When is the right time to get a dedicated infrastructure team?

What is a Cloud Infrastructure Team?

A cloud infrastructure team is a group of specialists that are responsible for designing and managing the systems that keep an organisation’s online application operations running. In simple terms, they ensure that everything below the application layer works reliably, securely, and efficiently.

Where developers focus on building the software itself, the infrastructure team provides the environment that software runs on. They manage the platforms, tools, and processes that enable applications to be deployed, scaled, and monitored effectively.

What are an Infrastructure Team’s core responsibilities?

Servers and Hosting Environments

The team manages physical and virtual servers, whether they are on-premises, in data centres, or in the public cloud or a hybrid solution with a combination of both. This includes provisioning, configuration, patching, as well as handling capacity planning, ensuring there are enough resources to handle traffic and future growth.

Networking and Connectivity

The infrastructure team is responsible for the network architecture that connects systems both internally and externally. This covers firewalls, load balancers, VPNs, routing, and they ensure that services can communicate securely and efficiently across different regions or cloud providers.

Automation and Deployment Pipelines

Modern cloud infrastructure teams use a lot of automation. They typically build and maintain continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, manage infrastructure as code (using tools like Terraform or Ansible), and reduce manual effort in deployments and maintenance.

Monitoring and Incident Response

They implement monitoring, logging, and alerting systems to track performance, detect issues, and respond quickly to incidents. This includes tools for metrics, application performance, and system health checks. The main goal of this is to identify and resolve problems before they impact end users.

Security and Compliance

Infrastructure teams work closely with security specialists to enforce access control, encryption, vulnerability management, and compliance with standards such as ISO 27001, PCI DSS or GDPR. They will also oversee patch management and security updates.

Scalability and Performance Optimisation

As demand grows on an application, the infrastructure must scale. The infrastructure team ensures that systems can handle increased loads, optimising resource allocation, balancing traffic, and using techniques such as auto-scaling or container orchestration.

Disaster Recovery and Backup Management

The team can plan for resilience by implementing backup strategies, redundancy, and disaster recovery procedures to minimise downtime in case of system failures or data loss.

Tooling and Developer Enablement

An infrastructure team often supports developers by providing reliable staging environments and tools that streamline development, testing, and deployment.

Stage 1: When Shared Responsibility Can Work (Early Stage)

In early-stage companies, developers or system administrators handle infrastructure alongside their main duties. This works initially because:

• Lower costs and maximum flexibility
• Simple systems don’t require specialisation
• Quick iteration without process overhead

However, this model breaks down as complexity grows. Developers spend increasing time on maintenance rather than features, and without clear ownership, small issues escalate into outages.

Warning Signs that you may Need an Infrastructure Team

• Frequent outages or scalability issues: The system breaks under load or deployment errors increase.
• Slow delivery cycles: Developers spend too much time firefighting rather than building features.
• Security and compliance gaps: Infrastructure decisions are made ad hoc without proper oversight.
• Complexity outgrowing generalists knowledge: Multi-cloud setups, automation frameworks become unmanageable.
• No disaster recovery plan: Risk prolonged downtime, data loss, financial damage, and long lasting harm.
• 24/7 uptime expectations: Customers expect reliability levels that require round-the-clock monitoring.

Stage 2: Fractional Infrastructure Team (High Growth Stage)

Moving to a Fractional Infrastructure Team

Fractional teams offer the sweet spot for growing companies: expert capability without full-time overhead. Benefits include:

• Expert access: Senior engineers with deep specialisation
• Cost efficiency: Pay only for hours needed, no full time cost
• Flexibility: Scale up during migrations, scale down during stability
• Quick maturity: Establish best practices without costly rework
• Knowledge bridge: Build standards that future teams can inherit
• No overhead: Zero costs for HR, training, management, or churn

Moving to a fractional infrastructure team offers the advantages of expertise, reliability, and scalability without the financial burden of building a permanent in-house infrastructure department too early and can scale up or down quickly without recruitment delays. The investment pays off through stability, resilience, and better use of developer time. This flexibility allows businesses to invest resources into growth, development, and innovation rather than staff overheads.

