Dedicated Software Development Team
Senior engineers in Ho Chi Minh City, live in 4–6 weeks. You set the technical direction and talk to the engineers directly. We handle recruiting, HR, payroll and retention.
Start with three engineers. Grow into your own offshore development center. Same people, either way.
Trusted by engineering teams in 15+ countries — Series A startups to Fortune 500.
Offshore doesn’t fail because of the location.
It fails because of the model.
You’ve probably lived through at least two of these:
The engineer on your standup is also billed to four other accounts. Nobody will tell you that.
A two-hour clarification becomes a two-day delay, then a week of rework.
Three months of onboarding walks out the door. The replacement has never opened your repo.
Sprints close green. Code fails review — or never got reviewed at all.
Your senior engineers lose ten hours a week managing the vendor. The exact thing you outsourced to avoid.
One root cause: engineers who were never actually yours.
What is a dedicated
software development team?
A dedicated software development team is a group of engineers who work exclusively on one client’s product, full-time and long-term, under that client’s technical direction. Unlike project outsourcing, the client owns the roadmap and sets priorities. Unlike a contractor pool, the engineers are not shared, rotated or reassigned when a higher-paying account arrives.
At InApps, that team is recruited, vetted and managed for you in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. You direct the work and own 100% of the code. There’s no entity to register and no office to lease — those are ours.
Three things make it dedicated
Exclusivity.
Your engineers work on your product only. Never split, never billed to two clients in the same month.
Direct access.
You talk to the people writing the code. Your Slack, your standups, your code reviews, with no account manager relaying decisions on technical matters.
Continuity.
92% of our engineers are still on the same team after 12 months, so context stays in the building.
Dedicated team, staff augmentation,
or your own development center?
This page sells the middle rung. Here’s the full ladder anyway, because buying the wrong one is expensive in both directions — you either pay for structure you don’t need, or outgrow the contract in six months.
| Criterion | IT staff augmentation | Dedicated team | Offshore development center |
|---|---|---|---|
| You get | 1–5 engineers into your existing team | A full exclusive team — engineers, tech lead, QA | An engineering branch in Vietnam under your brand |
| Who employs them | InApps | InApps | Your Vietnamese entity |
| Who owns the entity | No entity needed | InApps’ | Yours — we register and transfer it |
| Who signs the office lease | InApps | InApps | You |
| Upfront setup cost | None | None | Yes |
| Non-tech roles included | No | No | Yes — HR, finance, admin |
| Typical size | 1–5 | 3–20 | 20+ |
| Time to running | 1–2 weeks | 4–6 weeks | 4–5 months |
| Scaling | Per person | Up or down on 30 days’ notice | Structural — you own the headcount |
| IP ownership | 100% yours | 100% yours | 100% yours |
| Exit | 30 days’ notice | 30 days’ notice | Entity and headcount transfer to you |
Size isn’t what separates these. Ownership is. A dedicated team is capacity you rent with a 30-day exit; an ODC is a company you own in Vietnam. Choose a dedicated team when the work doesn’t end but the commitment shouldn’t be permanent yet. A roadmap rather than a project, three or more engineers, and no appetite for registering a foreign entity to find out whether it works.
One engagement.
Everything that makes a team function.
Your team
- Senior vetted engineers
- dedicated tech lead
- QA engineer
- optional PM
- team shape built around your roadmap
Your infrastructure
- Managed secure office and workstations
- high-performance devices
- VPN, SSO and access control
- ISO 27001-aligned security policy
Our operations
- Recruiting and onboarding
- payroll and Vietnamese labour compliance
- performance management
- retention and replacement cover
Your process
- Agile ceremonies in your format
- your tools and documentation standards
- real-time reporting
- 3–5 hours of live overlap with Europe, full overlap with APAC
You get the cost structure of offshore hiring with the accountability of an in-house team.
First call to shipping code
in under six weeks.
Scope
Tell us the roadmap and the gaps. We define roles, team shape and size. No intake form.
Recruit
We source and vet against your stack. You interview the finalists and choose your own team.
Onboard
Codebase walkthrough, tool access, process alignment, first sprint. The team is shipping.
Run and scale
You run the sprints. We run the people — performance, retention, payroll — and add or drop headcount as the roadmap moves.
You direct the work from day one. You never touch the hiring, the payroll or the paperwork.
Book a discovery callUnder 1% of applicants
get near a client codebase.
Technical assessment.
