What is the difference between staff augmentation and a dedicated development team?
Where the management sits. Under augmentation, engineers join YOUR team and YOUR process and take direction from your leads. A dedicated development team is a persistent group with its own delivery rhythm and usually its own lead, working as a unit alongside you. Augmentation suits a team with spare management capacity and a clear backlog. A dedicated team suits an organisation that wants a functioning engineering group without having to direct it day to day. If you are unsure which you need, describe your situation and we will tell you.
How does this differ from your offshore development service?
Offshore development is scope-based: we take responsibility for delivering a defined piece of work, and how it gets built is largely our problem. Augmentation is capacity-based: you keep responsibility for what gets built and how, and we supply people into your process. The practical test is who is accountable if the project is late. Under augmentation that is you, which is exactly right when you want to retain control, and exactly wrong when you wanted to hand the problem over.
How does this differ from employer of record?
Legal employment. Under augmentation, engineers are our people working with your team, and the contract is a services arrangement. Under employer of record we become the legal employer of a person you have effectively chosen and directed, handling their contract, payroll, tax, and statutory insurance in Vietnam. Companies who want a long-term, formally employed team member without opening an entity usually want the employer of record route. Those who want flexible capacity usually want this one.
Do you have pages for specific technologies?
Yes, and they are the right place to look for skill-specific detail. We maintain pages across our technology practice covering Java, Python, .NET, Node.js, React, Angular, Vue, Flutter, React Native, Golang, PHP, and others, each describing what we build with it. We deliberately do not run a separate page per hire-a-developer keyword, because that would put two of our own pages in competition for the same search and give you two thinner pages instead of one useful one.
How quickly can you provide an engineer?
We are not going to give you a number, because a general one would be dishonest. It depends entirely on the stack, the seniority, and how specific the requirements are: a mid-level engineer in a mainstream stack is a very different search from a senior specialist in something niche. What we will do is tell you a realistic timeframe for YOUR role after we have seen it, and tell you if we think it is unrealistic rather than starting a search that cannot succeed.
What if the engineer is not a good fit?
You tell us and we replace them, with sourcing and handover on us. We also ask for a scheduled fit review inside the first month specifically to make this conversation normal and early. The failure mode we are guarding against is a mismatch that everyone senses at week three and nobody raises until month six, by which point it is expensive for both sides.
Can we interview candidates before they join?
Yes, and you should. Interview as many as you want, for as long as you want, using whatever process you use for your own hires. Nobody joins your team without your approval. If you reject an entire shortlist, we go back and look again. Any arrangement that allocates people to you rather than proposing them has removed your main control over quality.
What are the working hours and how much overlap will we get?
Vietnam is UTC+7. That gives substantial overlap with Asia-Pacific, a workable morning overlap with Europe, and limited overlap with North America, typically an early-morning window on our side. We state this plainly during scoping. Where a role genuinely requires sustained real-time collaboration with a US West Coast team, we will say so and let you weigh it, rather than promising flexibility that depends on individuals permanently working unsociable hours.
Who owns the code and intellectual property?
You do, under the contract, from the moment it is written. Engineers work in your repository under your access controls, so there is no technical dependency on us either. Nothing about the arrangement is designed to make leaving difficult.
Is there a minimum engagement length?
There is a practical one rather than a contractual trap. Onboarding an engineer into a codebase takes real time, and an engagement shorter than a few months rarely repays that investment for either side. We will tell you if we think the duration you have in mind is too short to be worth doing, because a disappointing short engagement helps nobody. Notice periods are symmetrical and agreed at the start.
Can augmentation turn into a dedicated team later?
Yes, and it is a common path. Teams often start with one or two engineers, then find that the coordination load justifies a lead on our side and a shift to the dedicated team model. Moving in the other direction happens too, when a project finishes and only maintenance capacity is needed. We would rather change the model when the situation changes than defend the original arrangement.
