The concrete problem is simple: you need DevOps, SRE or platform engineering capability that actually ships, but every attempt to use outside specialists stalls in process, misalignment or hand‑offs that break under production pressure.
Inside large enterprises, this problem persists because the control systems for technology spend were designed for projects, not for evolving platforms that never finish. Procurement expects defined scope, fixed timelines and clean vendor boundaries, while a modern platform team needs blurry edges, experimentation and continuous reprioritisation. The result is an operating mismatch: by the time contracts clear, the platform stack, regulatory posture or security patterns have already shifted.
Ownership ambiguity compounds the delay. DevOps and SRE functions sit at the intersection of application teams, central architecture, cyber, and infrastructure operations. No single sponsor wants to own the integration risk of external specialists across all those domains, so every decision triggers alignment meetings, side letters, and risk reviews. Risk avoidance becomes risk creation: the safest answer in each silo is to slow things down, which collectively makes platform work late and brittle.
Traditional hiring fails first on time, then on structure. Recruiting senior platform engineers or SREs in competitive markets routinely takes quarters, not weeks, and internal processes assume unlimited patience from delivery teams. Even when positions are approved, job descriptions often blend four roles into one: part Kubernetes engineer, part cloud security specialist, part observability architect, part delivery lead. Internal HR frameworks are not designed for this degree of technical precision, so roles remain open or filled by generalists who struggle to move complex platforms forward.
Where hiring does succeed, you inherit a different structural issue: you are building permanent headcount into functions that are, by design, volatile in shape and size. Platform transformations go through waves of intense build activity followed by steadier optimisation and stewardship. Locking this entire curve into full‑time staff either creates long periods of under‑utilisation or a permanent pressure to invent work that justifies the headcount. That is not a talent problem; it is the inevitable result of using a fixed employment model for a variable demand curve.
Classic outsourcing fails for the opposite reason: it assumes that DevOps, SRE and platform engineering can be decomposed into tickets and delivered under a service catalogue. Large vendors optimise for predictable work, so they convert platform needs into standardised units, fixed SLAs and layered delivery teams. The people who understand your architecture rarely touch the code or pipelines, and the people pushing changes lack the context to make risk‑balanced decisions in real time. This is structurally misaligned with an environment where build, run and evolve must sit inside one operating rhythm.
When this problem is actually solved, the first visible change is cadence. There is a stable weekly and monthly rhythm where platform work, reliability work and product delivery meet in a single planning conversation, with DevOps and SRE specialists treated as enduring members of the team rather than an external ticket queue. Priorities move, incidents occur, architectural decisions shift, but the group operating the platform does not reassemble from scratch each time; it absorbs change without renegotiating who is responsible.
Ownership clarity follows. One leader is accountable for the combined outcome: platform reliability, delivery throughput and security posture across the relevant stack. Under that leader, responsibilities are explicit. Internal teams own policy, risk appetite and strategic direction. Outside specialists own specific delivery objectives, such as shaping the CI/CD architecture, hardening the runtime, or embedding SRE practices into product squads. There is no confusion about who decides, who implements and who maintains.
Governance becomes enabling rather than blocking. Risk, compliance and architecture teams engage on defined touchpoints, with platform specialists present in the discussion, not represented indirectly through vendor managers. Architecture standards are translated into pipeline checks, golden paths and templates, rather than PDFs and slide decks. Continuity is visible: the individuals who design the build pipelines are the same individuals refining alerting thresholds months later, and they remain reachable when a subtle failure mode appears at scale.
Integration with internal teams is operationally tight. DevOps, SRE and platform specialists join the same incident channels, planning sessions and post‑incident reviews as internal engineers. Access is provisioned appropriately, not grudgingly, so they can work directly in your repos, pipelines and observability stack while operating under your security constraints. Over time, platform patterns converge, not proliferate, because the same group of specialists touch multiple domains and can recognise duplication early.
Team Extension is an operating model built for exactly this configuration: external specialists working as an embedded, accountable part of your DevOps, SRE and platform engineering fabric, without trying to convert your platforms into commoditised services. The model starts from technical precision. Roles are defined in detail before any sourcing takes place, clarifying whether you need, for example, a Kubernetes‑first SRE with deep observability experience, a platform engineer to standardise GitOps across product lines, or a DevOps specialist focused on cloud networking and security controls. This avoids the structural fuzziness that derails internal hiring and generic vendor engagement.
From there, the model addresses continuity and delivery risk directly. External professionals are engaged full‑time to your engagement and commercially managed through Team Extension, which keeps them focused on your platform outcomes rather than juggling unrelated clients. Talent is sourced from Romania, Poland, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, with Latin America used where North America nearshoring is important, creating access to depth of experience without trading down on standards. Allocation typically completes in 3. 4 weeks, which is fast enough to matter for real delivery timelines, yet measured enough to preserve fit; if the right specialists are not available, the answer is no, not “close enough”. Commercially, monthly billing based on hours worked keeps the model simple, while accountability sits with Team Extension for continuity, handover and performance, rather than with your HR function. Being Switzerland‑based and serving clients globally, the operating model is built around governance, transparency and the expectation that sophisticated buyers will scrutinise how work is done, not just who writes the code.
The problem is that large enterprises cannot reliably use outside specialists to make DevOps, SRE and platform engineering actually ship, because hiring alone is too slow and rigid while classic outsourcing fragments ownership into ticket queues, and Team Extension solves this by embedding precisely defined, full‑time external specialists into your platform rhythm with clear accountability, strong governance and continuity that survives the next incident and the next roadmap shift. Across industries from financial services to manufacturing, healthcare, energy and beyond, the underlying constraints are the same: complex platforms, tight risk controls, and no patience for fragile delivery. If you want to explore whether this operating model fits your constraints, ask for an intro call or a short capabilities brief and we will keep the conversation focused on feasibility, not sales theatre.