Real-world coding challenge, architecture interview, code quality under time pressure.
Communication and English.
Technical writing, a client-facing scenario, spoken fluency. B2 minimum, no exceptions.
Soft skills and collaboration.
How they behave when a sprint goes sideways.
Final project review and references.
Technical panel, background check, values alignment.
15% pass the technical assessment. Under 5% get past soft skills. Under 1% are placed.
What a dedicated software
development team actually costs.
Every vendor in this category answers “it depends.” Here’s what it depends on, and then a real number.
| Driver | Effect |
|---|---|
| Seniority mix | Senior-weighted teams cost more per head and ship with less rework |
| Team size | Larger teams lower per-engineer overhead, raise coordination load |
| Stack rarity | React and Node cost less than Rust, LangGraph or embedded |
| Commitment length | 12-month engagements price better than quarterly |
Indicative monthly rates, per engineer, all-in
| Role | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Mid-level engineer | $X,XXX – $X,XXX |
| Senior engineer | $X,XXX – $X,XXX |
| Tech lead / architect | $X,XXX – $X,XXX |
| QA engineer | $X,XXX – $X,XXX |
Sample team — 1 tech lead, 3 senior engineers, 1 QA: $XX,XXX/month. No recruiter fees, no benefits load, no bench time, no setup cost.
Typically 60–70% below equivalent US and Western European rates.
Get a costed team planPrudential: 30+ engineers across
Southeast Asia, no local hiring risk.
Prudential needed engineering capacity across multiple Southeast Asian markets under insurance-grade compliance, without absorbing local recruitment overhead in Singapore. InApps built and ran a 30+ engineer team that shipped faster than direct local hiring.
That’s the top end. Most teams start at three to five and grow from there.
Ask the people who stayed
not the ones we picked
Every quote below is from a verified review. None of them were written by us.
“Clear expectations, rules that actually hold, delivered on time. And the people are easy to work with — not just professionally, but as humans.”
How we compare
| Criterion | InApps dedicated team | Hiring in-house | Typical vendor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | 60–70% below US/EU | Salary + benefits + overhead | Variable, often hidden fees |
| Time to productive | 4–6 weeks | 3–6 months | 2–8 weeks, bench-heavy |
| Talent bar | Top 1% of applicants | Whatever your local market offers | Mixed |
| Who you talk to | The engineers, directly | The engineers, directly | An account manager |
| Flexibility | Up or down on 30 days’ notice | Rigid headcount | Limited |
| Engineer retention | 92% at 12 months | Market average | Rotation is common |
| Where it can go | Converts into your own Vietnamese entity | — | Ends when the contract ends |
When the team stops being a team
and becomes a department.
Some clients stay at five engineers for years. Others reach twenty and realise Vietnam is now a permanent part of their engineering org — at which point a vendor contract is the wrong container for it.
That’s an offshore development center: a company registered in Vietnam, your brand on the door, your headcount, your office. Most vendors can’t take you there. They either talk you out of it or hand you back to a recruiter.
We build it around the team you already have.
None of this has to be decided on day one. Start with three engineers on 30 days’ notice and find out whether the model holds. That’s the part most vendors can’t offer.
When this works.
And when we’ll tell you it doesn’t.
Good fit
- Three or more engineers needed full-time, exclusively on your product
- A roadmap rather than a one-off project
- You want to cut hiring cost without adding management overhead
- You want the same engineers still there in eighteen months
Wrong fit — and we’ll say so on the first call
- Fixed scope with a hard deadline → project-based development
- One specialist for six weeks → IT staff augmentation
- Roadmap not defined yet → talk to us next quarter
An honest no on the call beats a mismatched team six weeks in.
Everything you
need to know
What is a dedicated software development team?
Is a dedicated team the same as staff augmentation?
What’s the difference between a dedicated team and an offshore development center?
Who manages the engineers day to day?
How long does it take to get a team running?
How much does a dedicated software development team cost?
What is the minimum team size, and is there a minimum term?
Can we scale the team up or down?
Can we replace one specific engineer without changing the team size?
What happens if an engineer leaves?
Who owns the code and IP?
How is our code and data protected?
What about time zone overlap?
How do you vet engineers?
Which tech stacks do you cover?
Why Vietnam rather than India or Eastern Europe?
Let’s scope the team.
Tell us what you’re shipping and where you’re short. You’ll get a team shape, a timeline and a real number.
No pitch deck. No obligation.