what a four-hour window costs in local time, and when it shifts.
What agency owners ask first.
The questions that come up on every first call. Still unsure? Send us the task.
White-label development means a partner builds software that your agency delivers under its own brand. Your client contracts with you, sees your team and pays your invoice, while the partner’s engineers work inside your tools and process. You keep the client relationship and the margin, and the partner adds capacity you do not have to hire.
Whether white labeling is legal for your agency is a question for your own counsel, and ivector does not give legal advice. What we can state is what our own terms say. The pilot agreement assigns the IP to you under US law. The partner agreement carries an NDA and non-solicitation of your clients, or we sign yours. If your client asks where the engineers sit, we recommend telling them.
We do not publish a rate card. A pilot is fixed price, agreed in writing before work starts, with an itemised number within 48 hours of the scoping call. If the pilot meets your standard, we agree a monthly rate for the engineer or pod and you mark the work up to your client. If it does not, you pay the pilot fee and keep the code.
By default, yes. Our engineers work under your brand in your tools, and your client sees your team. If a client asks where the engineers sit, we recommend telling them. We call this disclosed hybrid: your delivery lead and accountability are in California, the engineering bench is global. Buyers who ask are reassured by a straight answer and put off by a vague one.
Delivery is US-led from Mountain View, California, with a global engineering bench. Every engagement carries four hours of guaranteed daily overlap with your timezone, written into the agreement, and a named engineer rather than a rotating pool. We will name the country in conversation before you sign anything.
Fixed price, agreed in writing before work starts, for a task you choose from your own backlog. We do not publish rates because the right price depends on the task, but you will have an itemised number within 48 hours of the scoping call, and the pilot never converts to time-and-materials without your agreement.
You pay the pilot fee and nothing else, and you keep the code and the IP. There is no retainer, no minimum term and no penalty for walking away. The pilot exists so you can make that judgement on evidence rather than on a sales call.
React and Next.js, Node and Python back ends, React Native and Flutter, AWS, Azure and GCP, and LLM feature work including retrieval, evaluation harnesses and agent integrations. If a task needs something outside that list, we say so before quoting rather than learning on your client’s time.
Yes. Our engineers build iOS and Android apps in React Native and Flutter under your brand, with Node or Python back ends. The same pilot applies: a fixed-price task from your own backlog, so you judge the code before you commit. Your client sees your team, not ours.
Yes. The most useful proof is Edge, a staffing company whose full production site our team shipped in 48 hours, because you can see it working rather than read about it. We also publish case studies for named clients, and we will walk you through code on the first call.
Yes, and we will never approach your client directly. Non-solicitation of your clients is standard in our partner agreement, and we are happy to sign yours instead.