FAQ
Questions we get asked before the first engagement.
If something here is unclear, or your question is not covered, ask us directly — we will give you the same answer in email that we would give on a call.
Working together
- Are you a staff augmentation company?
- We can provide engineering capacity when that is genuinely what is needed, but it is not our preferred model. We would rather own a defined cloud or platform scope, or deliver a scoped project, than rent hours. Owning a scope means we are accountable for an outcome; renting hours means you are accountable for directing us, which is usually the thing you were trying to avoid.
- Do you replace our internal DevOps team?
- No. DeClouder either complements an internal team — taking a defined part of the platform so your engineers can focus elsewhere — or provides the platform capability for companies that do not yet need a full internal organization. Where an internal team exists, we agree the boundary between us explicitly.
- Can you work with our existing development team?
- Yes, and this is one of the most common ways we engage. Your developers stay on the product; we take the infrastructure and platform work, review changes that touch it, and keep the paths they use to ship working.
- How do engagements get scoped?
- A conversation, then an assessment of the actual environment, then a written scope covering what we own, what stays with your team, and how support and coverage work. Major projects or work outside an agreed managed scope are scoped separately rather than absorbed.
- Do you publish pricing?
- No. Scope varies enough between environments that a public price would be misleading. Pricing is proposed after we understand what you are running and what you need us to own.
AI and delivery
- Do you use AI to operate production systems?
- AI assists our engineering workflows — investigation, drafting infrastructure code, documentation, automating routine work. Production-impacting decisions and changes remain subject to engineering review and whatever change controls we agree with you. An engineer is accountable for every change that reaches your production environment.
- Where does AI actually help?
- Mostly in the work that is mechanical or investigative: reading across logs, metrics and configuration to narrow a problem; drafting and reviewing Terraform; generating and maintaining runbooks and documentation; and applying repetitive changes consistently across many repositories.
- Why does that matter to us?
- It is why a small senior team can carry the scope it does. You get experienced engineers rather than a larger team of mixed seniority, and the repetitive parts of the work do not consume the hours you are paying for judgment.
Support and operations
- Do you offer 24/7 support?
- Support and coverage are defined as part of each engagement, based on the customer requirements and what the environment genuinely needs. We would rather agree realistic coverage we can honour than advertise a blanket promise.
- Is there a limit to what a managed engagement covers?
- Yes — every managed engagement has an agreed scope. We do not offer unlimited DevOps. Routine operational work, changes and improvements within the agreed scope are covered; larger projects and work outside it are scoped separately so there are no surprises on either side.
- How do you handle access to our environment?
- Access is scoped to what the engagement requires, granted through your own identity and access controls, and reviewed as part of the engagement. Least privilege applies to us as much as to anything else we would recommend.
- What happens if we want to take the work back in-house?
- That is a normal outcome, and it is one reason we keep infrastructure in code and documentation current. Handover means transferring code, documentation and context — not extracting you from a dependency.
Technology
- What technologies do you support?
- Our core ground is AWS, Kubernetes and Amazon EKS, Terraform and Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD systems such as GitHub Actions and GitLab CI, cloud-native observability tooling including CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana and OpenTelemetry, and the common infrastructure and platform tooling around them.
- Do you work with clouds other than AWS?
- AWS is where our depth is, and it is what we lead with. If part of your estate sits elsewhere, tell us during the first conversation and we will be straight about whether we are the right people for that portion.
- Are you a security provider?
- We do infrastructure security and reliability engineering: IAM and least privilege, hardening, logging and monitoring coverage, backup and recovery practice, and vulnerability remediation support. We are not a SOC or a managed security service provider, and we will say so rather than stretch to fit.
Still have a question?
Ask it directly. If we are not the right fit for what you need, we will tell you that instead of scheduling another call.