Search this and Google shows you a map before it shows you a single vendor page. Three software companies within sixteen miles, with review counts attached, sitting above Gartner, Clutch and every agency in the country. That is the most useful thing this search reveals: at the point of shortlisting, proximity and reviews outrank scale.

Fixed priceOne number

Works only when the spec is genuinely settled. Every change becomes a negotiation.

Time and materialsRate x hours

Fits evolving scope, which is most real projects. Set a ceiling deliberately.

Dedicated teamMonthly

Continuous product work over quarters. You pay for capacity in slow months too.

Staff augmentationPer person

You have the plan and the management and need hands. You own the outcome.

What is included in software development services

The phrase covers the whole lifecycle, and firms differ mostly in which parts they actually staff rather than subcontract.

Discovery and scoping

Turning a business problem into a specification someone can estimate without guessing.

Architecture

The decisions that are expensive to reverse: data model, service boundaries, hosting, and how the thing fails.

Build

Front end, back end, integrations, and the unglamorous half nobody demos: migrations, permissions, error states.

Quality assurance

Automated tests that survive a refactor, plus the manual passes that catch what tests do not.

Deployment and operations

Environments, release process, rollback, monitoring, and who gets paged.

Maintenance

Dependency updates, security patches and the change requests that arrive the week after launch.

A firm that only staffs the middle two will hand you something that works on a demo and struggles in production. Where the whole lifecycle is in scope rather than the build alone, that is custom software development. That gap is the single most common reason a build disappoints.

The software development services Sthenos sells

Sthenos Technologies groups its services the way a buyer arrives at them: something to build, something to modernize, something to connect, something to keep running, or engineers to add to a team you already have. Every service named below has its own page on this site, so nothing here is a capability we describe and then cannot show you.

Build

Modernize

  • Legacy modernization. Re-platforming and rebuilding aging systems while preserving data integrity and compliance.
  • Cloud migration and optimization. Moving workloads off the hardware holding them back, and running them properly once they are there.
  • Cloud consulting. Designing, migrating and optimizing across public, private and hybrid models.
  • Website redesign. Four tiers, because a redesign is four genuinely different products sold under one name.
  • Digital transformation. Where the change is to the operating model and not only to the software.

Integrate

  • ERP and SAP. Unifying data and standardizing operations across the systems that run the business.
  • CRM and Salesforce consulting. Greenfield builds, and untangling an org that has accumulated years of fields and flows.
  • Data analytics and big data. The modelling work that stops a dashboard reporting a confident number two departments know is wrong.
  • Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. Tenant, permissions and data lifecycle work, including Copilot readiness.
  • CMS. Coupled, decoupled and headless architectures for content operations at scale.
  • Internet of things and robotic process automation. Device and process automation wired into the systems of record.

Operate

Augment

  • IT staff augmentation. Engineers inside the setup you already run, using your board, your branch rules and your code review.
  • Software outsourcing. The three models compared, because outsourcing is three different purchases sold under one word.
  • IT consulting. Bounded work that ends with a decision, which is a different purchase from running the thing day to day.
  • Agile project management. The delivery discipline underneath all of the above.

The technologies and platforms we build on

A stack list is only useful if the firm quoting it will put its name to each item, so every technology below links to the Sthenos page for it. Nothing appears here that does not have a page behind it.

Back end and enterprise languages

  • .NET, for Microsoft-centred enterprise and agency estates.
  • Java, where longevity and an existing JVM estate decide the choice.
  • Python, for data, machine learning and service back ends.
  • Node.js, where one language across the front and back end is worth more than raw throughput.
  • PHP, including review and modernization of codebases that are already there.

Front end

Mobile

  • iOS and Android, native, where platform behaviour and performance matter.
  • Flutter, for one codebase across both stores.
  • Kotlin, the current default for Android work.

Cloud platforms

  • AWS. Migration, DevOps and MLOps, and edge delivery.
  • Microsoft Azure. Azure DevOps, infrastructure as code, and Azure-native identity and governance.
  • Google Cloud. Kubernetes Engine, Cloud SQL and BigQuery.
  • The wider Microsoft platform, including Dynamics, Power Platform and Copilot.
  • Magento, for commerce estates already standing on it.

Data and applied AI

If the technology you are standardised on is not on that list, say so in the first conversation. Sthenos Technologies would rather tell you it is the wrong firm for the job than learn the stack on your budget.