Stage 3: Dedicated Infrastructure Team (Operational Maturity Stage)

Moving to a Dedicated Infrastructure Team

Dedicated teams become valuable when infrastructure is mission-critical and demands exceed what fractional support can efficiently provide. They offer:

• Full ownership: Continuous oversight and optimisation
• Deep integration: Close alignment with product and engineering
• Instant response: No scheduling delays or competing priorities
• Institutional knowledge: Long-term investment in your specific systems

A key tipping point comes when the cost of ongoing fractional engagement begins to rival or exceed the salary of full-time staff. At that point, internal hires provide better continuity, deeper organisational knowledge, and more predictable value for money.

When a Dedicated Infrastructure Team Becomes More Cost-Efficient

While the idea of hiring a dedicated infrastructure team can be attractive, the financial reality often favours staying with a fractional model for much longer than you expect. Fractional teams deliver senior-level expertise and broad skill coverage at a fraction of the long-term cost of maintaining an internal department. It may become beneficial to move to a dedicated infrastructure team once infrastructure management becomes a full-time requirement, typically when the support and maintenance exceeds what a fractional team can provide efficiently or when the business begins to require true 24/7 operational coverage.

Example: Fractional Team Costs

A typical fractional infrastructure expertise arrangement might look like this:
• Hourly rate: £150
• Average usage: 50 hours per month

That equals £7,500 per month, or £90,000 per year.
Even at 100 hours per month, the annual cost rises to £180,000 and would still be considerably less than employing full-time staff.

This model gives access to senior engineers and architects for projects, maintenance, and troubleshooting without fixed salary commitments. It suits organisations that need expert guidance and occasional hands-on support rather than full-time operational coverage.

Example: Dedicated Team Costs

To achieve true 24/7 coverage, a company typically requires at least five engineers, and in larger environments closer to ten to cover shifts, weekends, holidays, and management overheads. Using a typical salary of £50,000–£60,000 per engineer per year, the cost quickly escalates:
• Five person team: £300,000–£350,000 per year
• Ten person team: £600,000–£700,000 per year

These figures exclude recruitment, benefits, training, and tooling costs, which can add a further 20–30% to total expenditure. Even a small internal team of two or three engineers will generally cost £120,000–£180,000 per year before allowances.

Hidden Costs of Dedicated Teams

Cost Comparison, Fractional Team vs Dedicated Team

Model	Annual Fee/Salary	Total Annual Cost	Coverage	Flexibility	Expertise Level
Fractional (30 hrs/month)	£54K	£54K	Limited, on demand	Very high	Senior, broad specialism
Fractional (50 hrs/month)	£90K	£90K	Limited, on demand	Very high	Senior, broad specialism
Fractional (100 hrs/month)	£180K	£180K	Limited, responsive	High	Senior, broad specialism
Dedicated team, 2 to 3 staff	£120K to £180K	£160K to £240K	Business hours only	Medium	Varies with hires
Dedicated team, 5 staff (24/7)	£300K to £360K	£400K to £520K	Full coverage	Low	Mixed seniority
Dedicated team, 10 staff (24/7)	£600K to £720K	£800K to £1M+	Enterprise grade coverage	Low	Range from junior to senior

Key insight: The most efficient option until infrastructure demands exceed roughly 120–150 hours per month or the business requires permanent, around-the-clock internal support.

How to Structure a Dedicated Infrastructure Team

Building a dedicated infrastructure team is not just about hiring the right people, but doing so at the right time and in a way that aligns with the organisation’s goals. The structure should evolve naturally from the company’s stage of growth, balancing specialisation with collaboration across other technical teams.

The first hires are often Platform Engineers or Site Reliability Engineers. These are experienced generalists capable of stabilising systems, automating deployments, and improving observability. These roles can initially work alongside the fractional team, ensuring a structured handover and retention of hard-won operational knowledge.

As the business grows, the team can expand into specialist roles such as Cloud Engineers, Infrastructure Security Engineers, and Observability Engineers.

Core Infrastructure Roles

Infrastructure Engineer – A versatile generalist role covering server management, automation, and deployment. Often a foundational hire in smaller teams before deeper specialisation.

