Hiring Dedicated Development Team in 2025: The Ultimate Guide

Big enterprises, such as Google, Microsoft, Uber, and Facebook, tend to hire dedicated development teams to access specialized skills, raise project scalability, and accelerate product development. Many IT vendors can offer you to hire a dedicated development team from their staff. There’s no need for countless interviews and lengthy onboarding. Another reason to cooperate with a dedicated app development team is a low budget. There’s no need to pay for office rent, taxes, software, and hardware. Besides, you only pay when there are tasks to assign.

In this article, you’ll find step-by-step instructions on how to hire a dedicated team, where to search for dedicated developers, how much it costs, and what to keep in mind before choosing such a cooperation model.

A dedicated development team is a group of professionals that is dedicated to working exclusively for your project or for the completion of chosen tasks related to your project. This approach allows you to get fully focused and committed specialists who are dedicated to the success of your project, generally resulting in faster project delivery and flexibility in resource allocation.

A dedicated development team is great for performing large, long-term projects with frequently changing requirements. It is quite flexible, focusing on the scope of work and tasks, costs and resources, as well as prioritizing the development team itself.

The key value of this model is enhanced concentration, resulting in increased speed and quality of the outcome. Challenges like team members being stretched too thin or overworked are not a concern since the team's sole objective is focused on project development.

Forming a dedicated team may be done in two ways:

• You can get a separate full-service team comprising all necessary employees, such as a business analyst, frontend software architect, and more.
• You can hire a dedicated software development team to complement their existing employees with external experts.

However, it's essential to note that dedicated teams typically do not cooperate with in-house programmers and are managed on the customer's side. Once the project is completed, the cooperation concludes.

What specialists can become members of your dedicated development team? Here’s a list that can hint to you about your future dedicated team structure:

• Frontend web developers. These specialists create a part of the software that your user interacts with, including the solution’s interactivity
• Backend developers. Back-end developers are responsible for building and maintaining the server side of your software solution
• Mobile developers. Mobile developers master applications for smartphones and tablets, consequently for iOS or Android mobile operating systems. Besides, usually, they are also qualified to provide cross-platform Flutter development services
• UI/UX designers. UI/UX designers craft an appealing, user-friendly, and intuitive visual for your software solution
• QA specialists. Specialists that provide quality assurance services test the software for quality and bug-free infrastructure
• DevOps engineers. DevOps experts act as a bridge between software creation and IT operations and head all automated processes throughout software development
• Other specialists. You can also hire other dedicated specialists like a project manager, business analyst, or solution architect, depending on your request and specific project requirements

According to Precedence, the IT services outsourcing market size is expected to reach $1,345.48 billion by 2034. This market growth is associated with the consequences of the pandemic when businesses need to continue to provide their processes with new software products, and they turn to outsource companies for their development. As a result, Exploding Topics has pointed out that hiring a dedicated development team has become a popular practice for businesses of all sizes, with 92% of G2000 companies and 37% of small businesses outsourcing projects to external providers.

There are several examples of companies that have cooperated with dedicated app development teams and outsourced their tasks to outsource vendors:

• Google. To reduce expenses, this giant outsources parts of its projects, like IT management and backend development.
• Slack has outsourced the development of its mobile app and marketing website. A dedicated team of developers created the project’s MVP.
• WhatsApp. The development of the iOS version of the popular messenger was completely outsourced to a dedicated development team.
• GitHub. The largest web service for hosting IT projects has put a significant portion of the backend website development in the hands of the dedicated development team

There are three models of outsourcing cooperation: dedicated app development team, IT staff augmentation, and outcome-based partnership. Let's break down the differences between these three engagement models for app development because choosing the right one is crucial for your success.

With a dedicated app development team, you hire an entire team of specialists exclusively for your project. They work on your project from start to finish. You can think of it as your own remote development department.

The dedicated development team for hire model offers several advantages:

• Focusing only on your project to ensure faster progress and better quality
• Knowing your business and project inside and out to provide more innovative solutions
• Direct communication with the dedicated team to enhance the development process
• Regulating the team's size and skill set as your project evolves to better flexibility

IT staff augmentation, on the other hand, assumes you hire individual developers to extend your existing team. It's like having extra hands to handle particular tasks or fill skill gaps by finding experts with specific skills you need right now. It avoids the time and cost of a full hiring process and lets you get access to a wider talent pool.

Though staff augmentation is helpful for a short-term resource need, it has limitations. Integrating external developers into your in-house team is often time-consuming and complex. Also, communication can be more challenging with team members who are not fully integrated into your company culture.

When you're choosing between a dedicated development team and outcome-based partnership, the core difference lies in control and focus. An outcome-based partnership centers on delivering specific, pre-agreed results. You define what you want to achieve, and the development partner takes on the responsibility of making it happen. It can be great for projects with clearly defined, measurable goals.