How much do software development services cost?

This is the second question Google lists for this search, and the honest answer is that the engagement model decides the number more than the vendor does.

Model How it is priced Where it fits Where it goes wrong
Fixed price One number for a defined scope The specification is genuinely settled and unlikely to move Every change becomes a negotiation, and the buffer is priced in whether you use it or not
Time and materials Rate multiplied by hours actually worked Scope will evolve, which on most real projects it does No ceiling unless you set one deliberately
Dedicated team Monthly, per named engineer Continuous product work over quarters, not a single project You are paying for capacity even in a slow month
Staff augmentation Per person, into your existing team You have the plan and the management, and need hands You own the outcome, so weak internal direction shows up fast

We publish the detail per project type rather than a single meaningless average: what an MVP costs, what custom software costs, and what a redesign costs in four tiers.

Engagement models: what you are actually buying

The table above says how each model is priced and where each one breaks. This section says what the contract actually commits, because that is the part buyers discover late. Sthenos Technologies charges $150 to $250 per hour depending on the seniority and mix of the team, a typical project runs $50,000 to $200,000, and where the scope is clear we quote a fixed price for a defined outcome with a costed roadmap before any build starts. Those figures are published on our about page and they sit under all four models below. What changes between the models is who carries the risk of the scope moving.

Hourly rate, by the seniority and mix of the team $150 to $250
$0$250 per hour
What a typical project runs $50,000 to $200,000
$0$200,000

Figure 1. Who carries the risk when the scope moves

Two panels. On the left, fixed price, where the vendor carries the estimating risk. On the right, time and materials, a dedicated team and staff augmentation, where the buyer carries the risk of the scope moving. The vendor carries the estimating risk Fixed price for a defined scope You are buying an outcome. It requires the scope to be written down before the price means anything, which is why a short discovery and a costed roadmap come first. You carry the risk of the scope moving Time and materials You carry the scope risk, and the control. Dedicated team You pay for the capacity either way. Staff augmentation You own the outcome.

Caption: every line in this figure is a sentence from the four model descriptions below it. The figure adds no ranking and no number; it only puts the four side by side so the trade is visible in one look.

Fixed price for a defined scope

You are buying an outcome, and the vendor carries the estimating risk. Best for a specification that is genuinely settled, a discrete phase, or a bounded discovery. It requires the scope to be written down before the price means anything, which is why Sthenos runs a short discovery and hands over a costed roadmap first.

Time and materials

You are buying capacity at the published rate band and you carry the scope risk, which is the honest trade when the destination is still moving. Best for evolving products and for work that follows what users do. Set a ceiling deliberately, and review it at the same cadence you review the software.

Dedicated team

You are buying a standing team rather than a project, priced monthly, with the same people across quarters so the knowledge stays put. Best for continuous product work. It is the model with the highest knowledge retention and the lowest tolerance for a quiet quarter, because you pay for the capacity either way.

Staff augmentation

You are buying engineers into your own process, using your board, your branch rules and your code review, and you own the outcome. Best where you already have the plan and the management. The detail is on our IT staff augmentation page, and the three-way comparison against a dedicated team and full project outsourcing is on software outsourcing services and staff augmentation companies compared.

What moves the price

No two quotes for the same brief are comparable until you know which of these each vendor assumed. None of them carries a number here, because a number without your scope attached to it is decoration.

The seniority and mix of the teamThis is the stated reason our own rate band has a range at all.
How settled the scope isA settled scope can be quoted as a fixed price. An unsettled one priced as though it were settled is where the buffer, and the argument, comes from.
Team size and how long the engagement runsThe same total effort costs differently spread over two quarters than compressed into one.
How many systems it has to talk toEvery integration adds a counterparty whose availability, data quality and release calendar you do not control.
The control framework the contract namesWork scoped against a named framework carries evidence, review and documentation the same build would not otherwise need.
How scarce the technology isA rare stack narrows the pool of engineers who can be put on it, which shows up in the rate rather than in the hours.
Where the engineers sitAsk this of any vendor. Sthenos is headquartered in Tysons, Virginia with an office in North Bethesda, Maryland, and where a programme needs more people than the local team, delivery scales through our formal partnership with NeoSOFT while the commercial relationship stays with Sthenos.
What happens after launchA quote that stops at go-live is not cheaper, it is shorter. Deployment and maintenance get sold back to you later.