DevOps Engineer – Focuses on automating delivery pipelines, configuration management, and bridging development with operations. Sometimes replaced with more precise titles as teams mature (e.g. Platform Engineer or CI/CD Engineer).

Site Reliability Engineer – Concentrates on reliability, observability, and scalability, applying software engineering principles to operations. In many modern teams, this replaces the traditional Systems Administrator.

Platform Engineer – Designs and maintains the internal developer platform that supports deployment, monitoring, and scaling. This role is becoming increasingly popular as companies adopt ‘platform as a product’ models internally.

Systems Administrator – Oversees operating systems, user management, and hardware, often still crucial in hybrid or on-premises environments. In more cloud-native setups, this role tends to evolve into Infrastructure Engineer or Cloud Engineer.

Specialist Roles

Cloud Engineer / Cloud Architect – Manages cloud infrastructure design, cost optimisation, and governance. The Engineer title tends to suit a hands-on implementation, while an Architect offers a higher-level design and strategy.

Network Engineer – Handles network configuration, routing, VPNs, and security boundaries. Still essential, even in cloud-native environments, though is increasingly tied to automation.

Automation Engineer / Infrastructure Automation Specialist – Focuses on infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible) and process automation. This role often overlaps with DevOps but is more tool and workflow oriented.

Monitoring Engineer – Builds and manages systems for metrics, logging, and tracing and increasingly shifting towards proactive insights rather than reactive monitoring.

Security Engineer / Infrastructure Security Engineer – Works on hardening systems, managing identity and access, and embedding security into infrastructure pipelines. This role becomes vital as organisations scale or operate in regulated sectors.

Advanced or Strategic Roles

Infrastructure Manager / Head of Infrastructure – Leads the team, sets strategy, manages budgets, and ensures alignment with business objectives.

Platform Architect / Infrastructure Architect – Designs high-level architecture across cloud, network, and deployment layers, ensuring scalability and consistency.

Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE) – Specialises in database performance, resilience, and automation, particularly important in data-heavy environments.

Capacity Planning and Performance Engineer – Optimises resource allocation and system performance at scale, often within large enterprise or SaaS operations.

Compliance and Governance Specialist – Ensures infrastructure meets standards like ISO 27001, PCI DSS, or GDPR, bridging the gap between engineering and compliance functions.

Organisational Infrastructure Team Models

There is no single correct structure for an infrastructure function, but three common approaches work well at different stages:

Centralised Team – A single group manages infrastructure across the company. This promotes consistency, governance, and efficiency but can create bottlenecks if demand grows faster than capacity.

Embedded Team – Infrastructure specialists are integrated within product or development teams, allowing closer collaboration and faster iteration, though coordination across teams can be challenging.

Hybrid Model – The most flexible approach for scaling organisations. A central team manages shared tooling, standards, and security, while embedded engineers support product teams directly. This balances agility with consistency.

Whatever the structure, success depends on alignment with business priorities. The infrastructure team’s remit should support reliability, developer productivity, and customer trust.

Transitioning from Fractional Infrastructure Team to a Dedicated Team

The transition from fractional to dedicated infrastructure support is driven by scale, complexity, and cost. Once infrastructure becomes critical to delivery and resilience, hiring full-time specialists can offer stronger ownership, long-term savings, and deeper integration with business goals.

Shifting from a fractional infrastructure model to a fully dedicated team marks an important stage in operational maturity. The goal is to build on what already works, while introducing stability, ownership, and long-term capability. However, the transition must be managed carefully to avoid disruption, duplication, or loss of expertise.

Assess Current Needs and Future Scale

Start by reviewing infrastructure demands, performance gaps, and future growth. Identify where the fractional model is no longer sufficient. A clear understanding of scale and workload helps define the structure and scope of the new team. Expanding too early or without a clear plan can result in unnecessary cost and underutilised talent.

Formalise Processes and Documentation

Before transition, ensure that all systems, configurations, and workflows are properly documented. The fractional team can assist with codifying knowledge and establishing repeatable processes. If documentation is incomplete, critical expertise may be lost during handover, leading to service gaps or technical regression.

