The questions we get asked.
If something here is unclear or your question is not listed, request a briefing — we will answer directly.
How does a typical engagement start?+
A short discovery phase — usually two to four weeks — where we map your environment, data, and target decisions, and produce a written brief and architecture. Most customers then move into a 10-14 week build.
Do you work fixed-fee or time-and-materials?+
Both. Discovery is fixed-fee. Build engagements are typically fixed-fee per phase with clearly defined deliverables. Ongoing operations are subscription.
What is your minimum engagement size?+
Our discovery engagements start at six figures. We are not the right partner for short proofs of concept.
Where do the models run?+
Inside your environment — your cloud account, your VPC, or your on-premise infrastructure. We never act as a hosted inference endpoint over your data.
Which cloud providers do you support?+
AWS, Azure, GCP, and major sovereign-cloud providers. We also support on-premise Kubernetes deployments.
How do you integrate with our identity and audit stack?+
Through your existing SSO, RBAC, SIEM, and secrets-management tooling. Steinn does not maintain a parallel identity layer.
Who owns the models you build?+
You do. Weights, prompts, evaluation harnesses, and documentation are delivered to you and remain under your control.
What model risk documentation do you produce?+
A full SR 11-7-aligned package by default — model development documentation, validation evidence, challenger comparisons, and ongoing monitoring artifacts.
Can our internal model risk team validate independently?+
Yes. We expect it. Our delivery includes the artifacts your second line needs to perform independent validation.
How long until something is in production?+
Most customers reach a production-grade pilot within 14-18 weeks of kick-off. Broader rollouts depend on your change-control cadence.
How long does an audit cycle take?+
Because every inference is logged and reproducible, audit responses that previously took weeks typically take days.