Bespoke builds for organisations with a specific problem.
For the work that doesn't fit a generic API. A domain-specific model, an internal tool, a data pipeline, a piece of infrastructure that needs to live somewhere accountable. Small team, hands-on, working out of Newcastle.
Discovery → build → deploy → support
Discovery and scoping
1–2 week fixed-fee engagement. We sit down with you (in person where practical), map the problem, run a small technical spike, and return a written proposal — scope, timeline, fixed price, what we're explicitly not doing.
AUD $4,000 – $9,000
Build
Day rate AUD $1,400 – $2,200 per engineer. Weekly demo, monthly invoice itemised by hour. We work in your stack where it makes sense and propose alternatives where it doesn't. Compute is billed at retail rate on top.
Deploy
We deploy onto Newcastle Compute by default, or onto your infrastructure if you'd prefer. Either way you own the code, the data, the model weights, and the keys.
Support
Optional monthly retainer for ongoing maintenance, model retraining, and incident response. Cancellable any month. No-retainer support also available at standard day rate.
Project shapes we take on
Domain-specific assistant
A fine-tuned model plus retrieval pipeline plus an interface, scoped to the way your organisation actually works rather than what a generic chatbot can do. Typical scope 4–8 weeks.
Internal tool with AI inside
A line-of-business tool — review of contracts, triage of inbound emails, processing of unstructured records — where AI is a component, not the headline. Typical scope 6–10 weeks.
Data pipeline / model evaluation
Building the harness around a model — ingestion, cleaning, evaluation, monitoring. Often the harder half of getting AI into production. Typical scope 3–6 weeks.
Infrastructure on Newcastle Compute
Provisioning, hardening and operating a private deployment on our hardware — for organisations that need the compute but don't want to run the operations themselves. Scope varies.
Who you're working with
Newcastle Compute is led by Matt Cook — software engineer, Hunter resident, founder of Newcastle Rising. The team is deliberately small: two to three engineers depending on the project, all senior, all based in Australia, no offshoring. You get the people who do the work, not an account manager standing between you and them.
We've shipped production systems across web, data, and applied AI. We'll happily share references and prior work under NDA. Where we don't have direct experience in a domain, we'll say so before you sign anything.
Send a brief
One or two paragraphs describing the problem is enough to start. We'll reply inside 48 hours, usually faster.