Adding engineers to your team, with the terms written down

A dedicated team means engineers working on your product under your direction, as an extension of your team rather than on a fixed-scope project. The questions that determine whether it works are contractual and operational: who directs the work, who owns the output, and how the time-zone gap is handled.

This is one page rather than a page for each technology, and that is deliberate. The industry convention is a separate page for every language and framework, hire PHP developers, hire React developers, and so on through several dozen. Those pages are the same page with one noun changed, which is a pattern search engines treat as manipulation. The engagement is what varies, not the language.

Staff augmentation arrangements fail on the terms rather than the engineering. Nobody establishes who directs daily work, so engineers wait for instruction that never arrives. IP ownership is assumed rather than written, which becomes serious at acquisition. Overlap hours are not agreed, so a question asked at 5pm is answered the following afternoon. And 'dedicated' turns out to mean shared across three clients, which nobody said explicitly.

Who this is for

When this work makes sense

  • Businesses with more work than their team can absorb
  • Companies needing specific skills for a period without hiring permanently
  • Organisations whose hiring timeline is longer than their delivery deadline
  • Product teams needing to scale for a phase of work
  • Businesses that tried offshore development and had a poor experience
How to choose

Questions worth asking any supplier

Who directs the daily work? Engineers without an owner produce activity rather than progress.

Is IP ownership written down? Assumed ownership becomes a problem at the worst moment.

How many overlap hours are guaranteed, and in which time zone?

Does 'dedicated' mean exclusive? Ask directly and get it in writing.

What is the notice period both ways, and what happens to knowledge when someone leaves?

What you get

Deliverables

Engineers matched to your stack and working under your direction

A written engagement agreement covering rates, notice and exclusivity

IP assignment in writing, with output in your repositories

Agreed overlap hours with your team's working day

Participation in your existing process, your standups, your tracker, your review standards

Documentation as work proceeds, so knowledge does not leave with a person

A named point of escalation on our side

A handover path if the engagement ends

Built with

  • Next.js
  • React
  • Node.js
  • Python
  • Laravel
  • PostgreSQL
  • Your existing stack
How we work

Process

Engagements start with a written working agreement before anyone is assigned: who directs work, which hours overlap, where code lives, what review standards apply, and how escalation works. It is unglamorous and it is where these arrangements actually fail. Almost every unsatisfactory staff augmentation experience traces to one of those points never being stated, and both sides assuming a different answer.

The standard nine stages, discovery, strategy, UX/UI, development, content and SEO, testing, launch, measurement and continuous improvement, apply to every project. The paragraph above is what differs for this one.

Pricing

What moves the number

Pricing depends on scope, functionality, integrations and content requirements. These are the factors that change it most:

  • Number of engineers and seniority
  • Engagement length, since longer commitments carry different rates
  • Required overlap hours with your time zone
  • Whether specialist skills are needed
  • Whether we provide project management or you direct directly
  • Notice period
Comparison

Dedicated team, fixed-scope project, or hiring

Dedicated team

Fits: Ongoing work where scope evolves and you direct priorities

Limits: You must have capacity to direct it; unmanaged engineers produce little

Fixed-scope project

Fits: Well-defined deliverables with clear boundaries

Limits: Change requests are commercial negotiations; poor fit for evolving work

Hiring permanently

Fits: Long-term needs where retained knowledge matters most

Limits: Slow, and difficult to reverse if the need changes

Proof

Case studies

No published staff augmentation case study. Client engineering arrangements are confidential.

MBGDesk operates from 4 offices in India, United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates. We hold no industry certifications and do not imply otherwise.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Why not a page for each technology?

Because those pages are the same page with one word changed, which is the doorway pattern. Our research across seven competitors found 76 such pages in that set. What varies between engagements is the terms, not the language, so this is one page that covers the terms honestly.

Does dedicated mean exclusive?

With us, yes, and you should ask every supplier directly and get it written down. 'Dedicated' is used loosely across this industry to mean anything from exclusive to shared across several clients, and the difference matters enormously to what you actually receive.

Who owns the code?

You, assigned in writing, in your repositories from the first commit. This is standard and it should be explicit, assumed IP ownership becomes a serious problem during due diligence, which is exactly when nobody wants to discover it.

How do time zones work?

We agree guaranteed overlap hours with your working day. Part of the team works from India, which gives useful overlap with UK and UAE hours and partial overlap with US mornings. The agreement states hours rather than leaving it to goodwill.

What if an engineer is not working out?

Tell us early and we replace them. It happens, and the risk to manage is knowledge loss, which is why documentation as work proceeds is part of the arrangement rather than a final deliverable.

Can they work in our process?

Yes, and they should. Your standups, your tracker, your review standards, your definition of done. An external team running a parallel process produces integration friction that costs more than the arrangement saves.

What happens when the engagement ends?

Handover, documentation, and code that is already in your repositories rather than being transferred. A departure that requires a transfer project means the arrangement was structured wrongly from the start.

How do you handle security and system access?

Least privilege, on your infrastructure, with access granted per person and revoked when they leave the engagement. Engineers work in your repositories and your environments under accounts you control, not through a shared login on our side. Production access should be separate from development access and granted only where the role genuinely requires it. If a supplier is relaxed about this, that tells you how they treat every other client's systems too.

Talk to us about this

Tell us what you are trying to build and we will come back with scope, approach and an estimate.