Kateryna BoikoBusinesses are adapting to market demands and looking for ways to reduce software creation costs. They want to spend less on salaries, benefits, and office facilities for engineers.
IT staff augmentation is one of the opportunities that allows you to onboard developers with specific skills quickly and at reasonable costs.
As an IT staff augmentation company with 14+ years of experience, Mobilunity shares the benefits and explains how to address the challenges of this cooperation model.
We’ll also explore software developers’ salaries in popular outstaffing locations and check best practices for integrating remote experts.
So what is staff augmentation in IT? Let’s check its definition and learn how it differs from similar concepts.
What Is IT Staff Augmentation?
IT staff augmentation assumes a company cooperates with external professionals. They typically are located in offshore, distant regions or nearshore, nearby countries.
Dedicated development team (DDT) providers learn a client’s project demands and required roles, find and vet candidates, and contract the selected developers.
With this model, businesses augment their tech staff with remote professionals short or long-term. Additionally, they get administrative, legal, and accounting support for the contracted programmers.
Extended teams can cover tasks such as front-end and back-end development, mobile app development, DevOps and cloud computing, cybersecurity and IT support, and more. However, IT staff augmentation isn’t the only way to engage external tech resources, so let’s explore other options.
Other Ways of Working With Remote Developers
Sometimes, IT staff augmentation is confused with the IT outsourcing model, hiring freelancers, or opting for Managed Services. All these formats assume contracting external engineers but have significant differences.
IT outsourcing means delegating an entire project to a third party, such as a software engineering company. The outsourcing vendor engages programmers to deliver turnkey solutions, such as building a mobile app, implementing ERP, modernizing a legacy system, and more. So you can outsource projects and outstaff experts.
The Managed Services model falls between IT staff augmentation and outsourcing. It’s an analogy for BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) but for an IT function. You contract tech experts from an MSP (Managed Services Provider) to handle specific processes, such as cloud management, IT support, or cybersecurity services.
You can augment your internal team by vetting and contracting freelance coders directly or through platforms like Upwork or Toptal to perform diverse tech tasks. Even though they’re technically responsible for the results, you’re the one managing the risks.
Here’s a brief comparison of the differences between staff augmentation vs other types of collaboration with remote programmers.
Parameters | IT Staff Augmentation | IT Outsourcing | Managed Services | Freelancers |
Result | Hired engineers | Ready-to-use solutions | Handled IT functions | Hired engineers |
Who selects and controls developers | Client | IT outsourcing company | MSP | Client |
Nature of services | Ongoing or project-based | Project-based | Ongoing | Project-based or ongoing |
Team management | Client | IT outsourcing company | MSP | Client |
Pricing | Fixed monthly or hourly fee per specialist | Fixed project cost or time and materials | Fixed cost or SLA-based (defined KPIs) | Fixed, hourly, monthly, or milestone-based payment |
The Price Includes | -recruiting-developer fees-back-office support-IT infrastructure-compliance and security-retention | -developer fees-project management-infrastructure and tools-administrative and legal compliance | -service management and SLAs-IT infrastructure and maintenance-compliance and security | -developer fees-platform fees |
Best for | Long and short-term software engineering and covering diverse tech expertise like full-stack development, building mobile apps, etc. | One-time assignments like machine learning and AI projects, app building, MVP creation, ERP implementation, etc | Delegating IT functions, like IT support, cybersecurity services, managing cloud infrastructure, etc. | One-off tasks or short-term projects |
Types of IT Staff Augmentation Services
Clients come to staffing providers with a project scope and descriptions of roles they need. At this point, the parties agree on one of the following types of staffing services — the cooperation format:
Dedicated Development Teams
Under this model, a DDT provider assembles an augmented team of experts dedicated to one client. These engineers work as full-time employees in your in-house team and integrate into the company’s workflow, processes, and culture.
You may ask to build a dev team from scratch or augment the existing one. Depending on the team setup, the staff augmentation process can take 3-6 weeks on average.
Vendors find and vet tech experts, so businesses interview only highly relevant, shortlisted candidates.
Once you select the developers for hire, the DDT partner contracts and onboards them. Throughout the cooperation, reliable vendors handle not only the administrative support but also the coders’ retention.
The dedicated teams model assumes you pay for each developer or the entire team based on the Effective Daily Rate approach. You reimburse days worked off and don’t have to cover vacations, sick leaves, or days off.
On-Demand Experts
This model is also called flexible or Flex, as it offers an hourly engagement. You pay only for the hours worked off and can adjust the workload to their current specific needs.
