Snapshot
Client
Series B HR technology SaaS, US-based, $8M ARR
Industry
HR Tech / SaaS
Engagement
Team Augmentation — 3 dedicated engineers
Team
2 senior full-stack engineers, 1 QA automation engineer
Duration
9 months (ongoing)
Tech Stack
React, TypeScript, Node.js (NestJS), PostgreSQL, AWS, Cypress, GitHub Actions
Key Result
2.3x increase in sprint velocity; 4 major features shipped in first 3 months
The Challenge
Our client builds a workforce management platform used by 600+ mid-market companies to manage employee onboarding, performance reviews, compensation planning, and offboarding workflows. At $8M ARR and growing 45% year-over-year, their product roadmap was expanding faster than their engineering team.
The internal team was 7 engineers — strong individually but stretched across too many priorities. The VP of Engineering described the math: “We have 14 months of roadmap prioritized as P0 or P1. At current velocity, we’ll ship 8 months of it this year. The other 6 months goes to next year — where it competes with next year’s P0s. We’re perpetually 6 months behind.”
They had tried hiring. Open positions for 2 senior engineers had been posted for 4 months. They’d received 200+ applications, conducted 40 phone screens, extended 3 offers — and lost all 3 to counter-offers or competing companies offering higher compensation. The fully-loaded cost of each position: $195K–$220K/year in their market.
They needed capacity now, not in 6 months after finally closing two hires.
Our Approach
Week 1: Team Assembly and Matching
The VP of Engineering defined the requirements: 2 senior full-stack engineers proficient in React, TypeScript, NestJS, and PostgreSQL, plus 1 QA automation engineer experienced with Cypress. All three needed strong written English for async communication and comfort working in a US-company sprint cadence.
We presented 5 candidate profiles within 4 business days. The VP interviewed all 5 via video call — 30-minute technical conversations focused on architecture discussion, not whiteboard puzzles. He selected 3.
Week 2: Sprint Zero
Day 1–2: Access provisioned (GitHub, Linear, Slack, Figma, Datadog, staging environment). 1-on-1 video introductions with each member of the existing engineering team. Product walkthrough recorded by the client’s product manager.
Day 3–4: Codebase exploration with guided assignments. Each engineer was tasked with tracing a specific workflow through the codebase (onboarding flow, performance review cycle, compensation calculation) and writing a brief technical summary of how it works. This exercise accomplished two things: it forced deep codebase understanding in 48 hours, and it produced documentation that the existing team had never written.
Day 5: Each engineer picked up their first ticket from the sprint backlog. First PRs submitted by end of day Friday.
Week 3+: Full Sprint Integration
The Gigabit engineers joined the client’s existing sprint cadence — biweekly sprints, Monday planning, daily async standups (posted in Slack at end of Dhaka day), Friday demos. They operated in the same Linear board, the same GitHub repositories, the same Slack channels as the internal team.
Communication structure:
- Async daily updates (Slack) at 5:30 PM Dhaka (7:30 AM Eastern) — ready for the US team when they start their day
- Sync standup twice per week during the 2-hour overlap window (8–10 AM Eastern / 6–8 PM Dhaka)
- PR reviews within 24 hours (Gigabit’s tech lead reviewed overnight; US team reviewed during their day)
- Sprint planning synchronous (biweekly, during overlap window)
- All other communication async via Slack threads and Linear comments
The Results
Velocity Impact
The 2.3x velocity increase was not purely additive (7 engineers + 3 engineers ≠ 1.43x). The Gigabit engineers also improved overall team productivity by:
- Taking on the backlog of automated test coverage that the internal team had been deferring. The QA engineer wrote 240+ Cypress tests in the first 2 months, increasing test coverage from 34% to 71%. This reduced regression bugs by 60%, which reduced the time the internal team spent on bug fixes.
- Handling the “important but not exciting” tickets that sat at the bottom of every sprint backlog — documentation updates, accessibility improvements, performance optimizations, dependency upgrades. These maintenance tasks, perpetually deprioritized, were creating compounding technical debt.
Features Shipped (First 3 Months)
4 major features that had been on the roadmap for 6+ months:
1. Compensation benchmarking module. AI-powered salary benchmarking that compares employee compensation against market data. Integrates with external salary APIs, normalizes data by role/level/geography, and presents recommendations to HR managers. This feature had been the #1 requested item from enterprise customers for 8 months.
2. Custom workflow builder. Drag-and-drop builder allowing HR administrators to create custom approval workflows for any HR process (offer letters, promotions, terminations, policy exceptions). Previously, every workflow customization required engineering involvement.
3. Advanced reporting engine. Custom report builder with drag-and-drop field selection, filtering, grouping, and visualization — replacing the static reports that generated 30% of all customer support tickets.
4. SSO enforcement for enterprise tier. SAML-based SSO with directory sync (Azure AD, Okta), enforced login policies, and automated user provisioning/deprovisioning. Required by 12 enterprise prospects in active sales cycles.
Financial Impact
But the cost comparison understates the value. The US hiring approach would have taken 4–6 months to fill the positions. The Gigabit team was productive in 2 weeks. The 4-month head start on feature development is worth significantly more than the direct cost savings — those features unlocked 12 enterprise deals in the sales pipeline.
I was hesitant about offshore augmentation. Our codebase is complex, our domain is nuanced, and I worried about communication friction. The Gigabit engineers were submitting PRs by day 5. By week 3, our internal team couldn’t tell the difference between a PR from a Gigabit engineer and one from our own team. The code quality, the communication, the ownership mentality — it’s exactly what I’d expect from a senior hire, at a third of the cost.
— VP of Engineering, [Client]
What's Next
The engagement has been extended indefinitely. The client has expanded from 3 to 5 Gigabit engineers (adding a frontend specialist and a DevOps engineer) and is planning to add 2 more in Q3 2026 as they prepare for a Series C raise.
The VP of Engineering now treats Gigabit augmentation as a permanent part of his team structure rather than a temporary solution: “We hire senior architects and tech leads in the US. We augment execution capacity with Gigabit. It’s the best cost-to-capability ratio I’ve found.”
Investment Summary
Need More Engineering Capacity Without The 6-month Hiring Timeline?
We assemble dedicated teams in 1–2 weeks. Your engineers, embedded in your workflow,
shipping from sprint one.