Define Roles and Responsibilities

Set clear boundaries between the fractional and dedicated teams. Define ownership across infrastructure management, monitoring, automation, and incident response to avoid overlap or missed accountability. Ambiguity in responsibilities can create friction between teams, leading to duplicated work or unaddressed tasks.

Build Gradually

Adopt a phased approach by hiring one or two dedicated engineers initially, allowing them to work alongside the fractional team for continuity. Expand as operational stability and demand increases. Moving too quickly can overload new hires, while moving too slowly can frustrate existing teams that depend on better infrastructure support.

Prioritise Knowledge Transfer

Plan for structured handover sessions, documentation reviews, and pairing between fractional and new team members. This preserves institutional knowledge and ensures smooth continuity. Poor knowledge transfer can cause recurring issues, dependency on external contractors, or wasted time relearning past solutions.

Strengthen Collaboration and Culture

Integrate the new infrastructure team closely with product and development teams. Shared goals around uptime, deployment speed, and reliability encourage alignment and mutual respect. If the infrastructure team becomes siloed, it may lose touch with business priorities, leading to tension or slow delivery cycles.

Review and Iterate

Without continuous review, early inefficiencies can become entrenched, limiting the value of the new team.

Transitioning from fractional to dedicated infrastructure is more than a hiring decision, it is a cultural and operational shift. Done carefully, it strengthens reliability, efficiency, and accountability. Rushed or poorly planned, it can quickly introduce unnecessary costs, confusion, and instability.

The Hybrid Approach: Is there a Best of Both Worlds?

Even organisations with dedicated infrastructure teams benefit from maintaining fractional relationships. Here’s why:

Breaking Through Day-to-Day Barriers

Dedicated teams often struggle with competing priorities:

• Daily operations consume 40-60% of time
• Incident response disrupts planned work
• Technical debt accumulates while fighting fires
• Strategic projects perpetually delayed

Solution: Use fractional experts for focused project delivery while your team maintains operations. This ensures critical improvements actually happen rather than being perpetually postponed.

Incident Response and Surge Capacity

Major incidents require immediate scale:

• On-call engineer handles initial response
• Fractional team provides instant senior backup
• No need to pull developers from features
• Post-incident review with external perspective

Specialised Expertise On-Demand

Rather than hiring for every possible skill:

• Cloud migrations: Bring in migration specialists
• Security audits: Expert assessment without permanent headcount
• Performance tuning: Deep expertise when needed
• Disaster recovery: Annual testing with DR specialists

Conclusion

The economics are clear: fractional infrastructure teams provide better value until you consistently need 120-150+ hours monthly. Even then, the hidden costs of employment (recruitment, training, management, churn) and productivity realities make the comparison closer than it appears. However, as systems expand and the workload grows, the economics can change.

Ultimately, the decision depends on budget, scale, complexity, and business goals. A strong dedicated infrastructure team can deliver reliability and security, support developer productivity, and create a solid foundation for innovation. That said, remaining with a fractional infrastructure team can still offer clear advantages, allowing access to a wide range of expertise on demand, without long-term commitment or fixed overheads.

The optimal approach for most organisations even in the Operational Maturity Stage is to implement a hybrid team. Make use of fractional teams for expertise, projects, and surge capacity while dedicated staff (if any) handle day-to-day operations. This ensures strategic improvements actually happen rather than drowning in operational work.

Whether starting with fractional support or transitioning to a hybrid model, remember that infrastructure excellence comes from expertise and focus, not just headcount. The flexibility to scale resources with demand, access senior expertise without permanent overhead, and maintain progress on strategic projects while handling daily operations is what enables sustainable growth.

Key Takeaways

• Start with fractional infrastructure support for cost efficiency and flexibility
• In-house engineers deliver only 60-70% billable hours after meetings, training, and admin
• True 24/7 coverage requires 5-10 engineers (£300K-£720K salary alone, £400K-£1M+ total cost)
• Fractional teams provide senior expertise at £90K-£180K per year with no overhead
• Even with dedicated teams, use fractional support for projects and incident surge capacity