If you want to hire dedicated developers to extend your current in-house tech team, you need an action plan. Without a proper strategy, you risk facing delays, substandard work, and even increased costs.
When done right, you’ll onboard professionals who not only complete tasks with the utmost commitment but also add significant value to your organisation.
In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to find and hire dedicated developers, the cost of it, and the best country where to source the talent you can’t get at home. We’ve drawn on our experience of building over 100 dedicated development teams for our partners over the past 10 years to help you make an informed decision.
To begin with, let’s define what dedicated developers really are and explore the benefits they can bring to your business.
What are dedicated developers?
A dedicated developer is a professional who works exclusively for a company. These specialists are fully committed and focused on their organisation’s tasks and don’t juggle between clients.
While they can be onshore, they are often nearshore or offshore, providing flexibility and cost advantages.
For example, a FinTech that sets up a 15-person dedicated development team gets engineers who are invested in their business and not splitting their attention elsewhere.
See Preqin’s case, a UK firm that transitioned from traditional outsourcing to a dedicated development team.
Thanks to this shift, the company was able to hire developers who were 100% committed and aligned with the company’s goals. These professionals have been pivotal in creating Preqin Pro — a new flagship product — and establishing the organisation as a global leader in alternative asset insights.
What does the right dedicated developer bring to your team?
Businesses that look for dedicated engineers do so for a couple of reasons. Some — like the aforementioned Preqin — need professionals with the right expertise to support their growth.
That’s precisely one of the motivations why you might want to hire them: accessing niche programming skills.
Although JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and Python are the most used programming languages today, developers are now specialising in niche languages like Kotlin or Rust. Having dedicated programmers who dominate these technologies can be a competitive advantage and enable your company to design and deploy innovative products faster.
Regarding soft skills, dedicated developers are typically creative thinkers who aren’t afraid to propose new ideas and offer unique perspectives to solve common problems. Plus, they are known for being exceptional team players.
Top benefits of hiring dedicated developers
A dedicated development team can offer significant benefits to your business in comparison to other models for scaling your development, including the following:
- Accessing top talent (you can’t find at home): In many regions, such as Silicon Valley, London, or Berlin, talent shortages are a growing challenge. Dedicated developers are generally located in talent-rich tech hubs like Bangalore, India, or Warsaw, Poland. These cities are home to top engineers and other industry professionals with extensive experience working with Western companies.
- Enjoying cost-effective operations: Businesses that hire dedicated developers in countries with lower living costs can cut hiring, onboarding, salary, and operational expenses. And it’s not just about reducing costs but getting the right talent and accessing niche skills that might be unaffordable locally. The high specialisation of dedicated developers in specific technologies makes them a more cost-effective choice than hiring engineers onshore or in neighbouring countries.
- Getting more visibility/control: Hiring dedicated developers provides CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and other tech leaders with more visibility and control over the workflow. With direct communication within the team, they are in the driver’s seat, managing daily operations and maintaining complete product oversight.
- Improving engineering productivity: Dedicated engineers are fully focused on their company, so they tend to be more productive than professionals who work on multiple projects or clients. CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and other tech leaders can rest assured that their team will always deliver high-quality work on time following Agile or other methodologies.
- Mitigating risks and common challenges: When building a new tech team, organisations worry about high attrition and the loss of knowledge. However, with developers who stay with the team long-term — ensuring tech leaders work with the same engineers rather than new faces — issues with knowledge transfer and team rotations are minimised to almost zero. Dedicated specialists contribute to security and protect intellectual property by working within the organisation’s systems under strict confidentiality agreements like NDAs.
Don’t focus solely on hard skills. Hire developers who are flexible and open to change, as they’ll adapt better to your company’s needs and perform better in the long run. Top engineers who resist change may not be the best hires.
How to hire dedicated developers step by step
For the sake of this article, we’re going to assume you have a clear idea of the kind of dedicated developers you need and have your job descriptions ready.
If not, check out our comprehensive guide on building a dedicated development team.
Now, let’s dive into the three main steps to hire dedicated developers:
Choose the right model
Before searching for engineers, first, find a hiring and engagement model that aligns with your goals.
These are the most popular models for hiring top tech talent:
Hiring locally: As its name suggests, it involves bringing on dedicated developers within the same country. This can include collaborating with freelancers or hiring professionals through a third-party provider.
Nearshoring: It refers to hiring dedicated devs in a neighbouring country. It’s the right fit for businesses that prioritise being close to their external specialists over other factors.
Staff augmentation: Via this approach, companies hire and manage external engineers on a temporary basis. It’s a flexible solution to fill skill gaps or handle workload spikes without long-term commitments.
Offshoring: This model involves relocating operations to another country to tap into specialised skills and cut costs while retaining full management and control. It’s ideal for companies seeking a long-term partnership.
From all of the above, offshoring is the most effective model to hire dedicated developers.
When done right, hiring offshore developers can help you build a world-class team of professionals who become a key part of your organisation and provide valuable insights for sustained business growth.
In contrast, staff augmentation and nearshoring involve hiring engineers for specific tasks, offering less commitment and integration compared to offshore developers.
Find a reliable and experienced partner
Once you’ve chosen an engagement model, it’s time to pick a reliable partner to source, hire, and onboard your dedicated developers.
If you opt for offshoring, you’re in luck. Some of the best offshore development companies are known for handling the following processes for you:
- Recruitment.
- Payroll and taxation.
- Local registration and legalities.
- Employing HR and administrative staff.
- Acquiring and setting up an office space for your team.
- Onboarding and daily engagement with your new developers.
Put simply, your partner does all the heavy lifting while you focus on your product and core business activities.
Besides verifying that your potential partner manages these tasks, evaluate their management capabilities, as these are crucial to a successful long-term partnership. Investigate who’s leading the business, the organisation’s structure and overall industry experience.
