DevOps and SRE support, 24/7
24/7 DevOps and SRE Support Without Building the Team
A follow-the-sun rotation of senior engineers keeps your production running at every hour, at a fraction of what an in-house 24/7 team costs. A named engineer takes a critical incident within 15 minutes, day or night.
- P1 response in 15 minutes
- Root cause analysis on every critical incident
- Rates from $45 per hour
Why is 24/7 DevOps cover a staffing problem?
Round-the-clock cover needs people before it needs tools. Google puts the minimum for a single-site 24/7 on-call rotation at eight engineers, and one mid-senior DevOps or SRE engineer costs about $208,000 a year in the US or £110,000 in the UK. So most teams settle for two people sharing a pager.
8
engineers: Google’s stated minimum for a single-site 24/7 on-call rotation
Source: Google SRE book
$208k
fully loaded yearly cost of one mid-senior DevOps or SRE engineer in the US
£110k
the same engineer in the UK, with employer NI, pension and on-call pay
Two people sharing a pager is neither 24/7 nor sustainable, and it fails on the weekend you can least afford it. One holiday or one resignation and the rotation is gone.
How does follow-the-sun DevOps support work?
Engineers in five timezone clusters hand over to each other, so someone is mid-shift at every hour of the working week. A ticket raised at 03:00 goes to an engineer who is already working, and nobody is woken up to diagnose your platform. Weekends and public holidays run on a paged on-call rotation.
Follow-the-sun
Engineers across five timezone clusters hand over to each other, so someone is mid-shift at every hour of the working week.
Every hour is working hours
There is no out-of-hours tier. A ticket raised at 03:00 is picked up by someone already at their desk.
Weekends on call
Weekends and public holidays run on a paged on-call rotation. Critical-incident targets stay the same.
What response times do you commit to?
A named engineer responds to a P1 critical incident within 15 minutes, updates you every hour and works to restore service within 4 hours, with a root cause analysis in 3 working days. P2 gets a response in 30 minutes, P3 in 4 hours and P4 within 1 working day. Final targets go into your contract.
| Standard targets | P1 Critical | P2 High | P3 Medium | P4 Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Named engineer responds | 15 min | 30 min | 4 hours | 1 working day |
| Updates while open | Every hour | Every 4 hours | Daily | On change |
| Restoration target | 4 hours | 8 cover hours | 5 working days | Best effort |
| Root cause analysis | 3 working days | On request | - | - |
A response means a qualified engineer who has publicly taken ownership of the incident, never an automated reply. P2 response at weekends is 2 hours. Final targets are set per engagement against your scope and written into the contract.
How does incident response work day to day?
Every incident follows a written playbook: defined triage, a dedicated channel and a five-line situation summary within minutes of the page. Updates say what is happening, what it means for you, who is on it and when the next update comes. Every critical incident gets a root cause analysis from the engineer who handled it.
Incident playbook
Defined triage, a dedicated channel and a five-line situation summary within minutes of the page.
Updates you can act on
What is happening, what it means for you, who is on it, and the exact time of the next update.
Root cause, every time
A mandatory root cause analysis on every critical incident, to a committed date, by the engineer who handled it.
Change and access control
Tiered notice, a named verifier and a rollback point for every change; least privilege, MFA and an audited break-glass path.
What does one in-house DevOps or SRE engineer cost?
One mid-senior DevOps or SRE engineer costs about $208,000 a year in the US and £110,450 in the UK once benefits, payroll taxes, pension, on-call pay and tooling are added to salary. Salary is only 67 to 72 percent of the bill, and each hire usually adds a 15 to 25 percent agency fee.
| One mid-senior DevOps/SRE engineer, per year | United States | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary, market median | $140,000 | £80,000 |
| Benefits, payroll taxes, pension | $49,000 | £18,450 |
| On-call allowance, about 10% of base | $14,000 | £8,000 |
| Tooling, training, equipment | $5,000 | £4,000 |
| Fully loaded cost | $208,000 | £110,450 |
Before any of this, each hire typically costs a 15 to 25 percent agency fee: about $21k to $35k in the US or £12k to £20k in the UK. Replacing someone who leaves costs between half and twice their salary.
What does an in-house 24/7 DevOps team cost?
Real 24/7 cover starts at four engineers: $832,000 a year in the US or £441,800 in the UK, plus about $112,000 or £64,000 to hire them. Google’s guidance of eight engineers doubles that. The lean setup most companies run, two engineers sharing a pager, still costs $416,000 or £220,900 and gives no continuous cover.
| In-house team, per year | United States | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|
| Lean: 2 engineers sharing a pager | $416,000 | £220,900 |
| Minimum 24/7: 4 engineers | $832,000 | £441,800 |
| Google SRE guidance: 8 engineers | $1,664,000 | £883,600 |
| One-off: hiring a team of 4 | + $112,000 | + £64,000 |
The lean option is what most companies have. It does not give continuous cover: one holiday or one resignation and the rotation is gone.
