Managed AWS Operations: Build Your Team or Buy the Service?

Every growing company on AWS faces the same inflection point: do we hire a dedicated DevOps/Platform Engineering team, or do we outsource managed operations to a partner?

The answer isn’t universal. Here’s a practical framework for making the decision.

The Build Option: In-House DevOps Team

What you get: Full control. Your team knows your stack intimately, can respond instantly, and evolves with your product.

What it costs:

• 2-3 senior DevOps engineers: $400-600K/year (fully loaded)
• Tooling (monitoring, alerting, CI/CD): $30-50K/year
• On-call burden: burnout, attrition, coverage gaps
• Ramp-up time: 3-6 months to full productivity
• Knowledge concentration risk: what happens when someone leaves?

Best for: Companies where infrastructure IS the product, teams with 50+ engineers, organizations with unique compliance needs.

The Buy Option: Managed Operations

What you get: 24/7 coverage, established runbooks, multi-client experience, predictable costs.

What it costs:

• Monthly retainer: typically $5-15K/month depending on scope
• Less customization (though good partners adapt)
• Dependency on external team
• Communication overhead

Best for: Companies with 5-30 engineers, teams where infrastructure supports the product (not IS the product), organizations that need 24/7 coverage but can’t justify the headcount.

The Decision Framework

Answer these questions:

1. Is your infrastructure a competitive advantage? If your product’s differentiation comes from infrastructure (edge computing, custom ML pipelines, real-time data), build. If infrastructure is a means to an end (web app, SaaS, API service), buy.

2. How many engineers do you have? Under 15 total engineers: managed services almost always win. You can’t afford to dedicate 2-3 engineers to infra when you have a product to ship.

3. Do you need 24/7 coverage? 24/7 on-call requires minimum 4-5 people for sustainable rotation. If you need it but don’t have the headcount, managed services fill the gap.

4. How fast are you growing? Hypergrowth companies often can’t hire fast enough. Managed services provide instant capacity while you build the team.

The Hybrid Model

Most of our clients land on a hybrid approach:

• Managed partner handles: 24/7 monitoring, incident response, patching, backups, cost optimization, compliance
• Internal team handles: Architecture decisions, application deployment, feature infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines

This gives you the best of both worlds: reliable operations without the full headcount cost, while your team focuses on what matters — shipping product.

When to Transition

As you grow, the balance shifts. We’ve helped clients transition from fully managed to hybrid to mostly in-house. The right partner doesn’t lock you in — they help you build internal capability over time.

The key question isn’t “build or buy forever.” It’s “what’s the right balance for where we are today?”