Fractional DevSecOps and Cloud Engineering for UK Startups
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, for UK startups. One senior engineer who owns the cloud bill, the deployment pipeline and the security posture together, rather than three separate hires in one of Europe's most expensive engineering markets. Includes the security leadership work: Cyber Essentials readiness, UK GDPR technical measures, and enterprise security questionnaires answered with evidence.
The Problem
A UK startup needs cloud architecture, deployment automation and security, which are three disciplines, and London engineering salaries make each of them an expensive hire. Meanwhile the cloud bill compounds, deploys stay one engineer deep, and the security asks arrive early: public sector and enterprise buyers increasingly require Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus before a contract is signed, every company handling personal data answers to the ICO under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and fintechs carry the FCA's operational resilience expectations on top. Most of the market answers this with advisory: a consultancy that reviews your posture and hands back a report your team has no capacity to implement.
Who This Is For
UK startups and small engineering teams, funded or bootstrapped, running on AWS, GCP or Azure with nobody who owns infrastructure and security full time. Typical trigger points: a public sector or enterprise buyer required Cyber Essentials, a security questionnaire arrived, an investor asked who owns security during diligence, or an FCA-regulated partner started asking operational resilience questions.
Typical Outcomes
Timeline Options
First 2 weeks
- Security posture review across cloud, access and data handling
- Cloud cost review with the top savings shipped, not listed
- The top-priority remediations, prioritised by what your buyers ask about
First 90 days
- IAM, network and encryption hardening complete
- A reusable, evidence-backed answer set for security questionnaires
- Incident response runbook written and rehearsed once
- Gap map against Cyber Essentials Plus or ISO 27001, whichever your buyers actually require
Ongoing retainer
- Continuous security ownership overlapping the full UK morning and early afternoon
- Monthly written report suitable for a board, an investor or a customer
- Evidence accumulating as the infrastructure runs
- Direct access to the engineer doing the work, never an account manager
This might not be a fit if...
- You need a legal opinion on UK GDPR; we do the technical and organisational work, and you take legal interpretation from a qualified UK firm
- You need the certification itself; we do readiness and remediation, and you engage the accredited certification body
- You need a 24/7 staffed SOC rather than detection and response readiness
- You already have a full-time CISO and a security team and want additional hands for ticket volume
What You Get
The Transformation
Before
- Cloud, deployment and security are three jobs and you can afford one hire
- A tender that requires Cyber Essentials with nobody to own the controls
- UK GDPR obligations understood in outline and implemented nowhere
- Security decisions made ad hoc by whoever is least busy that week
- Certification requirements discovered during procurement rather than before it
After
- One senior owner across cloud, infrastructure and security from week one
- Buyer security questions answered within the week, with evidence
- Cyber Essentials controls implemented and ready for assessment
- Security decisions made deliberately, recorded, and defensible to an auditor
- Readiness accumulating continuously instead of being assembled before a deadline
Engagement Models
Project-based
Fixed scope, fixed timeline, fixed price. Ideal for specific security initiatives.
Retainer
Ongoing support with priority response. Perfect for continuous security needs.
What influences pricing?
- Team size and environment complexity
- Timeline and urgency requirements
- Scope of systems and platforms
- Ongoing support and maintenance needs
Frequently Asked Questions
Explore Other Services
Cloud Audit
We audit your AWS, GCP, or Azure environment, finding the ghost costs draining your runway and the security gaps hiding underneath. Most teams find both within the first week.
Pipeline Security
Your pipeline is deploying secrets to production and you probably don't know it. We audit and harden your CI/CD, catching vulnerabilities before they ship, not after.
Incident Readiness
When production breaks, does your team have a playbook, or does everyone just Slack the one person who knows the system? We build the runbooks, alerts, and processes so the next incident doesn't become a war story.
RBI Fintech Compliance
RBI Master Direction technical compliance for payment aggregators, NBFCs, and digital lending platforms headquartered in Bangalore. Data localization, encryption, MFA, 6-hour incident reporting, VAPT readiness, and CERT-In empanelled audit prep. Built into your AWS / GCP / Azure infrastructure, not into a binder nobody reads.
DPDP Compliance
Get your startup ready for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act before May 2027 enforcement. Data inventory, consent management, 72-hour breach notification pipeline, DPO scope, child-data special handling. Built into your codebase, not into a privacy policy nobody reads. Penalty exposure up to ₹250 crore.
