Dedicated development team
A dedicated development team that works only on your product
Full-time engineers, designers and QA who join your roadmap for the long haul, run by your product lead with our delivery support, and billed as a predictable monthly fee.
Short answer
A dedicated development team is a group of full-time engineers assigned exclusively to your product for months or years, working in your tools under your product direction. It suits companies with an evolving roadmap rather than a fixed project. With Innovation Insight a three-person squad costs roughly $11,000 to $15,000 a month, a six-person squad $22,000 to $32,000, onboarded in two to three weeks and scalable with 30 days notice.
What a dedicated development team is
A dedicated team is not a project and not a single contractor. It is a standing squad, usually three to eight people, that belongs to your product. They attend your planning, ship your backlog, carry context from sprint to sprint and stay with you as the roadmap changes. You direct the work; we supply the people, the delivery lead, HR, equipment and replacement. The model exists because most software is never finished: after launch there is always a next release, and a team that already knows the codebase ships it faster than any new vendor could.
| Model | Who directs the work | Commitment | Billing | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated team | Your product lead, with our delivery lead | Three months minimum, then monthly | Fixed monthly fee per person | You have a roadmap, not just a project |
| Staff augmentation | You, engineer by engineer | Monthly, from one person | Monthly per person | You need capacity inside an existing team |
| Project outsourcing | Our project manager | Per project | Milestones or time and materials | You have a defined scope and deadline |
Team shapes and what they cost per month
Prices below use our published rates per role and seniority. Every figure includes the engineer's salary, equipment, HR, a delivery lead's oversight and the replacement guarantee. There is no recruitment fee and no bench charge.
| Team shape | Composition | Monthly range | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter squad (3) | Senior full-stack lead, mid full-stack developer, QA engineer (part-time) | $11,000 to $15,000 | A launched MVP that needs steady feature work |
| Product squad (5) | Lead, two full-stack developers, designer, QA engineer | $18,000 to $26,000 | A growing SaaS with weekly releases |
| Scale squad (6 to 8) | Lead, two front-end, two back-end, DevOps engineer, QA, part-time designer | $22,000 to $36,000 | Multi-product or platform work with infrastructure needs |
| AI feature squad (4) | AI/ML engineer, Python back-end developer, front-end developer, QA | $16,000 to $23,000 | Adding assistants, RAG or agents to an existing product |
| Seniority | Experience | Monthly (full-time) | Hourly equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-level | 3 to 5 years | $3,000 to $4,200 | $19 to $26 |
| Senior | 5 to 8 years | $4,000 to $6,000 | $25 to $38 |
| Lead | 8+ years | $5,600 to $7,800 | $35 to $49 |
How onboarding works
- Team design (week 0): we agree the roles, seniority mix and working hours from your roadmap and current codebase.
- Shortlist and interviews (week 1): two or three profiles per role with CVs, code samples and our interview notes; you interview them your way.
- Access and setup (week 2): repositories, cloud, tickets and chat in your name; our delivery lead documents the architecture and the definition of done.
- First sprint (weeks 2 to 3): a small, real deliverable to establish cadence, followed by a retrospective on how the collaboration should run.
Governance: who decides what
You own the backlog, priorities and acceptance. Our delivery lead owns cadence, quality standards and the health of the team, and reports to you weekly with velocity, risks and staffing. Engineers attend your stand-ups and planning. Architecture decisions are proposed in writing and approved by your technical lead if you have one, or by ours if you do not. Nothing is deployed to production without a review and the tests passing in CI. The arrangement is written into the statement of work so both sides know the rules before the first sprint.
Scaling up and down
A dedicated team should follow the shape of the roadmap. Adding a person takes five to ten business days from the request. Reducing the team takes 30 days notice and we handle the hand-over of that person's work. Seasonal patterns, such as a heavy build phase followed by a maintenance phase, are normal and are planned in the quarterly review. Because the whole team is on our payroll, scaling does not create severance or recruitment cost on your side.
What you get beyond the people
- A delivery lead who runs process, quality and staffing, at no extra charge for teams of three or more.
- Code review, automated testing and CI/CD set up as standard in the first sprint.