However, with an outcome-based partnership, you often have less direct control over how the development happens. You trust the partner to pick the methods and manage the team to get the results. A dedicated app development team gives you more control and flexibility. You directly watch over the team's work. It lets you guide the development and change things when needed. Such direct involvement helps the team learn more about your business and project. They often find better solutions and feel more invested in the project.

An outcome-based partnership works well for projects with very specific, unchanging needs. A dedicated team is usually better for complex projects. These projects need ongoing work, new ideas, and the ability to adapt to changes.

Your decision to hire a dedicated development team can, for sure, positively impact your software project. So now, let's discover when hiring a dedicated development team is the best option for your project's success.

Projects change, deadlines shift and new requirements pop up. A dedicated app development team lets you adjust your team size as needed. You don’t have to worry about keeping unnecessary staff or having difficulties finding experts at the last minute. Such flexibility to scale your team keeps your project efficient and cost-effective.

Success depends on the right people. When you hire dedicated team, you choose specialists who match your project’s needs. You get developers with the right skills to solve complex problems and deliver reliable software. No wasted time, no skill gaps. Just experts focused on your goals.

A dedicated development team for hire works only on your project. There are no distractions and no switching between tasks. Such a focus speeds up development, helping you launch faster. The sooner your software hits the market, the sooner you gain an advantage over competitors and get profit.

Managing an in-house staff takes time and effort. You have to oversee tasks, track progress, and resolve issues. When you hire a dedicated development team, they handle project coordination, so you don’t have to micromanage. Their experience keeps everything on track, reduces stress, and allows you to focus on business growth.

At any time, you can reach out to them to learn how things are going with the project. At the same time, the team can contact you for approval of the completed project scope, to report on current progress, or for risk management purposes.

To extract the best outcomes out of a dedicated development team for hire, you’ll have to conduct certain preparations prior. Below, you can find 6 steps to lay on while planning to insert a dedicated development team into your project completion.

You, as a business that seeks to hire a dedicated team of skilled developers, have to strictly outline your requirements, terms, and conditions of further cooperation. Now, let's overlook the key points you should consider:

• Project scope. To make your dedicated team complete set tasks correctly, it’s vital for you to primarily understand your own project requirements, functionalities, and desired timelines clearly
• Tech expertise. Outline the skills and expertise needed for a project and communicate it transparently with a dedicated development team
• Decide on team size and composition. Analyze essential attributes needed to complete your software solution and consequently determine the number and selection of members of your dedicated team
• Budget and payment terms. Make sure to clearly establish the budget and payment structure (e.g., fixed cost, hourly rates. etc.), to ensure financial transparency and full alignment with our business’s budget constraints

At this stage, it’s crucial to conduct well-structured and deep market research. Primarily, you have to focus on IT companies that offer to hire dedicated development team. When choosing a company, consider these key factors:

• Check their technical experience. Pay attention to the proven experience in the specific software development services you need. It can include custom software development, legacy software modernization, mobile/web/cross-platform development, etc.
• Assess their industry-specific expertise. Experience in your business domain is crucial. The vendor should understand industry-specific software development practices and requirements.
• Review their portfolio and case studies. A strong portfolio demonstrates successful project delivery in your business domain or with the technologies you require. Case studies provide deeper insight into their work and the results they achieve.
• Check their reputation and client reviews. Client reviews show a general view of the vendor's reliability and quality of service. Look for feedback that highlights their strengths and any potential weaknesses that you can face.

By the way, feel free to examine Cleveroad's portfolio and our Clutch page to find out more about our expertise and how we help our clients reach their business goals.

The next step is to define how well the IT vendor’s software experts can deal with the development project goals you set. Try focusing on specifying the following things:

The final selection of your dedicated app development team for hire heavily depends on the tasks you seek to accomplish or simplify. Here, you’ll cooperate tightly with your IT vendor, who’ll assist you in gathering a perfect team of software experts.

However, note that the formation of the team plays a pivotal role in the success of dedicated team model utilization and requires as much of your engagement as possible. Finally, nobody knows your business specifics as you do. So, at this point, you’ll be guiding your vendor to offer you the most qualified experts for the accomplishment of your business goals.

Effective collaboration can’t go without effective communication. That’s why it’s very important to establish reliable communication channels that can be mutually agreed on with you and the dedicated development team. Here are several examples of convenient and suitable communication tools our team commonly use:

• Project management tools: Asana, Trello, Jira
• Video conferencing platforms: Zoom, Google Meets, Microsoft Teams
• Instant messaging: Slack, WhatsUp, Telegram
• Version control systems: GitLab, GitHub, etc.

When all the conditions are negotiated, it’s time to begin the process of onboarding the dedicated development team. Team onboarding is a vital process that bridges the gap between your project and the newly assembled dedicated development team. It aims to ensure a seamless integration of the team members into your project's workflow while clarifying expectations, roles, and responsibilities.

By contributing time and effort to a comprehensive team onboarding process, you set the stage for a successful partnership with the dedicated development team. Effective onboarding ensures seamless collaboration, clarifies expectations, and enhances the team's ability to deliver high-quality results in line with your project's objectives.

