Your Kubernetes platform,
running like it should.
Whether you're building a platform team or scaling the one you have, we help mid-market engineering teams cut cloud costs, kill deployment failures, and stop fighting infrastructure so they can ship product.
Trusted by teams building on
Built on real-world experience
Our team has supported engineering organisations from 10-person startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, including AWS internal teams and ASX-listed companies. We bring that enterprise rigour to mid-market teams without the enterprise price tag.
What our clients say
“RunForge cut our monthly AWS bill by 40% and stabilised deployments that had been failing weekly. Their assessment paid for itself in the first month.”
— Head of Engineering, Series B SaaS (Melbourne)
“We tried to hire a platform engineer for 8 months. RunForge had our GitOps pipeline running in 3 weeks and trained our team to own it.”
— CTO, ASX-listed Fintech
“The platform assessment uncovered security gaps our internal audit missed. Their remediation roadmap gave our board the confidence to approve the infrastructure investment.”
— VP Engineering, Healthcare Platform
As your platform team
For teams without dedicated platform engineers. We embed, build, and hand over with full documentation and upskilling so your team can own it.
Alongside your platform team
For teams that need to scale capacity or expertise. We augment and upskill while your engineers stay in the driver's seat.
Sound familiar?
These are fixable. Every single one.
Your cloud bill keeps climbing
You're paying for resources you don't need. Savings Plans feel like gambling. Nobody knows which team is spending what.
Deployments are terrifying
Your CI/CD is duct tape. Rollbacks are manual. “GitOps” means “git push and pray.”
One incident from disaster
No runbooks. Outdated docs. The person who built it left. You're not sure what's running in prod.
Platform team is drowning
You have a team, but they're stuck maintaining instead of building. Every sprint consumed by toil and firefighting.
Can’t hire a platform engineer
The role's been open for 6 months. Technical debt compounds while your developers do infra work instead of building product.
Let’s fix this
Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll map out what’s broken and what to do first.
What your team looks like after working with us
Deployments take 3 minutes and nobody worries
A cloud bill that makes your CFO smile
New engineers productive on day one
Your team ships features, not fights fires
Your platform team builds, not firefights
Start here
Platform Assessment
A full review of your Kubernetes infrastructure, GitOps maturity, security posture, and cloud spend in one engagement. You get a prioritised roadmap with ROI projections, not a list of findings.
Guarantee: if our assessment doesn't identify at least 3 high-priority actionable improvements with ROI projections, we'll refund the engagement in full.
What you get
Best for: Teams running Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, or AKS) who need an independent review, planning infrastructure changes, or evaluating GitOps adoption
1–2 weeks · Billed at engagement start
Book AssessmentSolve it in weeks, not quarters
Every project is fixed-price. Scoped after a 30-minute discovery call, proposal in 48 hours. If scope changes, we absorb it.
You know the total investment before any work begins. No hourly billing, no change-order surprises.
Cluster Rescue Mission
2–4 weeksFrom $15,000EKS · GKE · AKS Stabilisation
Your Kubernetes cluster needs immediate attention. Instability, failed upgrades, knowledge gaps after team changes. We work alongside your team to stabilise, upgrade, document, and hand over a cluster they can confidently operate. Companies typically spend 3–6 months recovering without help. We stabilise in weeks.
GitOps Foundation
2–4 weeksFrom $15,000Argo CD Implementation
Production-grade Argo CD setup with HA, SSO, and CI/CD integration. We architect with your platform team to deliver repeatable, auditable deployments. Reduces deployment failures by 60–80%. Fewer incidents, fewer pages, fewer lost weekends.
Platform Migration
4–8 weeksFrom $30,000From Legacy to Production-Grade Kubernetes
Move off legacy infrastructure without the drama. Zero-downtime migration to production-grade Kubernetes with GitOps, observability, and 2 weeks of post-migration support. DIY migrations take 6–12 months and routinely blow budget. Fixed-price, fixed-timeline, done right.
Multi-Cluster Architecture
4–8 weeksFrom $35,000Enterprise GitOps at Scale
Consistent, automated deployments across multiple clusters and environments with safe promotion pipelines and full tenant isolation. Enterprise platform licensing costs $50K–$150K/year before implementation. This is a one-time investment.
Developer Platform Foundation
4–8 weeksFrom $35,000Internal Developer Platform
Give your developers a self-service platform on top of Kubernetes. They ship faster, your platform team has less toil, and golden paths keep everything consistent. The average internal platform takes 18 months and 3–5 engineers to build. We get you production-ready in weeks.
Complex or enterprise environment? For 3+ clusters, regulatory compliance, or multi-cloud architectures. Let's scope it together
Focus on your product. We'll run the platform.
Managed Kubernetes support from $5,500 AUD/month: your cloud account, your infrastructure, senior engineers keeping it healthy, secure, and cost-optimised.
You pay your cloud provider directly. No markup on infrastructure costs. No lock-in after 3 months.
Essential
You have a capable internal team but no Kubernetes specialist. You need a safety net and someone to call when things go sideways.
Best for: Post-migration stability, teams with some K8s experience
- Monthly maintenance & upgrades
- Cost monitoring & reporting
- Slack support (business hours AEST)
- Quarterly architecture review
- Response SLA: 4 business hours
- Proactive monitoring & alerts
- Bi-weekly sync calls
- 24/7 on-call
- Architecture advisory
Professional
Your Kubernetes platform is business-critical but you can't justify a full-time platform engineer. You need proactive management, not just reactive support.