- Documentation and runbooks maintained as the team works, so knowledge lives in your wiki rather than in heads.
- Security practices from our vendor pack: least-privilege access, MFA, device encryption and offboarding on the day someone leaves.
- Quarterly reviews of velocity, cost and roadmap fit, with recommendations on team shape.
| Your location | Time zone | Shared working hours with our 9:00 to 19:00 PKT day |
|---|---|---|
| Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin | CET (UTC+1/+2) | 9:00 to 15:00 CET, the whole European morning and early afternoon |
| London, Dublin | GMT/BST | 9:00 to 14:00 local |
| New York, Toronto | Eastern (UTC-4/-5) | 9:00 to 14:00 ET, plus async cover until your evening |
| San Francisco, Seattle | Pacific (UTC-7/-8) | 6:00 to 11:00 PT, or a dedicated late shift |
| Dubai, Riyadh | GST/AST | Almost the full working day |
When a dedicated team is the wrong choice
If your scope is fixed and short, a fixed-price project will cost less and needs no ongoing management from you. If you only need one specialist inside an existing team, staff augmentation is simpler. And if you do not have anyone who can act as product owner for at least a few hours a week, a dedicated team will stall; in that case start with a managed project and grow into a team once the product direction is stable.
Working with Innovation Insight
Innovation Insight has run dedicated teams for SaaS, marketplace and AI products since 2019, some for more than three years with the same core engineers. Our case studies show the stack and scale of that work, and our rates are published so you can budget before we talk.
A month in the life of a dedicated team
Sprints run for two weeks. On Monday of week one your product lead and our delivery lead confirm the sprint goal and the tickets, all of which already have acceptance criteria from backlog refinement the week before. Engineers work in your repository with pull requests reviewed within a working day. Stand-ups happen in your hours; the written stand-up covers the rest. On the Friday of week two the team demos to you, ships what you accept, and holds a retrospective. Once a month the delivery lead sends a one-page report: velocity, what shipped, risks, staffing and the next month's plan. Once a quarter we review the team shape against the roadmap and adjust.
Roles you can include
| Role | What they own | Monthly range |
|---|---|---|
| Full-stack developer | Features end to end across API and UI | $3,200 to $7,800 |
| Front-end developer | React and Next.js interfaces, design system, performance | $3,000 to $7,200 |
| Back-end developer | APIs, integrations, data and background jobs | $3,000 to $7,500 |
| Mobile developer | Flutter or React Native apps and store releases | $3,000 to $7,200 |
| AI/ML engineer | LLM features, retrieval, evaluation, models | $3,600 to $7,800 |
| DevOps engineer | Cloud, CI/CD, monitoring, cost | $3,400 to $7,800 |
| QA engineer | Automation, device testing, release quality | $2,600 to $6,200 |
| Product designer | Research, flows, UI, design system | $2,800 to $6,000 |
Every dedicated team of three or more includes a delivery lead at no extra charge. Project managers are available as a named role when you want us to run the backlog as well as the team.
Next step
Tell us what you're building and get a written estimate.
A senior engineer replies within one business day. NDA on request.
Products we've shipped, and what happened next.
Case studies written from the technical documentation of each project: the stack, the scale and the outcome.
Questions we get asked a lot.
What is the minimum team size and commitment?
Three people for three months. Below that, staff augmentation from a single engineer is the better fit.
Can the team use our tools and process?
Yes, and we prefer it. Your repositories, tickets, chat and CI are the default; we add our own only where you have a gap.
Who manages the engineers day to day?
Your product lead sets priorities and accepts work. Our delivery lead manages cadence, quality and the people, and reports to you weekly.
How quickly can we change the team's composition?
Adding a role takes five to ten business days. Reducing takes 30 days notice with a documented hand-over.
Do you offer a trial?
The first two weeks act as one: if any engineer is not right you get a replacement at no cost, and the three-month minimum starts from the first sprint, not from the interviews.
How is this priced compared to hiring locally?
A senior engineer on our team costs $4,200 to $7,800 a month all-inclusive. A comparable US hire costs $12,000 to $18,000 a month once salary, benefits, equipment and recruitment are counted.