Hire a Dedicated Development Team

When a roadmap outgrows what one or two contract engineers can carry, the answer usually isn't more individual hires — it's a team that owns delivery. Ortem's dedicated development teams are pods we assemble specifically for your product: a tech lead you interview and approve, 2–5 engineers matched to your stack, and a QA specialist. The pod runs its own sprints, manages its own backlog, and reports progress against your roadmap — you stay in the product-owner seat without running daily engineering management.

When a dedicated team is the right model

Choose a dedicated team when you have a product, platform, or major module that needs sustained ownership: a SaaS product after launch, a modernization program, an internal platform your in-house team has no bandwidth for. If you simply need extra hands inside a process you already run, staff augmentation is cheaper and faster. If you need a one-off build with a fixed finish line, a scoped project engagement fits better.

What it costs

A typical pod — tech lead, 3 engineers, part-time QA — runs $18,000–$35,000 per month depending on seniority and specialisation. Compare that with the fully-loaded cost of hiring the same team in the US (salaries, benefits, recruiting fees, equity, management overhead) and most clients land 40–60% lower, with the option to scale down on 30 days notice instead of severance.

For a sense of what sustained pod ownership actually looks like in practice, see our GreenPal case study — a two-sided marketplace built and grown by one team over multiple years, not handed off after launch.