Best for: Teams shipping daily to production, growing infrastructure
- Monthly maintenance & upgrades
- Cost monitoring & reporting
- Slack support (business hours AEST)
- Monthly optimisation recommendations
- Response SLA: 2 hours
- Proactive monitoring & alerts
- Bi-weekly sync calls
- GitOps support (Argo CD)
- 24/7 on-call
- Architecture advisory
Premium
Your platform runs revenue-generating workloads where minutes of downtime cost real money. You need an extension of your team with 24/7 coverage and strategic guidance.
Best for: Regulated industries, multi-environment, pre-IPO infrastructure
- Monthly maintenance & upgrades
- Cost monitoring & reporting
- Slack support (24/7 for critical)
- Monthly optimisation recommendations
- Response SLA: 30 minutes (P1)
- Proactive monitoring & alerts
- GitOps support (Argo CD)
- Weekly sync calls
- 24/7 on-call for critical incidents
- Architecture advisory & priority projects
3-month minimum · 30-day cancellation · 10% discount for annual prepayment
Advisory Retainer
Not ready for managed services? Start with strategic guidance. On-call architecture advice, Slack access, and monthly review calls, all senior-led.
Add-ons
Argo CD management (included in Premium)
Monthly reports, spend alerts, Savings Plans guidance
For Essential/Professional tiers
Per cluster
Per cluster
Running 3+ production clusters?
For teams with SOC2/ISO requirements, dedicated team coverage, and multi-environment complexity. Custom pricing scaled to your cluster count and compliance needs.
- 3+ production clusters
- SOC2 & ISO 27001 compliance support
- Dedicated engineering team
- Custom SLAs & on-call coverage
How it works
Book a call
30 minutes to understand your situation. No pitch, no pressure.
Platform Assessment
Full review of your infrastructure, security posture, and cost profile.
Remediation project
Fix what matters most with a fixed-price engagement.
Ongoing support
Advisory retainer or managed services to keep things running.
What happens after you say yes
For managed services clients
Audit & document
We audit your setup, document everything, and set up shared monitoring dashboards. You never wonder what we're doing.
Deploy & integrate
We deploy our operational tooling alongside yours. You get a live view of everything we see. Full transparency.
Optimise & report
First proactive optimisation report delivered. Dedicated Slack channel, shared runbook repo, monthly health score and cost trends.
Why teams choose RunForge
Hiring a senior platform engineer costs $220k+/year AUD (if you can find one). Then add 3 to 6 months before they're productive. With RunForge, you get a team of senior engineers delivering results within weeks, not quarters.
Our edge
AEST timezone advantage
Melbourne-based, serving teams across Australia, New Zealand, and APAC. Same-day response during your business hours, and work ready for your morning standup.
Senior engineers, start to finish
We maintain a limited client roster to ensure quality. Your engagement is staffed by senior engineers who stay with you from kickoff to handover.
Continuity guarantee
Every engagement produces documented runbooks, architecture records, and operational playbooks in YOUR repository. Managed services clients have dedicated backup engineer coverage.
Credentials
Fluent across the cloud-native ecosystem
Pricing & billing
You pay your cloud provider directly. We operate on a BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) model. Your account, your infrastructure costs. Our fee covers management and consulting services only. This keeps things transparent and means you're never locked in.
Every project gets a fixed-price proposal after a 30-minute discovery call. We scope based on cluster count, configuration complexity, compliance needs, and timeline. No hourly billing, no surprises. You know the total before any work begins.
3 months. This covers onboarding and gives us enough time to demonstrate value. After that, 30 days notice to cancel or change tiers. Annual prepayment gets you a 10% discount.
That's what the Advisory Retainer is for. $3,500–$5,000/month gets you 8–12 hours of on-call architecture advice, Slack access, and a monthly review call, all senior-led. Strategic guidance without operational responsibility.
Technical
We work across EKS, GKE, and AKS. Our GitOps methodology and tooling are cloud-agnostic by design. Whether you're on AWS, GCP, or Azure, the architecture patterns and operational practices we implement work identically across providers.
Cluster configuration, security posture, GitOps maturity, cloud cost analysis, and architecture review, all in one engagement. You get a single detailed report with a prioritised remediation roadmap and ROI case for recommended next steps.
We manage the cluster (upgrades, node groups, networking, autoscaling) and platform components (ingress, cert-manager, monitoring). You manage your applications and deployment workflows. GitOps tooling (Argo CD) is included in the Premium tier, and available as an add-on for Essential and Professional.
We operate with compliance-aware practices: CIS Kubernetes benchmarks, Pod Security Standards, network policies, and secrets management as standard. For teams pursuing SOC2 or ISO 27001, we provide evidence-ready documentation, control implementation support, and auditor-friendly architecture records.
Working with us
Yes. Most work is remote. Being based in AEST makes collaboration straightforward across Australia, New Zealand, and APAC. Same-day responses during your business hours, no awkward timezone gaps.
All work is led by senior RunForge engineers. On-call coverage is provided by vetted team members briefed on your environment and held to the same bar before touching anything. No offshore. Work is never handed off without your knowledge.
Every engagement produces documented runbooks, architecture decision records, and operational playbooks, all committed to YOUR repository, not ours. Managed services clients have dedicated backup engineer coverage. Knowledge is never siloed in one person.
If our Platform Assessment doesn't identify at least 3 high-priority, actionable improvements with clear ROI projections, we'll refund the engagement in full. We've never had to. But the guarantee is unconditional.
Still have questions? Book a free call and we'll walk through your situation.
Let's figure out what's costing you, and fix it.
Book a free 30-minute call with a senior engineer, or send a message. Either way, you'll know exactly what to fix first and what it's worth.
Book a free 30-minute call
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