The seven stages of the SDLC, and which ones vendors quietly skip

Google lists this question alongside the commercial ones, which tells you buyers use it as a checklist when comparing proposals. The stages are planning, requirements, design, build, test, deploy and maintain. Comparing two quotes is mostly an exercise in finding which stages one of them has left out.

Figure 2. The seven stages, and the six a quote can quietly leave out

The seven stages of the software development lifecycle in order, planning, requirements, design, build, test, deploy and maintain, with markers on the six stages this page says are compressed, skipped or excluded from a quote. PlanningRequirementsDesignBuildTestDeployMaintain 112344 1234 Planning and requirements get compressed when a vendor wants to start billing build hours sooner. It reappears later as rework. Design here means technical design, not visual. If a proposal has no architecture step, someone is going to invent it mid build. Test is where cheap quotes are usually cheap. Ask what is automated and what is manual. Deploy and maintain are frequently excluded entirely and sold back to you afterwards.

Caption: the seven stages and the four warnings are the ones set out in this section. Comparing two quotes is mostly an exercise in finding which stages one of them has left out.

  • Planning and requirements get compressed when a vendor wants to start billing build hours sooner. It reappears later as rework.
  • Design here means technical design, not visual. If a proposal has no architecture step, someone is going to invent it mid-build.
  • Test is where cheap quotes are usually cheap. Ask specifically what is automated and what is manual.
  • Deploy and maintain are frequently excluded entirely and sold back to you afterwards. Get them priced up front.

How a Sthenos engagement runs, step by step

Five stages, the same five published on our custom software development page. The cadence underneath all of them does not change: Sthenos works in two week sprints, so working software arrives every two weeks and a first production release typically lands in three to six months, as stated on our about page. Anything more precise than that is a discovery output, not a web page output.

  • DiscoveryThe problem, the constraints and the success criteria are mapped before a line of code. This is deliberately short and bounded. It ends with a written scope and a costed roadmap, which is the point at which a fixed price becomes possible.Written scope and costed roadmap
  • DesignDesign settles the decisions that are expensive to reverse, and the ones users will judge: data model, service boundaries, hosting, failure behaviour, and an interface that fits your users, your timeline and your security posture.Architecture and interface
  • BuildSenior engineers ship in short, reviewable increments, with automated coverage written alongside the feature rather than after it. Every two weeks something runs that you can open, which is what makes a slipping project visible in week four instead of month four.Working software every two weeks
  • LaunchHardening, testing and a controlled release, covering environments, the release pipeline and the rollback path. This is the stage cheap quotes leave out, and it is the one that decides whether the first bad night is an incident or an outage.A controlled release
  • SupportMonitoring, maintenance and a roadmap tied to business outcomes, run by the people who built the thing. Dependency updates and security patches are part of it, and so are the change requests that arrive the week after launch.Monitoring, maintenance and a roadmap

What lands on your side of the table

A process description says what a vendor does. This says what you end up holding, which is the version worth checking a proposal against.

  • The repository and the cloud accounts, in your name from the first commit. No licence back to us and no dependency on Sthenos continuing to exist.
  • A written scope and a costed roadmap, before any build starts. Produced by discovery, and the basis on which a fixed price can be quoted at all.
  • Working software every two weeks. Not a status report about software.
  • Architecture and a security posture you can put in front of a reviewer. Settled at design time rather than reconstructed during a customer security review.
  • Infrastructure your own engineers can run once we hand it over. Environments, pipelines, identity, monitoring and cost control, built to be operated by you.
  • Monitoring, maintenance and a roadmap after launch. Priced up front, so the system has an owner on the day the project ends.

How to compare software development companies

  • Ask who writes the code. Named engineers, their seniority, and whether they are employed or subcontracted.
  • Ask what happens when the estimate is wrong. Every estimate is wrong somewhere. The answer tells you how the relationship will actually work.
  • Ask for a system they still maintain. Launches are easy to show. Three years of uptime is not.
  • Ask what they would not build. A firm that accepts every brief is selling capacity, not judgement.
  • Check the review sites, because your competitors are. Clutch and the Google local pack are both above every vendor page on this search.

What to ask before you sign

The five questions above sort the shortlist. These five sort the contract, and each is a question Sthenos Technologies already publishes on another page of this site, which means you can put every one of them to us.

