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A senior AWS architect on retainer, not on payroll.

A fixed block of hours every month for the work nobody gets to between releases. Permissions, patching, internet exposure, costs, and the AWS side of SOC 2 or ISO 27001. A channel in your Slack, a report every month, one month's notice.

Ask about the retainer

Or email jacob@codelevel.pl.

I reply within 1 business day.

The estimate in hours is a cap: if the work would go past it, I ask you first. The rate is EUR 90 per hour, net.

What the hours go on

  • Permissions and access. IAM users, roles and keys reviewed, MFA on every account, SCPs in AWS Organizations, access removed when people leave.
  • Patching and versions. A weekly pass over missing updates on instances, in containers and in managed databases, including versions AWS is about to stop supporting.
  • Internet exposure. What faces the internet: security groups, public buckets, load balancers without a WAF, IP addresses nobody remembers.
  • Alerts and response. GuardDuty, CloudTrail and cost alerts that somebody reads. A daily look at the alerts, incidents handled during business hours.
  • Costs under control. A monthly pass over the bill, reservations and Savings Plans, anomalies caught before they become an invoice.
  • Evidence for the auditor. If you are preparing for SOC 2 or ISO 27001, I own the AWS part: controls, configuration, the screenshots and write-ups the auditor asks for.
  • Small changes on the spot. A new role, a bucket, an alarm, a Terraform fix. Larger projects are quoted separately, in writing.

What a month looks like

It starts with an inventory: every account, what runs in it, who has access and what faces the internet. That becomes a list of things to fix, most dangerous first. Then a short review every week and a report every month: what I did, what I found, what is left for next month and where the hours went.

We talk in your Slack channel or whatever tool you use. I do not need meetings. Changes go in through pull requests to your repository, and every call I make in AWS shows up in your CloudTrail.

What the retainer does not cover

Night and weekend on-call: I respond during business hours, in the same time zone as Berlin (CET/CEST), and take critical incidents in the evening too, until 22:00. Large projects do not come out of the block either: a rebuild, a migration or a Kubernetes rollout is quoted separately, and the retainer hours go on what has to happen every month.

Hour blocks

16 hours a month16 hours a month, about EUR 85 per hour
EUR 1,340 per month
32 hours a month32 hours a month, about EUR 80 per hour
EUR 2,560 per month

Net prices in euro, for businesses only. VAT: 23% for businesses in Poland; reverse charge for VAT-registered businesses elsewhere in the EU; no Polish VAT outside the EU.

When another service fits better

You need monitoring, backups and response times, not hours

Then a maintenance plan fits better: monitoring with alerts, backups with restore tests and agreed response times, with a few hours included, from from EUR 190 per month. The retainer is for a team that already runs its own servers and needs an architect’s time every month.

One job, not a monthly need

Then hourly work is enough: you describe the job, I quote the hours within 1 business day, and the estimate is a cap.

Describe your situation in a few sentences

I will reply with questions, or straight away with a proposal and a price.

Ask about the retainer

Or email jacob@codelevel.pl.

I reply within 1 business day.