Why Team as a Service (TaaS) is a Smart Choice for Scaling Your Development Team

Looking to scale fast with limited hiring resources? Team as a Service (TaaS) helps you launch dedicated teams in 2-6 weeks, with full control and no HR overhead.

Team as a service has become a popular choice to add skilled tech talent from abroad when creating business-essential products. The benefits of this practice are numerous, such as:

• Wider access to skilled software engineers than locally;
• Accelerated project development thanks to faster team launch;
• Lower costs in terms of talent and operations
• Long-term retention
• …and more.

Let’s explore how TaaS works, when to use it, how it compares to other outsourcing models, and what it costs to build an external team in different corners of the world.

What is Team as a Service (TaaS)?

Team as a Service (TaaS) is a model where a company hires an external team (through a professional vendor like nCube) to delegate software development while retaining full control over delivery and workflows.

TaaS model: A breakdown of key components

IT team as a service includes the following aspects:

Team composition: The vendor initiates the staffing process and selects team members based on your project specifications, including tech stack, seniority requirements, and project scope.

Team engagement: Team as a service is a full-time model, with all team members fully dedicated to the client’s project while working from the vendor’s office in a nearshore/offshore zone.

Workflow integration: All team members will be integrated into your company operations, reporting directly to you and supporting your software development project as if they were your in-house staff.

How does team as a service work?

Team as a service goes beyond filling gaps in your project. It’s about integrating a skilled team into your company’s workflows, culture, and long-term goals.

The goal of TaaS providers like nCube is to find synergy between your goals, priorities, and the talent that can drive your project to success. Here’s how the process typically works:

1. Team selection and onboarding:
Let the vendor know what roles, skills, and seniority levels you require. A TaaS provider launches a custom-tailored recruitment process, interviews candidates to check their tech competence and culture fit, and provides you with the shortlist. You interview and approve each team member and make hiring decisions. Once the appropriate team is selected, onboard team members and integrate them into your workflows.

2. Collaboration and communication tools:
Tightly integrated into your existing workflows, TaaS teams use your preferred tools like Slack, Jira, GitHub, Discord, Zoom, or others. Daily standups, sprint planning, retrospectives, and roadmap discussions with your external team occur just like with your in-house team.

3. Sprint planning and delivery:
TaaS as a Service integrates a contracted team directly into your Agile environment, where work is broken into sprints or milestones for uninterrupted delivery.

4. Transparency and reporting:
A Team as a Service model keeps you in the loop with regular updates via dashboards, sprint reviews, and retrospectives. You maintain full, direct control over the team’s performance and the project. Each team member reports to you (or someone from your internal team) directly as a tech leader.

TaaS vs. other models

7 main benefits of Team as a Service

#1 Faster time-to-market

Traditional hiring takes months. When you hire a team as a service, you sidestep endless search and dive straight into development. The vendor provides ready-to-start software engineers, so you can accelerate the roadmap thanks to reduced staffing and onboarding time. So, if speed is critical for your project, this model gives you a head start.

[Read how we helped SpeechLive cut time-to-hire and onboarding time by 50%]

#2 Scalability and flexibility

Maintaining a permanent software development unit isn’t always feasible, especially when your budgets are limited. Team-as-a-service solutions make it easy to adjust your team size according to your current needs. Whether you need to hire a large team fast after a funding round or downsize after a product launch, this model gives you flexibility.

[Learn how we helped Life360 scale a 50+ person team within 12 months]

#3 Access to global, specialized talent

A limited pool of tech talent is a common reason why companies seek TaaS providers. 42% of companies cited talent as their main driver, even more important than cost savings (34%). When you need senior engineers or niche expertise, companies like nCube give you access to a vast network of IT talent.

Instead of settling for whoever’s available locally or getting stuck in long hiring cycles, with a global reach, you’ll get talent matched to your exact needs, including niche skills like AI/ML, cloud architecture, or embedded systems.

[Learn how we helped InPost augment a logistics and robotics team]

#4 Up to 70% lower operational and hiring costs

When you hire Team as a Service, you can reduce your budget by 50%-70% compared to hiring in the US/EU markets. With this model, you skip expenses like recruitment fees, IT infrastructure, and supporting departments like HR and finance.

For instance, a vendor like nCube assembles your team in a cost-effective location and handles everything on the ground, from office space and equipment to administrative and HR support.

#5 Focus on core business goals

Managing a contracted team can be stressful. It often means juggling staffing, retention, and logistics, on top of your responsibility for the product development.

One of the biggest benefits of Team as a Service is that it frees you to focus on what matters. Instead of managing day-to-day team operations, you can invest your time in product strategy, innovation, and growth. A TaaS company like nCube will take care of the rest.

#6 Long-term knowledge retention

None of the outsourcing models can give you such a deep integration of an external team into your project like Team as a Service. Built for continuity, the same team will work throughout SDLC, learning your product, users, and business context. For you as a tech leader, this means less time lost in repeated ramp-up, onboarding, and knowledge transfer.

[Learn how we helped Heliwood maintain 100% developer retention for 2+ years]

#7 Aligned delivery and accountability

One of the biggest misconceptions about external teams is that they are isolated from your internal operations. Team as a Service is a model that deeply integrates the contracted team into your workflows (with regular check-ins, sprint reviews, performance tracking), so that it shares your priorities, works on your goals, and meets your KPIs – just like your in-house team.