How much do you save with managed DevOps support?
Compared with a 4-engineer in-house team, Valletta support costs 63 to 97 percent less, depending on the tier and on whether your benchmark is a US or UK team. Essentials saves 97 percent against a US team and 95 percent against a UK team. Even against two engineers sharing a pager, the saving is 26 to 93 percent.
| Valletta engagement | Saving vs US team | Saving vs UK team |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials: 24/7 cover with a small monthly allowance of hands-on hours | 97% | 95% |
| Standard: 24/7 cover plus about one engineer-month of work | 87% | 82% |
| Extended: 24/7 cover plus about two engineer-months of work | 75% | 63% |
Saving against an in-house team of 4 engineers, hiring costs excluded. Every tier includes the same rotation, priority ladder and reporting. Against the lean two-person setup, which cannot deliver continuous cover, the saving is still 26 to 93 percent.
Why does shared 24/7 cover cost so much less?
You fund your share of a rotation that already exists, so you pay for the work done on your platform rather than a whole team of your own. You also skip agency fees and months-long searches, absences are covered inside the rotation, and your platform is documented so cover never depends on one person.
A shared rotation
The engineer on shift is already there. You fund your share of the cover instead of a whole team of your own.
Hiring risk stays with us
You skip agency fees and months-long searches, and a resignation costs you nothing. Absences are covered inside the rotation.
Knowledge shared by the whole rotation
Your platform is documented and known by every engineer on the rotation, so cover never depends on one person’s memory.
Senior from day one
Engineers who already run production Kubernetes on AWS, with a playbook that is written down and audited.
What does 24/7 DevOps support look like in production?
We run 24/7 operations today for a multi-venue platform across the UK and the US: about 150 repositories on a Kubernetes estate on AWS, with booking, payment, kiosk and in-venue game systems that trade evenings and weekends. Our engineers work in the client’s tooling and instrument what is not yet visible.
~150
repositories on a Kubernetes estate on AWS
2
countries of venues, trading evenings and weekends
24/7
booking, payment, kiosk and in-venue game systems
Stack: AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Datadog, PagerDuty, GitHub Actions, Octopus Deploy, Jira and Zendesk. We work in your tooling where you have it and instrument what is not yet visible.
How does onboarding to 24/7 support work?
Onboarding runs in four phases from signature to full cover: access and discovery, a knowledge base, operations and automation. Through an agreed bedding-in period we measure and report against the targets before they become enforceable, so the numbers you hold us to come from your own data. Each phase builds on the last.
Access and discovery
Least-privilege access set up and the estate mapped.
Knowledge base
Infrastructure, deployment and incident runbooks written and tested.
Operations
Full rotation, alerting and monthly reporting live.
Automation
Preventive monitoring and AI-assisted triage.
Which clouds and tools do you cover?
We support production on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, with AWS and Kubernetes as the platform we run around the clock today. We work in the tools you already use, such as Datadog, PagerDuty, GitHub Actions, Octopus Deploy, Jira and Zendesk, and add monitoring where parts of your estate are not yet visible.
- Clouds: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud
- Orchestration and infrastructure as code: Kubernetes and Terraform
- Monitoring and paging: Datadog and PagerDuty
- Delivery: GitHub Actions and Octopus Deploy
- Tickets and service desk: Jira and Zendesk
How much does 24/7 DevOps support cost?
DevOps support is billed from $45 per hour. Every tier includes the same follow-the-sun rotation, priority ladder and reporting; tiers differ by how much hands-on engineering time comes with the cover. Send us your stack and current support setup. We come back with a side-by-side cost comparison and a fixed proposal.
Essentials
24/7 cover with a small monthly allowance of hands-on hours.
Standard
24/7 cover plus about one engineer-month of work.
Extended
24/7 cover plus about two engineer-months of work.
Managed Kubernetes, in-house cost and AWS Support compared
Three pages go deeper. Managed Kubernetes covers what we run on your clusters. The cost calculator shows what a 2, 4 or 8 engineer in-house rotation costs in the US or the UK. The AWS comparison explains what AWS Enterprise Support covers and how a 24/7 rotation works next to it.
Managed Kubernetes
Upgrades, node lifecycle, monitoring and incident response for your clusters, around the clock.
Managed KubernetesIn-house cost calculator
What a 2, 4 or 8 engineer in-house rotation costs in the US or the UK, line by line.
