Productera
Services

Three people. AI as the fourth.

AI-driven product engineering for regulated industries. A senior 3-person team ships what used to take 8 — without compromising compliance, security, or the architectural judgment that keeps things working at scale.

What we do

Four practices, one goal: get your product to market and keep it there. Every engagement is tailored to your stack, your timeline, and your regulatory reality.

The 3-person AI-driven build team

Most builds need three senior people, not eight. AI handles what used to require headcount; senior judgment handles what AI gets wrong. The result is faster delivery at roughly half the cost.

Tech PM

Owns the roadmap, writes specs the AI can build from, and talks to your customers. Single point of contact with your product team. Reads code well enough to validate AI output and architectural decisions.

Senior Architect

Designs the system and writes the critical paths. Directs Cursor, Claude, and codebase-tuned prompts as a force multiplier — compressing what used to take days into hours. Senior enough to know what breaks at scale, and where AI gets it wrong.

QA Engineer

Owns quality. Designs test strategies, validates security and accessibility, and catches the edge cases AI generates correct-looking-but-wrong code for. More important on a lean team, not less.

Need parallel workstreams, multi-product integration, or deep legacy expertise? We scale up with embedded engineering teams — see AlphaSense and ACA Group.

How a build runs

Same shape every time, different scope. No sales-cycle theatre, no surprise scope creep, no opaque deliverables.

01

Discovery sprint

1-2 week paid scoping. We read your code, interview your team, and write a phased architecture brief — what's working, what's at risk, and what we'd actually build. You get the plan with milestones and effort estimates whether or not you continue with us.

02

Architecture & scoping

The Senior Architect defines the system. AI tooling helps explore trade-offs and prototype critical paths before we commit. Scope and milestones get written down before any production code gets written, and in-flight changes go through written change requests.

03

AI-accelerated build

The Architect ships features at 3-4x traditional developer pace using AI for boilerplate, test scaffolding, and docs. The Tech PM keeps requirements current; QA validates what AI misses. You see commits the day they happen, with demos every two weeks.

04

Operate & iterate

Documentation, runbooks, and handoff training so your team can own what we built. We stay on retainer if you want ongoing support. Many engagements convert into multi-year partnerships — AlphaSense (3+ years), ACA Group (3+ years), Encore Compliance (18+ months).

Frequently asked questions

How does the 3-person AI-driven team actually work?+

A Tech PM owns roadmap and specs, a Senior Architect builds the system using AI tooling as a force multiplier, and a QA Engineer owns quality. AI handles boilerplate, test scaffolding, prototyping, and operational documentation; senior judgment owns architecture, security, edge cases, and the calls AI gets wrong. The result is the same output as a traditional 8-person squad at roughly half the fully-loaded cost — and faster, because there's no coordination tax.

How is AI actually used in delivery?+

Our Architect uses Cursor, Claude, and codebase-tuned prompts as a force multiplier — generating boilerplate, exploring trade-offs across multiple implementations, writing initial test suites, and producing operational documentation. The judgment calls about architecture, security, and edge cases stay with the senior human. We've written about the pattern in our post on the 3-person AI-driven team model.

What about projects too large for a 3-person team?+

We scale up. For parallel workstreams, deep legacy systems, or multi-product integration across a large platform, we run embedded engineering teams with multiple architects, engineers, QA specialists, and PMs. See our AlphaSense (10+ engineers, 3+ years), ACA Group (3+ years), and Encore Compliance engagements as examples of when scope demanded more than the lean default.

How are engagements billed?+

Discovery sprints are fixed-fee. AI-driven 3-person teams run on monthly retainer, with rates that depend on scope and the seniority required (lean teams concentrate spend on genuinely senior people). Larger embedded teams price per-team-member monthly. Fixed-fee builds are available when scope is clear enough to commit to.

What's a typical engagement length?+

Discovery: 1-2 weeks. AI-driven 3-person builds typically run 2-6 months from architecture to first production release — faster than traditional teams because there's no coordination tax between roles. Embedded multi-person partnerships often run multi-year (AlphaSense 3+ years, ACA Group 3+ years, Encore Compliance 18+ months).

Do you only work with fintech and RegTech companies?+

Our deepest experience is in regulated industries — fintech, RegTech, healthtech, and expert networks — but we also work with vertical SaaS companies where compliance, audit readiness, or operational rigor matter more than speed-to-MVP. We don't take on B2C consumer apps or projects without a technical reason for needing senior engineering.

Let's talk about what you're building

30-minute call with a senior engineer. No sales pitch — just a conversation about your product and how we can help.