If you’re looking for more than just buying hours from a third-party development team, but seeking accountability for results, services like TaaS is the best approach.

How much does it cost to hire a TaaS team?

When you hire Team as a Service, you’ll define the team composition, which typically consists of software engineers, Quality Assurance experts, UX/UI designers, Project Managers, and other talent. Each role has its own hourly rate.

For instance, at nCube, you’ll pay a flat monthly fee for each team member. Our fee covers their salary and overhead (workspace, IT infrastructure, retention program, insurance, taxes, and more) – no extra charges, even if you need to change team composition. Thus, you’ll get a clear monthly rate with no hidden costs, which makes Team as a Service a predictable service model.

Typical price ranges by region

The rates of remote developers vary depending on the team’s size, seniority, and location. Here’s an average monthly fee per full-time software engineer:

• Eastern Europe: $4,500–$7,500/month
• Latin America: $3,500–$6,500/month
• Asia (India, Vietnam): $2,500–$5,000/month

Cost comparison: TaaS vs. In-House vs. Outsourcing models

Here’s how Team as a Service (TaaS) stacks up against in-house hiring and traditional outsourcing:

	TaaS	In-house staffing	Traditional outsourcing	Cost savings with TaaS
Monthly cost (with overhead)	$4,500–$7,500	$8,000–$12,000	$5,500–$10,000	30–50%
Recruitment costs	Covered by the provider	$5,000–$20,000 per hire	None (Staff from the bench)	100%
Infrastructure costs	Covered by the provider	$500–$1,500/month per employee	Covered by the provider	100%
Employee benefits & taxes	Covered by the provider	20–35% of base salary	Covered by the provider	100%
Total estimated monthly cost (5-person team)	$25,000–$37,500	$45,000–$60,000+	$30,000–$50,000	Up to 40–50%

Bottom line: Compared to in-house staffing and outsourcing, TaaS gives you much better cost efficiency, greater flexibility, and full control over the team.

When to use Team-as-a-Service: 4 scenarios

#1 When you need to scale fast

Over one-third of businesses hire Team as a Service to achieve scalability at speed, especially after securing funding or launching a product aimed at outpacing competitors. It takes months to staff a software development project in the US/EU markets, especially when you need senior talent with rare skills. Thanks to the vendor’s quick access to ready-to-go talent, you can increase your development capacity within just a few weeks.

#2 When you want to reduce hiring and operational overhead

Team as a Service is like your internal team, without overhead. The service provider takes the load off your internal teams by handling recruitment, onboarding, HR, retention services, and IT infrastructure. With this model, you don’t have to invest in office space, payroll systems, or internal HR processes.

So, if you’re a fast-growing company that wants to stay focused on product delivery instead of building out operational capacity, this model is for you.

#3 When you lack in-house expertise

Your in-house team may not include a senior tech expert or a professional with a specific background like AI/ML, Data, or Cloud. Professional Team-as-a-Service providers like nCube excel in talent acquisition with any background that you may struggle to find internally. With global reach, we can fill the gap with the right skills, so you can confidently enter new markets, adopt a new tech stack, or test new ideas without distracting your core team.

#4 When you want long-term, cost-efficient development

In-house staff is often high maintenance, but you still need a reliable team to build your product. Team as a Service gives you a stable, dedicated team that understands your product, minus the overhead of maintaining a permanent team in a high-salary market.

The vendor takes care of employee benefits, office space, and retention, while you get a committed team with long-term product knowledge.

nCube: Your reliable team as a service partner

At nCube, we help you hire a dedicated team and help you integrate it into your operations. With 17+ years of experience, we’ll deliver stable, high-performing tech teams tailored to your goals, processes, and culture.

Access to a broad pool of software engineers: Our Team as a Service model is built upon our network of 125,000 software engineers across Europe and Latin America. This helps us find a perfect match for clients with various preferences in terms of budget, skillset (including niche skills), time zone, and culture fit.

Closing skill gaps of various complexity: We can help you handle pending vacancies your internal team can’t close for months. This concerns such complex roles as Data, AI/ML, Cloud, DevOps and rare combination of skills and backgrounds. Just recently, we helped one of our clients to add a Delphi engineer with an education in Aerospace.

Rigorous candidate screening for the right fit: With us, you’ll reduce your time-to-hire by up to 50%, as you’ll skip straight to meeting candidates prescreened by our internal team in terms of tech competence, soft skills, English skills, and culture fit.

Strong retention focus: We don’t stop at providing you with an appropriate team – we take care of team members’ comfort so that they remain on the project for as long as you need them. With our retention program, employee perks, legal & finance support, we’ve achieved 98% of unforced retention.

2-6 weeks to launch a team: Scale your development capacity without delays. You’ll receive the first CVs of screened candidates within 48 hours after our initial call. For instance, we provided team extension in Eastern Europe, creating a team of 9 software engineers for doTerra and reducing their time-to-hire by 70%.

Full integration and control: Team-as-a-service with nCube is like your in-house team, but without overhead troubles. You retain full control of the project and direct access to team members. The team works under your leadership using your tools and processes. As a TaaS company, we handle all logistics, from team formation and office space to HR support and retention.