A dedicated QA engineer in your Jira, your Slack, and your sprint ceremonies – from week one. Faster to get started than hiring, with more expertise than a testing factory.
Embedded QA is not outsourced testing with a better name. The word "embedded" is doing real work in that phrase, and it is worth being specific about what it means.
Embedded means we are present in your sprint ceremonies – sprint planning, daily standup, sprint review, retrospective. Not as observers. As participants. We contribute to sprint planning by reviewing acceptance criteria and writing test cases for each story before development starts. We participate in standup by reporting testing progress and flagging blockers in the channel your developers already use. We bring quality data to retrospective: escaped defects, coverage gaps, automation candidates for next sprint.
Embedded means we have the same access to your tools that your developers do. We are in your Jira, filing defects in the project with the same access levels as your QA team. We are in your GitHub or Gitlab, reviewing PRs for testability. We are in your staging environment, running test cases against features as they become available – not waiting for a handoff at the end of the sprint.
Embedded means we know your codebase and your product. After the first sprint, we are not a vendor receiving tickets. We are a team member who understands the risk profile of your authentication system, knows which areas of the app have historically been fragile, and can prioritize testing effort based on that context.
The honest comparison between embedded QA and full-time hiring covers five dimensions:
| Dimension | Embedded QA (goGreenlit) | Full-Time Hire |
|---|---|---|
| Time to value | 1-2 weeks | 2-4 months (recruiting, hiring, onboarding) |
| Experience level | 9+ years, founders directly engaged | Varies by candidate and salary band |
| Flexibility | Scale up or down each month | Fixed cost regardless of sprint load |
| Overhead | No benefits, payroll, equipment | Salary + benefits + equipment + management |
| Knowledge transfer | Documentation and runbooks built in | Depends on individual; lost when they leave |
Testing factories are volume operations. They take requirements, execute them against a checklist, and report results. For well-defined regression testing on stable applications, they can be cost-effective. For anything that requires judgment – risk-based prioritization, exploratory testing, test case design for new features – they produce coverage numbers that look good on paper but don't reflect actual quality.
The fundamental difference: a testing factory is a vendor. An embedded QA team is a partner. A vendor does what it is told. A partner tells you when what you are asking for is not the right thing to do.
In practice, that means: we will tell you when a release is not ready, not just when the test cases you asked us to execute have passed. We will flag requirements ambiguities in sprint planning, not just defects after implementation. We will recommend changes to your deployment process if we see risks that testing alone cannot address.
The most common thing we hear from clients who have used testing factories before goGreenlit: "We knew we had bugs, but we didn't know how many or where. Now we know." The difference is not the number of tests – it is the judgment applied to which tests to run, in what order, with what depth.
We offer three engagement models based on your sprint structure and coverage needs:
Weekly sprint retainer: A defined number of QA hours per sprint, allocated to test case design, test execution, and automation. Best for teams on one-week sprints or teams that need a consistent weekly QA presence without full-sprint commitment.
Monthly retainer: A broader scope of work per month covering testing, automation development, and process improvement. Best for teams that want QA embedded across the full sprint cycle and need more hours per sprint than a simple retainer covers.
Project-based: A specific deliverable with a defined scope – a regression suite build, a test strategy engagement, a QA audit followed by implementation. Best for teams that have a specific gap to close rather than an ongoing QA need.
We scope each engagement based on a discovery conversation. We don't publish prices because the right scope varies widely – a 10-person startup needs different coverage than a 50-person company. A 30-minute call is enough to define the right model and a realistic scope.
Tell us about your team, your sprint structure, and your current QA situation. We'll scope an embedded engagement that fits.
Book a Free CallWe can help you figure that out too. A 30-minute call is enough to assess your current situation and give you an honest recommendation – even if that recommendation is not us.
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