Services
Product leadership and hands-on AI architecture in one person: roadmap, architecture decisions, code review and eval ownership, on your sprint cadence.
Base tier ($15K/mo) is 2 days/week embedded. Mid tier ($22K/mo) is 3 days/week + Ayraxs bench on standby. Premium tier ($30K/mo) is 4 days/week + same-day response SLA. 3-month minimum (anything shorter is a Sprint). 90-day cancellation notice thereafter — you're never locked in.
Codebase walkthrough, team rituals, system inventory. End of month: written health report on your agentic line + top-3 priorities for the next 90 days.
Ship priority work. Add evals. Tune costs. Handle the first model release that breaks something. Build the muscle.
Weekly sprint cadence, monthly reliability report, quarterly architecture review. 90-day cancellation notice at any time.
I don't replace your engineering team — I add senior judgment they don't have yet. Most weeks: 2 days of architecture/review/planning, 2 days hands-on building or eval expansion. I bring Ayraxs talent bench in when your roadmap needs more hands than mine. The product stays under your team's ownership; I'm a force multiplier, not a replacement.
Real questions from scoping calls. If yours isn't here, ask it on a free 30-minute call.
A bit of both, with a product lens. Like a fractional chief AI officer, I own the AI roadmap and decide what to build and what to skip. Like a fractional CTO for AI, I make architecture calls and review the agent code. The difference is that I also ship: when scope demands it, I build the hard parts myself.
Hiring a Principal Product Engineer with agentic AI experience in 2026 costs $400–550K loaded annually, takes 10–14 weeks to ramp, and has 1-year average tenure at that seniority. A Retainer is $180–360K/year, productive on day 1, with a 90-day exit. For most companies <Series C, the Retainer is the right shape until your agentic AI work is genuinely 1.0+ FTE.
24/7 on-call (different service — need a managed-service vendor). Greenfield product discovery without a working hypothesis (need a Sprint first). Anything requiring a US security clearance. Pure-strategy advisory with no hands-on building (I make more building than advising).
Yes — most Retainer engagements convert from a Sprint or a Rescue. After you've seen the build quality and judgment for 4–6 weeks, the Retainer becomes obvious. Average conversion: 40% of Sprints, 60% of Rescues.
Up: bring Ayraxs talent bench in (within 1–2 weeks). Down: drop to base tier (2 days/week) at the start of any month. Cancel entirely with 90 days notice.
No equity, no Board seat. Cash-only retainer keeps the relationship clean and the incentives aligned with your operating reality. (Workly is the equity bet; hireagentic.dev is the cash brand.)