  • Ask what documentation is a contractual deliverable , not what they promise to write. Knowledge that left with the vendor is what a client discovers too late.
  • Ask who reviews the code, and whether that person can veto a merge. On too many teams the reviewers are the same people who wrote it.
  • Ask for named engineers on the contract, and a notice clause if they change. The A-team pitching and the B-team delivering is a staffing arrangement, not an accident.
  • Ask where the engineers physically are. Data residency, contract terms and your own compliance review all depend on the answer.
  • Ask what would make them decline the requirement. A firm with no answer is describing capacity rather than judgement.

Where to go next, by who you are

The same service reads differently depending on what you are accountable for, so this page splits three ways.

Startups and product companies

You are buying evidence that the idea works before you buy the whole product. Start with MVP development, which cuts to one core workflow, then SaaS development for the tenancy decision that sets your running cost, and independent software vendors if you are the one shipping the product other companies run on.

Enterprise teams

You are buying delivery that survives your own governance. Start with enterprise software development, add staff augmentation where the constraint is capacity rather than direction, and read the production readiness checklist before you accept a handover from anyone.

Government and regulated industries

You are buying against a control framework somebody else wrote. Start with government IT services and public sector for the registrations and codes a contracting officer checks first, healthcare software development where HIPAA is in scope, and fintech where a financial security review is.

A software development company in Maryland and the DC region

The map results on this search are Potomac, Rockville and Washington DC. Buyers in this region shortlist locally because they want people who can sit in the room for the decisions that matter, and who understand the compliance posture that federal and healthcare-adjacent work carries here. Agency buyers can start from our government IT services instead.

Sthenos Technologies delivers software for organisations across Maryland, Virginia and the Washington DC area, through an established engineering partnership with NeoSOFT. Local accountability for the decisions, scaled engineering capacity for the delivery. If you want the scoping conversation rather than a proposal template, talk to our engineers.

Frequently asked questions

How much does custom software development cost?

Sthenos rates are $150 to $250 per hour, depending on the seniority and mix of the team, and a typical project runs $50,000 to $200,000. Where the scope is clear we quote a fixed price for a defined outcome, with a costed roadmap before any build starts.

How long does a software development project take?

Sthenos works in two week sprints, so working software arrives every two weeks and a first production release typically lands in three to six months. A date more precise than that comes out of discovery, because it depends on scope rather than on goodwill.

Who owns the code you write?

You do, entirely, from the first commit. The repository and the cloud accounts are in your name, with no licence back to us and no dependency on us continuing to exist.

Do you work with US government agencies?

Yes. Sthenos Technologies is an EDWOSB and WOSB-certified US firm, NAICS 541511, active on SAM.gov, and it builds and modernizes custom software for federal, state and local agencies.

Do you use AI in software development?

Yes. Sthenos builds with AI-assisted engineering, and AI-assisted code takes the same route to production as any other: code review, hardening, testing, infrastructure and monitoring, then scored against our published production readiness checklist.

Where is the Sthenos team located?

Sthenos Technologies is headquartered in Tysons, Virginia, with an office in North Bethesda, Maryland, and serves clients across the US. Where a programme needs more people than the local team, delivery scales through our formal partnership with NeoSOFT and the commercial relationship stays with Sthenos.

Can you take over software somebody else built?

Yes. Legacy system modernization is one of the services we sell, and taking over an existing codebase is one of the ways it starts. Send us access to the repository, or a description of the system, and we will tell you what we think it would take.

Services

Before you buy

Costs

Ready to scope the work? Tell us what you are trying to build and the constraint you are working against, and you will get a straight answer on which of the four models fits and what it would take. Talk to our engineers.

Contact us
Talk to an engineer

We’re happy to answer any questions you may have and help you determine which of our services best fit your needs.

Rates and delivery
  • Our rates are $150 to $250 per hour, depending on the seniority and mix of the team.
  • Where the scope is clear we quote a fixed price for a defined outcome, with a costed roadmap before any build starts.
  • We build with AI-assisted engineering, and we deliver projects up to five times faster than a traditional IT services company.
Call us at: +1 (703) 945-5300
What happens next?
1

We schedule a call at your convenience

2

We run a short, bounded discovery, scoped per engagement

3

We give you a costed roadmap before committing to a build

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