Resident Engineer · HR
One senior engineer, on fixed days every week, inside the systems you already run. New starters are set up correctly on day one, people data reaches the board without a manual extract, and recruiters stop chasing spreadsheets. Each fix goes live with the hours measured before and after.
The first month
Week one
The audit and a measured backlog
Weeks two to four
First fix live in your tenant
Every month
One-page report: hours saved against baseline
Throughout
Everything delivered is monitored
Hiring, joiners and people data, fixed one process at a time.
Each fix goes live with the hours measured before and after.
Sound familiar?
From HR directors, heads of people and heads of recruitment. If three apply, this page is for you.
You are not unusual
84.5%
of UK HR teams have an HR information system in place.
82.9%
have payroll software.
1 : 60
is the median ratio of HR staff to employees.
From a CIPD survey of 1,174 UK HR decision makers, published in March 2023. The systems are there; the gap is between them. An older XpertHR survey (2020, 260 practitioners) found about 20% of HR time went on administration and 5% on analytics.1, 6
What a Resident Engineer is
A Resident Engineer is a senior DataCactus engineer who works inside your organisation on fixed days each week, with the people who do the work, and puts fixes into production rather than into a slide deck.
Large technology vendors now call this a forward deployed engineer and reserve it for their biggest customers.2 We do the same work, on the Microsoft platform you already pay for, for organisations of 50 to 1,000 staff, at a price that makes sense for one department.
1
Your engineer sits with the team, maps the processes that cost the most hours, and measures each one: hours per week, volume, how long things take, how often they go wrong. You get a prioritised backlog with a baseline against every item.
2
The engineer builds the first item in your tenant, tests it with your team, puts it live and records a short handover. Then the next one. A small fix ships every few weeks; a bigger one every four to six.
3
One page. What went live, hours saved against the baseline, what is next, one recommendation. You decide the order of the backlog; we advise.
4
Monitoring and fixes for every item delivered are included while the engagement runs.
What you get
Not included, in writing
Microsoft, Azure and AI model consumption (you pay Microsoft directly; we estimate it per backlog item). Changes to your source systems. Same-day or out-of-hours response. Work outside the named department unless the backlog is re-agreed. Anything that needs access not granted by the end of week two.
What we build
Ordered by how often it is the first item on the backlog.
A hire in the HR system creates the accounts, the equipment request, the payroll record and the first-week tasks. A leaver triggers the reverse, so access is closed on the last day and not remembered weeks later.
Each site’s sequence of checks enforced in one system instead of remembered, with recruiters working at the same time and managers seeing where candidates are stuck. Built for a restaurant operator hiring into airports and stations, as a Business Applications project.3
See applicant tracking →Extracts from the HR and payroll systems refreshed daily into one set of figures, with each manager seeing only their own teams. Done for a national health charity.
Read the case study →Data from the systems that hold it brought together and reported consistently, so the numbers a manager sees match the numbers payroll uses.
Documents read on upload, filed against the person, and expiry alerts sent to the right owner before the date.
Payroll inputs checked against the HR record before they are submitted, with the differences listed for a person to resolve.
Employees ask the handbook a question and get an answer that cites the policy, using the same approach as our Intake Agent, running in your tenant.
If your first problem is not on this list, it goes on the backlog anyway. The list is what we have built before, not the limit of what we build.
What we measure
Time to hire
From requisition to signed offer
Time to productive
Whether a new starter has what they need on the first day
HR hours per joiner
The admin that should not need a person
People-data requests answered from a dashboard
Fewer manual extracts, more self-service
Proof
The Restaurant Group tracked identity checks, referencing, criminal record checks and airport clearance in Excel, one file per site, with recruiters overwriting each other. A model-driven Power App now enforces each site’s sequence of checks.3
Week one
A working first version in the first week, and full deployment in six weeks.
The systems we work in
HR and payroll
The plumbing
Recruitment
These are the ones we meet most, not the limit. We can work with any platform you already run. We do not ask you to buy a new platform, and we pick the most adequate tool for the job, whether that is Power Automate, an Azure Function or n8n.
Security and data
Inside your tenant
Everything is built in your Microsoft 365 and Azure environment, under your identity, permissions and policies. Your data does not leave it.
Data protection
A data processing agreement on every engagement. Where AI models are used, they run through Azure OpenAI in your subscription, in the UK region you choose.
Licences and consumption
Estimated per backlog item before it is built, paid by you directly to Microsoft. No reselling, no mark-up.
Access
We ask for the access each item needs, in writing, and we work through your existing change process for anything that touches production systems.
Price and terms
Resident Engineer · One
£3,500 a month
One day a week
Resident Engineer · Two
£6,500 a month
Two days a week
Prices exclude VAT and your Microsoft and Azure consumption.
Nothing to pay if week one disappoints
If the audit and backlog at the end of week one are not worth continuing with, say so and there is no charge.
You keep everything
Solutions, documentation and the runbook are yours on payment. We keep the right to reuse our general components and know-how.
Who it is for
A good fit
HR directors, heads of people and heads of recruitment in organisations of 50 to 1,000 staff that run Microsoft 365 and have an HR system, payroll and recruitment tool that do not work together. It suits multi-site and high-volume hirers with no engineer of their own.
A poor fit
If you have a single problem, our One-Problem Automation is cheaper and faster. If you want an HR system selected or implemented, we work with the one you have. Or if your processes change faster than anyone can write them down.
FAQ
No. A contractor sells you days and you manage them. You buy a fixed monthly fee for named days, a measured backlog you own, monitoring of everything delivered, a monthly report and accelerators we bring. The engineer manages the work; you set the priorities.
The minimum is three months because the first month is mostly audit and the first build. After three, it is monthly.
It is yours, with the runbook, the solution inventory and a quote for ongoing cover of what was built.
Only the access each item needs, granted in writing by you, in your tenant. Where a build touches personal data, a data processing agreement is in place first and we work through your change process.
We work with whatever you run, through its supported interfaces. We will say if we think a change would pay for itself, in writing, and the decision is yours.
In your Microsoft tenant and Azure subscription, in the region you choose. It does not come to us.
Bring your slowest hiring or onboarding step to a 30-minute call.
Tell us what happens between an offer being accepted and a new starter’s first morning. We will tell you what the week-one audit would measure, what the first backlog item would probably be, and whether Resident Engineer or a one-off automation is the right fit.
Sources