Staff augmentation and full-stack hiring supply capacity, while an FDE supplies accountability. An FDE learns your domain, designs the architecture, builds with AI tools, controls token and cloud cost, and is responsible when something goes wrong. A single full-stack developer rarely combines domain knowledge, AI tooling skills and architectural depth in one person.

Yes, for many organisations custom software is now a viable alternative because AI-assisted development has made building software faster and more affordable. Enterprises can invest roughly one year of a large ERP implementation cost to build software tailored to their processes, avoid recurring licence fees, and keep the rights to the code. Suitability depends on process complexity, integrations and compliance needs, which PiTangent assesses during discovery.

Timeline and team size depend on scope. Applications at the scale of a large ERP traditionally needed around 200 people for two years, and PiTangent plans these programmes with 20 to 30 FDEs delivering in about six months. Smaller products and automations need smaller teams, from a single FDE upward, with the timeline confirmed after discovery.

Pricing is scope-based and quoted after a short discovery conversation, so you pay for the engineers and outcomes you need, nothing more and nothing less. You own the code, designs and intellectual property created for you, protected by NDA and contract terms, and custom software removes the recurring licence fees of off-the-shelf products.

FDEs treat token spend as an engineering constraint from the first design decision. They optimise prompts, orchestration, model selection and caching so the solution meets the business objective at the lowest sustainable running cost. Teams that build with AI tools without this discipline often see token costs rise sharply, which is why PiTangent follows a rule of optimising token usage throughout development.