It’s hard to provide a cost for hiring a dedicated app development team instantly. There are numerous factors that significantly influence pricing, including the dedicated development team's level of expertise, size, member selection, and location.

The rates of software development experts significantly vary among various regions and also impact the pricing. Examine dedicated development teams' hourly rate internationally below:

As you can see, even now, it’s not that easy to get a complete picture of how much does it cost to hire an app developer. North American software developers have the highest rates, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always mean superior quality. In Asia, rates are the lowest, and the quality of software development may appear surprisingly good. Anyway, there, you can face significant cultural differences that may impact communication and software creation outcomes.

At the same time, the CEE region (Central and Eastern Europe) is considered a quite beneficial option. The region, particularly Estonia, is famous for a great number of tech-savvy software experts with a rich selection of deep and unique technical knowledge. Apart from this, Estonia has the highest English proficiency rates in the EU, making communication and collaboration with the development team smoother and more efficient.

Now, let’s specify the most important aspects you should keep in mind while planning to hire dedicated developers.

Teams familiar with your domain terminology and best practices can more quickly grasp your project requirements. Besides, particular knowledge of your domain can strengthen your dedicated team's ability to anticipate potential challenges as they may have faced them before in previous projects. Also, the understanding of your domain eliminated the time needed to explain generic domain details.

Industry knowledge is clearly not enough to accomplish a software project. According to your requirements for dedicated team members' tech knowledge, you’ll have to ensure that dedicated team members' tech knowledge aligns with what they actually offer.

Imagine you need to hire a proficient front-end developer, but the specialist from your project team lacks knowledge in frameworks or tools that you require, like React Spring or Vue.js. While they might have general front-end development knowledge, they lack expertise in technologies you actually need. That’s why it’s important to determine what expertise your project needs and transparently communicate this with your dedicated development team for hire.

A strong technology stack is the foundation of a successful project. The dedicated app development team should have broad experience with various technologies and deep knowledge of the specific tools your project demands. If you need cloud integration, AI capabilities, or mobile app development, the team must have hands-on expertise in those areas. A team with diverse tech experience can also suggest better solutions you may not have considered.

Another thing to do is to ensure that your vendor and dedicated development team have a clear reputation and a rich record of solution delivery success stories. Review the IT vendor’s testimonials and reviews from past clients on platforms like Clutch to ensure their exact level of expertise and the ability to deliver highly functional, secure solutions and continuously and consistently support their clients after the software release.

Cooperation with a remote team often implies particular risks in smooth and sustainable communication. This is caused by the distance and sometimes even differences in time zones. Earlier, you learned about the most commonly used communication tools and technologies during cooperation with dedicated teams. However, it’s vital to make the chosen communication approach mutually convenient for both parties.

Choosing the partners for hiring dedicated development team requires you to consider the developers' location. As we discussed before, the choice of region affects the cost of your project since hourly rates differ from region to region. Moreover, the farther away the software vendor is from you, the stronger the time difference will be.

A big time difference can cause some difficulties in cooperation management. However, we at Cleveroad easily address time-zone differences. For example, we schedule meetings so that all stakeholders can attend. We ensure clear communication channels and stay in touch to respond quickly to requests.

Another factor you should evaluate is your future software development partner’s ability to scale the team size as you need. This will minimize future complexities with quick adaptation to the changing needs of your dedicated project. Also, the IT vendor’s preferred communication approach may also influence the swiftness of final project delivery, so check if it aligns with your specific goals.

NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) is a legal contract aimed to protect confidential information shared between parties. Prioritize vendors that offer to sign an NDA. This document ensures that both parties demonstrate full commitment to confidentiality and respect for each other's sensitive information, fostering mutual trust and transparency.

Cleveroad is an outsourcing software development company that has been providing dedicated development team services for more than 13 years for companies of various industries and sizes. We have an extensive staff of specialists who are ready to integrate into your work processes and provide their experience in the development and design of software for business.

Turning to Cleveroad, you get:

• Flexible models of cooperation: Dedicated Team, Staff Augmentation, Project-Based
• Agile-oriented team of more than 200 highly qualified specialists, experienced in a broad spectrum of domains, like Healthcare, Fintech, Logistics, E-commerce, and E-learning, fitting in your project
• Cooperation with a team proficient in web technologies (AngularJS, JavaScript, React, etc.), mobile technologies (Kotlin, Swift, Objective-C, etc.), and more
• We provide a wide range of software services, including custom web and mobile software development, IT consulting, legacy software modernization, CRM, HRM, ERP development, etc.
• Deep knowledge and proven expertise in advanced technologies like IoT, AI, Big Data, Machine learning (ML), cloud computing, blockchain, etc.
• A cooperation with an IT partner with ISO/IEC 27001:2013 (security management) and ISO 9001:2015 (quality management) certifications
• A comprehensive Project Management Office to help you fully oversee your project requirements in order to complete it fast, timely, without overstepping a budget