Dedicated Development Team Services

What a dedicated team means here

A dedicated development team is a group of engineers assembled for your product and working only on it. You own the roadmap, the priorities and the backlog. We own hiring, contracts, payroll, equipment, retention and continuity. Day to day it should feel like managing your own team — without carrying the headcount, the recruiting cycle or the idle bench on your books.

Two things make our version of this model different from a generic staffing arrangement. First, our teams are small and fully autonomous: typically three to seven engineers, sized to your roadmap rather than to a sales target. Second, they can cover both halves of a connected product — electronics and firmware as well as cloud, dashboards and mobile apps. That matters because the integration seam between hardware and software is where most connected-product schedules actually slip.

What a team typically looks like

Composition is decided during discovery and adjusted as the roadmap moves. A representative team for a connected product looks like this:

Not every product needs every role from day one. A firmware-heavy project may start with a tech lead and two embedded engineers and add cloud capacity once the device is talking. A platform project may never need electronics at all. The point of the model is that the shape follows the work.

How fast can a team start?

Typically two to four weeks from agreement to first sprint. That window covers matching engineers from our bench and current teams, onboarding them to your domain, and setting up access, environments and process.

Compare that with hiring: filling a single senior engineering role takes an industry average of roughly 47 days, and assembling a full team usually runs three to six months before everyone is productive. For a roadmap with a fixed external deadline — a trade show, a certification slot, a customer pilot — that difference is often the whole decision.

Dedicated team vs staff augmentation vs fixed scope

These three models get used interchangeably in sales conversations, and they are not the same thing. The honest comparison:

Most connected-product work sits in the first column, because hardware schedules generate discoveries that no fixed scope survives. But if your requirements really are frozen, a fixed-scope engagement is the cheaper and more honest choice, and we will say so.

How we start and how we hand over

Two moments decide whether a dedicated team works: the way it starts and the way it ends. Both should be defined before you sign anything.

Starting

• Short paid discovery. We map the task, constraints, architecture and technical risks before proposing a team. This is the cheapest de-risking available and it is what makes the estimate real.
• A named lead from day one. One accountable technical contact, not a project manager relaying messages.
• A trial sprint. One or two sprints before committing to a quarter. If the fit is wrong, you find out cheaply.
• Overlap hours, agreed in writing. We work European hours from Tallinn; a few hours of guaranteed daily overlap beats a larger asynchronous team.

Handing over

• You own everything. Source code, firmware, schematics, CAD and documentation are yours by contract, with no dependency on proprietary tooling you cannot take elsewhere.
• Documentation is a deliverable, not a favour. Architecture notes, runbooks and build instructions are part of done.
• Exit on notice. A defined notice period and a written handover plan, whether you are moving the work in-house or to another partner.

What this model costs you in practice

We quote per team and per project rather than publishing rate cards, because the number depends on composition, seniority and how much hardware is involved. What we can be concrete about is the shape of the cost.

• You stop paying for the bench. With in-house engineers you pay through the quiet periods between projects. A dedicated team scales down when the roadmap does.
• Recruiting cost disappears. Agency fees, job ads and weeks of your engineers' time spent interviewing become our problem, not a line on your budget.
• No office or equipment overhead. Workstations, licences, benefits and administration sit with us.
• Budget for the long tail. Connected products are never finished; plan for updates, security patches and monitoring after launch.

Engagement models we work with: dedicated team, time and materials, fixed scope, and retainer for ongoing support. Which one fits is a question for the discovery call, not for a pricing page.

When a dedicated team is the wrong answer

It is the wrong call in two situations, and we would rather tell you now than three months in. If the work is a small, well-defined, one-time job, a freelancer or a fixed-scope engagement will cost you less and finish sooner. If the capability is the core of your competitive advantage and you intend to build a permanent organisation around it, hire employees — and consider using a dedicated team only to bridge the hiring gap.

Everything between those extremes is where this model earns its place: a roadmap longer than a quarter, skills that are hard to hire all at once, and a deadline that will not wait for a six-month recruiting cycle.

Why GPO-Tech

We are an engineering company in Tallinn, Estonia, building connected products end to end since 2020 — electronics, firmware, cloud platforms, dashboards, mobile apps and AI integrations. Our founder is a Founder & CTO with 15+ years in Java and Kotlin and is ex-Wise, where he worked as an engineer on the core payment platform team.

Practically, that means three things for a dedicated team engagement. You are inside the EU, with the legal and IP framework European clients expect. You work in European hours, with real daily overlap. And you can get hardware and software from the same team, so the integration seam between them is an internal handoff instead of a contract boundary.

Frequently asked questions

How big is a dedicated team?

Typically three to seven engineers. Teams are sized to the roadmap and stay fully autonomous — we do not split people across several clients.

Do the engineers work only on my product?

Yes. That is the defining property of the model and the main reason it outperforms freelancers on anything longer than a small task.

Who manages the team day to day?

You set priorities and own the backlog. The team has its own technical lead who handles architecture, review and delivery, and who is your single point of contact.

How quickly can we start?

Usually two to four weeks. If the stack is unusual or the product needs electronics from day one, it can take longer, and we will say so before you commit.

Can the team cover hardware as well as software?

Yes. Electronics, firmware, cloud, dashboards and mobile apps come from one team, which removes the vendor boundary where connected-product schedules usually slip.

Who owns the code and IP?

You do. Source code, firmware, schematics, CAD files and documentation are assigned to you by contract, with no lock-in to proprietary tooling.

What if we need to stop or change the team?

Teams scale up or down within weeks on notice, and every engagement includes a written handover plan so the work can move in-house or elsewhere without a rescue project.

Do you publish prices?

No. We quote per team and per project after a short discovery, because composition, seniority and hardware involvement change the figure substantially.