The entire Virtana team resides in Trinidad & Tobago. Our office is based in St Augustine, Trinidad.

Virtana has a global client base, though the majority of our clients are based in San Francisco, California, USA. Trinidad is in the AST timezone, which is +3/+4 hours from San Francisco, or +0/+1 hours from New York, depending on daylight savings.

We can virtually embed ourselves as tightly as needed, and we can also stay arms-length, if that’s preferred. Here are a couple example models that have worked well:

• Tighter Integration: Virtana staff become an extension of the client’s existing engineering team, increasing the client team’s velocity on their short & medium term goals. Virtana staff are included in existing client team meetings (e.g. daily standups, weekly sprint kickoffs, etc). Virtana staff also directly communicate with client engineers, project managers, & product managers, using existing client tools (Google Chat, Slack, & E-Mail, JIRA, GitHub, Zoom, Google Meet, etc). Virtana & client engineers review each other's code and pull requests asynchronously.

• Looser Integration: Virtana staff execute on a medium or long term goal, which is fairly independent from the client’s ongoing short-term work. Virtana syncs with a client stakeholder weekly, fortnightly, or monthly to give regular progress updates. Some client engineers might be looped in for a critical design discussion. But, otherwise, the majority of the code implementation is reviewed, managed, executed by Virtana staff, thus limiting the burden on a likely already overworked client team.

While Virtana is open to perform fixed-scope projects, we have found that the shifting requirements of most software projects often makes setting a fixed scope quite challenging. If we feel that a client’s work is very predictable and has stable requirements, we’re open to working in a more open-loop fashion with clear deliverables set beforehand.

Kicking off a project usually takes 4-6 weeks. The onboarding process usually looks like the following:

1. Initial Outreach: A client reaches out to Virtana at info@virtanatech.com, sharing some brief information about the project and what support they’re looking for. Virtana will review the request and determine if it’s a good fit. (2 days)

2. Exploratory Call: Virtana will schedule a 30-60 minute call to better understand the project, and answer any initial questions the client may have about Virtana. (3 days)

3. Technical Deep Dives: Virtana will loop-in an additional engineer (or two) who could potentially serve as the technical lead for this project. Virtana will schedule a follow up call with the client to dive into the technical details of the project and informally define a few key deliverables or milestones. (5 Days)

4. Draft Proposal: Virtana’s technical lead for the project will put together a draft project proposal, and share it with the client. (5 Days)

5. Proposal Iteration: Any misunderstandings in the proposal are sorted out over follow up videocalls or emails. (0-5 Days)

6. Final Proposal: The final proposal is sent for approval by the client. (2 Days)

7. Proposal Approval: Once approved by the client, virtana invoices the client for an initial deposit to kick off the project. (3 days)

8. Deposit & Kickoff: Work begins once the deposit is paid. (0-5 days)

With any new engagement, we prefer to start small, which lets both Virtana and the client navigate any misunderstandings, miscommunications, or logistical issues. This usually looks like a few key milestones and deliverables defined in advance, that can reasonably be completed by 2-3 Virtana staff over 2-3 months.

Virtana aims to build long term relationships with its clients when possible. Longer engagements, even if spread across multiple projects, enables Virtana to have an even bigger impact towards our clients’ success. These relationships often start small, grow linearly in size over time, and continue for several years.

Virtana’s primary focus is software development, and this software is usually deployed on cloud systems, on-robot linux hosts, IoT devices, or microcontrollers. We’re open to and often do some level of prototype hardware design and development (e.g. microcontroller carrier boards, sensor integration, system interconnects, etc.), especially when the project also has a large software component to it.

At Virtana, we believe the sum of our team is greater than its parts. We rarely work on projects with a team of 1, as we feel our strength comes from our ability to operate as a cohesive unit, playing into each other’s strengths. Even if a client engages Virtana on a small project, that team is still supercharged by the collective technical expertise of the broader Virtana team.

For most of our projects, we assign all copyright & intellectual property rights to the client. Nonetheless, we offer discounts for open-source development.

Virtana understands that client code, strategy, and intellectual property is core to our clients’ business. As such, we take several measures to keep this information secure:

• Full disk encryption on all computers used by Virtana staff.

• 2FA on all cloud based services, and hardware 2FA (i.e. FIDO U2F hardware security keys) when it is an option.

In some cases, we’ve also taken stricter alternative measures to meet clients’ security needs:

• Utilizing computing hardware provisioned by a client’s IT team:
  Some of our clients provision laptops and provide them to Virtana engineers assigned to the project. This way all client code always remains on client hardware, and clients can have full control over their own security standards.

• Utilizing cloud VMs for development:
  We are also happy to do development on a cloud instance (e.g. AWS, GCP, Github Codespace, GitPod, etc). This way, no code physically resides on Virtana's premises. The cloud instances could be provisioned by either Virtana or a client IT team to ensure proper security standards are met. Similarly, we’re happy to do development on computers physically located on a client’s premises, assuming Virtana staff will have some form of VPN or remote access.

Yes! Virtana has worked on software systems that fall under USA’s export control restrictions (more info here). All of Virtana’s staff are citizens of the United States or Caribbean nations.

The majority of our projects are “time + materials”, billed hourly, & invoiced monthly. We’re open to alternative models (e.g. fixed bid, fixed monthly fee, etc), based on specific client or project needs.

Every project’s needs are different, which makes it near impossible to give a single cost.

Nonetheless, the following estimates should help give a rough sense:

• Starter Project: ~$10,000 USD / month

  • 1x Software Engineer - Technical Lead & Individual Contributor. (Full Time)

  • 1x Associate Software Engineer - Individual Contributor. (Half Time)

  • 1x Staff Software Engineer - Technical advisory. (~1 hr/week)

• Small Project: ~$20,000 USD / month

  • 1x Software engineer - Technical Lead & Individual Contributor. (Full Time)

  • 1x Associate Software Engineer - Individual Contributor. (Full Time)

  • 1x Associate Software Engineer - Individual Contributor. (Half Time)

  • 1x Technical Project Manager - Project Management. (~2 hrs/week)

  • 1x Staff Software Engineer - Technical advisory. (~1 hr/week)

• Medium Project: ~$40,000 USD / month

  • 1x Senior Software Engineer - Technical Lead. (Full Time)

  • 1x Software Engineer - Individual Contributor. (Full Time)

  • 2x Associate Software Engineer - Individual Contributor. (Full Time)

  • 1x Technical Project Manager - Project Management. (~4 hrs/week)

  • 1x Staff Software Engineer - Technical advisory. (~2 hrs/week)

• Large Project: ~$60,000 USD / month

  • 1x Senior Software Engineer - Technical Lead. (Full Time)

  • 2x Software Engineer - Individual Contributor. (Full Time)

  • 2x Associate Software Engineer - Individual Contributor. (Full Time)

  • 1x Testing Lead - Test operations manager. (Full Time)

  • 3x Test Technicians - Testing operators. (Full Time)

  • 1x Technical Project Manager - Project Management. (Half Time)

  • 1x Staff Software Engineer - Technical advisory. (~4 hrs/week)

Yes! We’re open to engaging with clients for a mixture of cash & equity. We’re excited to work with early stage companies & founders, or even larger companies that might be in a cash crunch. Accepting equity-based compensation also ensures that Virtana’s interests are aligned with the client’s interests.