AWS Baseline (India)
The 12 AWS security controls every Indian seed startup should turn on this afternoon: region-locked to ap-south-1, DPDP-aware, RBI-overlay-ready. Same opinionated baseline we open-sourced as aws-startup-security-baseline. Built for ₹30k-month retainers, not enterprise CAPEX.
K8s Audit (India)
Production Kubernetes cluster audit + hardening for Indian startups: RBAC review, network policies, admission controllers, supply-chain security, pod-security standards. Built for 3-15 node EKS / GKE / AKS clusters running real workloads, not enterprise mesh complexity.
SOC 2 (India)
SOC 2 Type I + Type II readiness for Indian seed startups, priced in rupees. We build you to audit-ready and shortlist India-based licensed CPA firms so the all-in lands at ₹15-30L instead of the ₹35L+ Western default. Vanta / Drata / Sprinto / Scrut integration, and a build cadence calibrated to Indian engineering economics. The attestation itself is always issued by the licensed CPA firm you engage.
Virtual CISO
Security leadership on a monthly retainer. One named person who owns your security decisions, answers your customers' questionnaires, and keeps cloud cost and cloud risk on the same review cadence, without a full-time CISO salary.
Chennai
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, run from Chennai. Lower cloud bills, infrastructure that holds up, and security that stands up to scrutiny, for a fraction of what one senior hire costs. Remote-first, IST working hours, in-person in Chennai when it genuinely helps.
UAE
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, for startups in the UAE. One senior engineer who owns the cloud bill, the deployment pipeline and the security posture together, rather than three separate hires or an advisory firm that writes recommendations someone else has to implement. Includes the security leadership work: enterprise questionnaires answered, and clarity on which data protection regime each of your entities actually falls under.
US
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, for US startups. One senior engineer who owns the cloud bill, the deployment pipeline and the security posture together, rather than three separate six-figure hires or an advisory firm that writes recommendations someone else has to implement. Includes the security leadership work: SOC 2 readiness built into how the infrastructure runs, and enterprise security questionnaires answered with evidence.
Singapore
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, for Singapore startups. One senior engineer who owns the cloud bill, the deployment pipeline and the security posture together, rather than three separate hires or an advisory firm that writes recommendations someone else has to implement. Includes the security leadership work: PDPA technical measures, MAS TRM alignment where your buyers require it, and enterprise questionnaires answered with evidence.
India
One senior owner for cloud, infrastructure and security across your Indian startup, on a monthly retainer in rupees. Built around what Indian teams actually get asked for: DPDP obligations, RBI overlays for fintech, and SOC 2 or ISO 27001 readiness priced for Indian engineering economics rather than Western defaults.
Bangalore
Cloud, infrastructure and security owned by one senior practitioner, on a monthly retainer, for Bangalore startups competing against the most expensive DevOps hiring market in India. The retainer covers the virtual CISO (vCISO) function too: one named person accountable for security decisions and for answering enterprise questionnaires. Remote-first on IST hours, with the fintech and SaaS compliance surface Bangalore teams actually run into.
DaaS
Fixed-scope, fixed-price DevOps and security engagements you can start this week: cloud cost investigation, security audit, incident-readiness sprint, compliance gap scan. The quote is agreed before work starts, and every engagement ends with findings your team keeps. Start on demand, scale to fractional if you want it owned monthly.
Terraform
Terraform consulting for startups: codify the infrastructure that currently lives in consoles and one engineer's head. Reproducible environments, reviewable changes, secure state, and a CI/CD pipeline that plans before it applies. Works with existing infrastructure via import; Terraform and OpenTofu.
Migration
Startup-sized cloud migrations that arrive secure and cost-controlled: PaaS to cloud (Heroku class exits), cloud to cloud, region moves for data-localization, and account consolidation. Fixed scope, fixed price, senior engineer end to end. The migration is the cheapest moment you will ever have to fix cost and security; we use it.
AI Search Visibility
When your buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity who to hire, the answer should include you. A fixed-scope sprint that measures where you stand in AI answers today and builds the technical layer that gets you cited: generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), done with receipts. We ran this exact playbook on matrixgard.com and the results are public. A growth-side offering from the same practice; the security retainer remains the core.
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