Staff Augmentation for Startups: How Can It Benefit You? 

For startups seeking to scale, human capital is a critical asset. One of the most effective and proven ways to access talent is staff augmentation. If done right, this service can help you accelerate the pace of hiring and create a sustainable engineering team. However, the spectrum of advantages of staff augmentation for startups doesn’t end here. In this post, we’ll address the question of why young companies need to consider remote teams.

7 reasons for startups to consider staff augmentation

Let’s dive deeper into why you should go with startup staffing solutions. We went over 7 key benefits of this approach based on our experience.

Attracting top talent easily

As a startup founder, you’re probably faced with a significant hurdle in pursuing scarce tech talent. One challenge is selling your company to potential candidates. You have to compete with other companies with deeper pockets that have the upper hand in terms of branding. Another problem is attracting top developers. They tend to expect a shared equity, as working with a startup usually requires certain concessions on their part, for instance, a cut in salary. 

Startup staffing solutions give you the benefit of working with top software developers without pushing too hard. As you probably know, staff augmentation companies dominate the IT job market in such skilled tech hubs as Eastern Europe and Latin America. Many local developers are glad to join these firms, as they are reputable local brands and offer exciting job opportunities. One of which could be your startup! For candidates, it means working at an established firm and enjoying all the due perks – from a community of like-minded people and competitive employee bonuses to an opportunity to work with the newest technology. For you, a startup owner, it means no trouble convincing developers (especially senior ones) to work for your fledgling company. 

Unprecedented access to a global talent pool

Hiring from an overfished pool of candidates, with established brands snapping up skilled developers, is something many startups have to grapple with. Thus, expanding your talent sourcing lens is a crucial step in team scaling – and startup talent outsourcing can be the optimum solution. While with in-house staffing you’re tethered to your location, staff augmentation helps you get a foot in the door of a much larger pool of technologists. For instance, Latin America boasts 1 million software developers. Central and Eastern Europe offers an even larger number – a whopping 1.3 million. 

Learn more about our approach to staff augmentation here.

If you want to build a team in any of these regions, we can be your gateway to the tech hub of your choice. Just choose the location, from Poland and Ukraine to Argentina and Brazil, and we’ll launch a team exactly where you want it. We’ll create a legal entity, handle HR and recruitment processes, set up IT equipment, and take care of all office operations – and do it efficiently thanks to the long history of providing staff augmentation for startups.

Scaling up on short notice 

Chances are you’re still on the fence weighing remote teams vs. on site teams for your startup. Getting expertise fast is the major selling point in favor of the first option. Let’s say you’re at the prototype stage. For sure, building a permanent team will be costly, without the guaranteed success. Instead, you can load off your requirements to the vendor and get outsourced talent for startups within a matter of weeks. Thanks to our recruitment power in Eastern Europe and LATAM, we can build a skilled team as fast as 2-6 weeks. 

We believe the key advantage of staff augmentation for startups is speed and flexibility. You can get an MVP done and say goodbye to the team at once. Alternatively, you can keep the team for the next stage – like prototype improvement in case you get positive market feedback. 

Reducing your software development budget

Lower labor cost is one of the obvious benefits of using staff augmentation solutions. By accessing the global workforce, North American and Western European startups can source skilled talent at a lower cost without any quality trade-offs. Moreover, the providers cover office space, administration, IT infrastructure, and related services, which contributes to significant budget savings. Take a look at the expenses that you can sidestep when choosing a remote team for your startup: 

• Office space
• Legally required benefits
• Insurance
• Paid leave
• Retirement and savings
• Supplemental pay (overtime, etc)

A provider of outsourced talent for startups typically covers all of these expenses. The client only pays for an FTE per month plus a service fee. 

Keeping engineers’ retention high

Talent management, and employee retention, in particular, is another aspect of back-office work that startup owners need to handle. Software engineers typically require a professional development plan to stay committed – and it’s the manager’s task to provide one. On the other hand, when you source talent through a staff augmentation company, you can leave this aspect to the vendor. They will take care of your engineers’ career growth. We’re proud to say that our retention rate is 3.5 years, which means, a software engineer sticks to the same project from start to finish. For example, our engineers have been keeping CrossEngage humming for more than 8 years now with minimal employee substitution. 

Building a stable team scaling process

Staff augmentation is a boon for startups looking to build up for gradual team scaling. Unfortunately, talent sourcing is a demanding and overwhelming process, especially for young companies. From pitching your company to potential candidates and assessing their tech competence to measuring their motivation and culture fit – the recruitment process can be intense. With staff augmentation, your startup can get a pipeline of strong candidates, which you can add to your team on an as-needed basis. 

That’s not to say that this model excludes you from the process of building your team. The providers take your vision, desired attributes for candidates, and tech stack to set up a multi-step team formation process that includes English tests, tech skills, culture fit, and soft skills screening. On your side, you have the right to approve or veto provided candidates. 

That way, vendors of staff augmentation for startups let you dedicate more time and resources to core business activities while scaling your team efficiently.

Skipping the overhead hassle

As a startup, your major need is the talent. What you don’t want for sure is to deal with the legal and administrative headaches of establishing a team. The good news is that providers of staff augmentation for startups take care of establishing a workspace for your team and cover all legal aspects as well as accounting, payroll, and more. If you dive into it alone, you risk walking the minefield of local regulations, taxes, and compliance issues. 

Learn more about how our staff augmentation model works on a special page dedicated to this service.

Moreover, this approach lowers the risks in case you have to let the team go. Providers of outsourced talent for startups let you part ways with team members simply by terminating the contract, which frees you from potential legal complications associated with layoffs. With the right kind of provider, like nCube, you can simply focus on managing your team.

Let nCube build a skilled remote team for your startup

As a company that creates development teams for startups, we know for sure that sourcing tech talent in the USA, the UK, and Western Europe is challenging. At nCube, our mission is to help startups grow by accessing skilled developers from Eastern Europe and Latin America. Within our strategic approach to hiring developers for startups, we help tech leaders build remote units that will be a seamless extension of their core teams. Our key advantages are:

We provide access to global talent hubs

We’re the gateway to the most skilled technology talent hubs worldwide, including:

• Central & Eastern Europe: Poland, Ukraine, Romania, the Baltics
• Latin America: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia

We rigorously screen all candidates before they meet you

Each candidate we provide has undergone our multi-step validation process that includes tech competence assessment, English tests, and culture fit. We specifically focus on candidates with domain knowledge, OOP/OOD understanding, formal STEM education, problem-solving mindset, and adequate English proficiency. The decision to approve or veto our provided candidates is always yours.

We focus on high employee retention

Work with a stable team for as long as you need it – we’ll take care of keeping your team members around. We are a reputable employer brand and offer competitive perks, constant HR support, training, development opportunities, and regular team-building events – the type of company developers are happy to work with.

We share your sense of urgency

We understand the urgency of adding engineers to your team. Our efficient recruitment process ensures a swift turnaround:

• Interview the first candidates within a week after our initial call;
• Jumpstart your team on average within 2-4 weeks;
• Access over 125,000 engineers in our network.

We’re pro a “dedicated team” approach

Your added engineers will work exclusively for your startup. They will operate under your direct management, seamlessly integrated into your operations as if they were in-house staff. They will participate in scrum calls, all-hands meetings, and adhere to your policies and practices.

While we understand that staff augmentation isn’t ideal for all startups out there, it’s still worth consideration. Contact us and let’s see if it suits your business.