Open the calculatorAWS Enterprise Support compared
What AWS Support covers, what it leaves to you, and how a 24/7 rotation fits next to it.
See the comparison
Which assumptions sit behind the cost numbers?
The in-house figures use market salaries for a mid-senior DevOps or SRE engineer in 2026, the overheads that come with them, and the team size continuous cover needs. US costs are in dollars and UK costs in pounds. The savings compare Valletta standard engagement pricing with a 4-engineer team, hiring excluded.
- US salary: $140,000 base, within the 2026 market composite for DevOps ($119k to $143k) and SRE ($132k to $155k) from Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, PayScale and Built In, via KORE1 (2026).
- US overheads: benefits and payroll taxes at 35% of base. BLS reports benefits at 30% of total private-sector compensation (June 2026), equal to about 43% of wages, so 35% is conservative.
- UK salary: £80,000, the median permanent SRE salary on IT Jobs Watch for the six months to 26 October 2026.
- UK overheads: employer National Insurance at 15% above £5,000 (2026/27), 5% employer pension and £2,000 of other benefits.
- On-call and tooling: on-call allowance at 10% of base; $5,000 or £4,000 per engineer for tooling, training and equipment.
- Hiring: agency fees of 15% to 25% of first-year pay (20% used); replacing someone who leaves costs between half and twice their salary (Gallup, via KORE1).
- Team size: Google SRE book, "Being On-Call": eight engineers minimum for a single-site on-call rotation.
- Savings: Valletta standard engagement pricing against the 4-engineer team, hiring excluded; £1 = $1.30.
Sources
- Google, Site Reliability Engineering, chapter 11 "Being On-Call" (accessed 13 November 2026)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (accessed 13 November 2026)
- IT Jobs Watch, Site Reliability Engineer, UK permanent median salary (six months to 26 October 2026; still £80,000 when rechecked on 13 November 2026)
- KORE1 (2026), DevOps and SRE salary composite from Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, PayScale and Built In
- Gallup, cost of replacing an employee, via KORE1
- Valletta assumptions: UK employer National Insurance 15% above £5,000 (2026/27), 5% employer pension, exchange rate £1 = $1.30
Frequently asked questions
A response means a qualified engineer who has publicly taken ownership of the incident, never an automated reply or a ticket acknowledgement. For a P1 critical incident that happens within 15 minutes, then an update every hour saying what is happening, what it means for you, who is on it and when the next update comes.
Weekends and public holidays run on a paged on-call rotation. Critical-incident targets do not change: a P1 still gets a named engineer within 15 minutes and hourly updates. The one difference is P2, where the weekend response target is 2 hours instead of 30 minutes. Everything else follows the standard priority ladder.
Yes. The priority ladder on this page is our standard. Final targets are set per engagement against your scope and written into the contract. During an agreed bedding-in period we measure and report against them before they become enforceable, so the targets you hold us to come from your own data.
Yes. We work in your tooling where you have it and instrument what is not yet visible. On the platform we run today the stack is AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Datadog, PagerDuty, GitHub Actions, Octopus Deploy, Jira and Zendesk, so alerts, tickets and deployments stay where your team already looks.
Onboarding has four phases: access and discovery, where least-privilege access is set up and the estate mapped; a knowledge base of tested runbooks; operations, with the full rotation, alerting and monthly reporting live; and automation, with preventive monitoring and AI-assisted triage. A bedding-in period comes before targets become enforceable.
Access follows least privilege and requires MFA, with an audited break-glass path for emergencies. Every change carries tiered notice to your team, a named verifier and a rollback point. Access is set up in the first onboarding phase, and your platform is documented so the whole rotation works from the same runbooks.
Our support is billed from $45 per hour. A minimum in-house 24/7 team of four engineers costs $832,000 a year in the US or £441,800 in the UK, and our tiers cost 63 to 97 percent less than that. We send a side-by-side comparison and a fixed proposal once we know your stack.
We cover AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. AWS with Kubernetes is the platform we run around the clock today, for a multi-venue business across the UK and the US with about 150 repositories. The same rotation, priority ladder and change control apply whichever cloud your production runs on.
A dedicated DevOps engineer works inside your team on your roadmap during their working day. 24/7 support is a rotation that covers every hour of the week with committed response targets. Many teams combine the two: an engineer builds the platform, and the rotation keeps it running at night and at weekends.
AWS Support answers for AWS services and, by AWS’s own description, does not include custom code development, software debugging or system administration. Our rotation operates your platform: clusters, pipelines, alerts and incidents. The two do different jobs and work well together, since only AWS can look inside its own services.
Compare it against your own numbers
Send us your stack and current support setup. We come back with a side-by-side cost comparison and a fixed proposal.
Prefer to talk?