Senior prepress automation leadership. Monthly. 30-day exit.
A senior prepress automation engineer embedded in your team on a monthly retainer. Proactive, not reactive. You get the strategic and technical output of a senior hire without the full-time salary — and you can stop on 30 days' notice.
You need senior-level output. Not a full-time hire.
- Scaling print operations that can't yet justify a full-time automation hire
- Teams mid-migration (Esko → open stack, or the reverse) who need embedded expertise
- In-house prepress teams with good operators but no senior integration engineer
- Companies shipping a web-to-print or MIS integration who need more than a freelancer
Six areas of ongoing output.
Workflow design, platform selection, integration patterns — the upstream choices that determine whether a build holds under production load.
MIS↔prepress wiring, JDF/JMF schemas, web-to-print data contracts, ERP connectors. Built to survive the next MIS upgrade.
Not just oversight. Production code, AE Pilot tickets, Cloudflow workflows, JavaScript modules, APIs — delivered alongside your team.
Pull request reviews, prepress-specific correctness checks, and enforcing standards your team can sustain after the engagement ends.
Working sessions, documentation, and deliberate knowledge transfer so your team doesn't need to re-learn everything when the engagement changes.
Production issues don't wait for the next sprint. Senior eyes on urgent problems, with context on how the workflow was built.
Scoped in one call.
- 1Discovery call — 30 minutes.
Describe your stack, your team size, what's slowing you down, and what you want to ship. No deck required.
- 2Scope: hours, focus areas, cadence.
Typically 10–20 hours per week. We agree on focus areas and a communication cadence — async-first or weekly sync, your preference.
- 3Monthly engagement begins.
Monthly billing. Scale hours up or down with 30 days' notice. Stop entirely on 30 days' notice, no penalty.
Different tools for different problems.
A support contract is reactive — incidents, patches, version upgrades. Lead is proactive — building things, improving things, mentoring your team.
| Support contract | Lead | |
|---|---|---|
| Mode | Reactive | Proactive |
| Focus | Incidents, patches, uptime | Building, improving, mentoring |
| Billing | Annual contract | Monthly, 30-day exit |
| Best for | Production stability | Technical velocity |
| Overlap possible? | Yes | Yes — both at once is common |
| 10 hrs/week retainer | $3,000–5,000/mo |
| 20 hrs/week retainer | $5,000–8,000/mo |
| Full-time equivalent (40 hrs/week) | Custom — get in touch |
| Minimum commitment | 1 month |
| Exit clause | 30 days' notice, no penalty |
Actual rate depends on scope, hours, and focus areas. Confirmed in writing after the scoping call.
Looking for embedded prepress automation leadership?
30-minute scoping call. No deck required. Engagement can start the following month.