What is a fractional SRE engagement?

We act as your fractional SRE function — owning reliability outcomes, not just giving advice — for a fixed number of days per week or a time-boxed project.

When is the right time to bring in SRE help?

Typically once you have paying customers, a small engineering team, and incidents or scaling risks are interrupting product work.

Do you replace a full-time SRE hire?

No — we help you bridge the gap until hiring makes sense, and can support you through that transition.

How does this compare to a full-time SRE hire?

A full-time Staff SRE runs $200K+ in base salary — closer to $250K+ all-in — takes months to hire, and may not stay. An embedded fractional engagement at $6,000–16,000/month starts in days, costs a fraction of that, and de-risks the decision while you figure out whether a full-time role is justified.

Production doesn't have to be chaos

Fractional SRE leadership for reliability at scale.

Sunwolf Studio delivers fractional SRE consulting to design, operate, and scale reliable cloud infrastructure so your team can ship fast without fearing the next incident.

See our work

Focus

Reliability · Scalability · Cost

For

Seed to Series C startups

Engagement

1-3 days/week or project-based

When to bring in Sunwolf

We help startups bridge the gap between "it works" and "it's reliable" — before you're ready for a full-time SRE hire.

Incidents are interrupting product work

On-call isn't owned, and engineers are firefighting instead of building.
Infra was built fast and now scaling feels risky

Growth is coming, but the foundation wasn't built for it.
You need Staff SRE guidance

But can't justify a full-time hire at this stage.

How we help

Start with a Reliability Audit to establish your baseline, then scale into project-based implementation or ongoing embedded capacity as your reliability needs grow.

Reliability Audit

Start here

A senior, independent read on your reliability posture — and the front door to everything else.

$1,500/audit

30-minute diagnostic conversation
Independent analysis of your infrastructure
Results presentation with written report
Tactical steps to improve reliability

Creates shared clarity and de-risks larger change.

Book Your Audit

SRE-in-a-Box

A complete SRE redesign and implementation, scoped to a fixed set of outcomes.

$10K–30K/project

SLOs, monitoring, and alerting tailored to your stack
Incident response workflows and runbooks
On-call structure and escalation policies
Team training and knowledge transfer

Defined deliverables and timeline. Out-of-scope work converts to $185/hr.

Schedule Call

Embedded Fractional SRE

Ongoing reliability ownership and dedicated capacity — external ownership with internal accountability.

$6,000+/month

1 day/week: $6,000/mo
2 days/week: $11,500/mo
3 days/week: $16,000/mo

Reliability outcomes, not just advice
Incident response and postmortems
Scaling, capacity, and architectural decisions
On-call design and team enablement

3-month minimum. 4+ days/week is quoted separately as dedicated capacity.

Schedule Call

Results from recent work

We've helped startups move from "hope it holds" to predictable, measurable reliability.

View all

Scaling Luxury: Launching a Robust Short-Term Rental Platform

Enhanced Staymenity's backend API with several Laravel and PHP major version upgrades, modernizing their tech stack.

Read case study Fractional SRE

Screenshot of Sendspark dashboard with custom domain settings

Empowering Video Communication: Building a Serverless API for Domain White Labeling

Designed and implemented a serverless API using Go for managing white-labeled domains.

Read case study API Development

View all case studies

A lightweight, practical engagement model

Intro call

We discuss your stack, incidents, and reliability goals, and decide if Sunwolf is a fit.

Assessment

You complete a short onboarding form, then we review infra, monitoring, and recent incidents.

Roadmap

We agree on a concrete, time-boxed plan focused on the highest-impact reliability wins.

Execute & iterate

We implement alongside your team, document changes, and adjust as your product evolves.

Boutique, Staff SRE expertise

Sunwolf Studio is a boutique SRE consultancy focused on helping fast-moving startups run reliable, scalable infrastructure without building a full SRE team.

We bring experience running production systems on AWS and GCP with Kubernetes, Terraform, and modern observability stacks like Datadog and Prometheus/Grafana — paired with a pragmatic, product-aware approach to reliability.

Focus areas

SLOs and error budgets
Incident response & on-call
Production readiness reviews
Scaling and performance
Cloud cost and reliability trade-offs

Questions founders often ask

What is a fractional SRE engagement?: We act as your fractional SRE function — owning reliability outcomes, not just giving advice — for a fixed number of days per week or a time-boxed project.
When is the right time to bring in SRE help?: Typically once you have paying customers, a small engineering team, and incidents or scaling risks are interrupting product work.
Do you replace a full-time SRE hire?: No — we help you bridge the gap until hiring makes sense, and can support you through that transition.
How does this compare to a full-time SRE hire?: A full-time Staff SRE runs $200K+ in base salary — closer to $250K+ all-in — takes months to hire, and may not stay. An embedded fractional engagement at $6,000–16,000/month starts in days, costs a fraction of that, and de-risks the decision while you figure out whether a full-time role is justified.

Ready to stop firefighting production?

Book a short intro call to see if Sunwolf Studio is the right fit for your startup.