Found the right engineer. Now you have to convince someone who wasn't in the room.
You can't authorise the spend yourself, and the conversation with your manager needs to happen from memory, days later. This page gives you the words, ready to send.
A copy-ready email
The one-page business case
The problem, in business terms
A voice or agent feature is blocked, slipping the roadmap, or shipped in a state that doesn't survive real usage — real network conditions, concurrent users, or a language the prototype was never tested in. Each week of delay has a cost, whether that's a missed launch window or continued manual work the feature was meant to remove.
Three options, compared
| Option | Cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Hire in-house | Salary + recruiting time + ramp-up | Months before first shippable work |
| Engage an agency | Typically higher than a specialist contractor, plus account overhead | Weeks to scope and staff |
| Fixed-scope specialist contract | From $1,800 (Sprint) or $6,000 (Build), fixed and quoted upfront | Scoping call this week, first milestone in days |
Recommendation
A fixed-scope engagement de-risks the decision: the price is fixed before work starts, unstarted milestones are fully refundable, and the code belongs to the company on completion. It is the lowest-commitment way to validate the approach before considering a larger hire.
Risk reversal terms
- Paid pilot milestone
- Unstarted work refundable
- You own the code
- Named support window
Engagement timeline
Scoping call (free, 30 minutes) → written proposal with milestones → 50% deposit → first milestone delivered and demoed → remaining milestones → final payment and handover with a named support window. Full detail on the services page.
Objection cheat-sheet
"Why not use our own team?"
Because they're already committed elsewhere, or this isn't their specialism — real-time voice and multi-agent systems are a narrow skill set most product teams don't carry in-house. If your team has the bandwidth and the specific experience, you shouldn't hire him — that's the honest answer.
"Why not an agency?"
Agencies typically cost more and add account-management overhead, and you rarely know in advance which individual engineer will actually do the work. A direct specialist contract skips both, at the cost of one point of failure instead of a team — which is exactly what the risk-reversal terms are designed to offset.
"What if he becomes unavailable mid-project?"
Milestones are scoped so each one delivers working, demoable software — nothing is held back until a single final delivery. If something happened mid-milestone, you'd be holding working code and clear documentation up to that point, not a folder of unfinished work. This is a real trade-off of working with an individual rather than a firm, worth weighing honestly against the cost difference.
"How do we even pay someone abroad?"
Standard international wire transfer or a freelance-platform contract (e.g. Upwork), both offered — whichever fits your procurement process. This is raised and settled on the scoping call before any commitment.