DDT partners can often find part-time experts faster, as they have a pool of available specialists for popular roles such as QA specialists, fractional CTOs, and DevOps engineers.
You’ll have the Time and Materials billing model here, which assumes hourly payments. Back-office support and retention of your engineers also remain on the partner’s end.
Below are the key distinctions between the two different types of staff augmentation in IT.
Cooperation Format | Dedicated Development Teams | On-Demand Flex Experts |
Availability of Tech Experts | Full-time | On-demand |
Billing Model | Effective Daily Rate (regular payments per specialist/team) | Time & Materials (T&M) Model (hourly payments) |
Best for | Ongoing, long-term cooperation | One-off projects, high-load periods, team supervision, filling skill gaps |
When Turn to the Technical Staff Augmentation
Should you consider staff augmentation to optimize the budget or scale quickly? These are the key reasons why companies turn to this hiring model.
- Reducing Hiring Costs
Contracting offshore/onshore tech experts through providers optimizes the expenses for recruiting, onboarding, retaining, and maintaining your programmers. Whether getting experts on a permanent or temporary basis, businesses can save up to 50% on costs by hiring from regions with lower living costs yet strong STEM skills.
- Establishing a Strategic Cooperation
Businesses that seek long-term, cost-effective collaboration with top-tier programmers can build strategic partnerships with IT staff augmentation agencies. Providers will cover the legal, accounting, compliance, and administrative aspects of your cooperation while you focus on your project’s success.
- Leveraging Project-Based Hiring
Whether you need to migrate your digital assets to a cloud, integrate with ERP or CRM, or develop an AI-powered solution, team extension can be your go-to option. You can quickly onboard skilled professionals at lower costs and get 100% control over their workload during the project.
- Covering Tech Talent Gap and Getting Advisory
When you lack internal expertise in AI, DevOps, cybersecurity, and other tech domains, staff augmentation will help you get on-demand access to high-quality specialists. They’ll help you approach complex tasks and stay competitive without long-term commitments.
- Handling Peak Seasonal Workloads
With the flexibility of part-time augmented staff, organizations can quickly onboard additional team members for nearly immediate support. Scaling up or down remains cost-optimized as companies leverage the pay-as-you-go approach during and after peak seasons.
IT Staff Augmentation Trends 2025
The global IT market size is expected to grow from $8,920 billion in 2024 to $9,611 billion in 2025 and reach $13,177 billion in 2029 (The Business Research Company).
Meanwhile, tech staff augmentation is adapting to shifting business needs for the IT workforce and emerging technologies.
In this section, we’ll explore the top 5 trends in IT resource staffing.
- AI-Powered Hiring Platform
Talent intelligence platforms allow companies and DDT providers to find, assess, and shortlist requirements-matching candidates. Instruments like LinkedIn Talent Insights, HireVue, HackerRank, and more analyze CVs, portfolios, and tech tests to ensure faster spotting of relevant candidates. The hiring part remains at the company’s end.
- Hybrid Teams With Remote-First Work Culture
While businesses prioritize cost-efficiency, access to international talent, flexibility, and productivity, hybrid dev teams are seeing growing adoption. Companies leverage cloud collaboration tools and asynchronous workflows to promote virtual-centric environments and a healthier work-life balance, so distributed dev teams become their strategic advantage.
- Providers Focus on Cybersecurity and Compliance
As more companies turn to staff augmentation and the number of cyber attacks grows, tech talent providers apply structured methodologies to mitigate security risks. They include strict access controls, encrypted communication, compliance audits, NDAs, cybersecurity training, and more. This focus enhances regulatory adherence, trust, and business continuity.
- Companies Select Nearshoring Over Offshoring
Though offshore destinations can offer more attractive rates for software development experts, organizations are shifting toward nearshoring. They opt for better cultural compatibility and time zone synchronization while balancing affordability with efficiency. Fewer cultural barriers contribute to better team integration and higher productivity.
- Businesses Prefer Long-Term Cooperation
Organizations tend to strengthen collaboration stability, keep sustained expertise, and cut training costs. Shifting to long-term contracts allows them to retain qualified programmers and enhance teams’ collaboration and integration. So, building strategic partnerships becomes a future-proof solution that improves flexibility and cost control.
Benefits of Software Development Staff Augmentation
We’ve mentioned several pros of tech staff augmentation by now, so let’s summarize this model’s key advantages.
- Cost-efficiency. Businesses can improve their IT budget optimization by hiring programmers at reasonable rates and saving on overheads.
- Access to global IT talent. Without geographical limitations, companies can acquire rare-skilled, niche experts without spending a fortune.
- Fast recruitment. The time-to-hire of several weeks is critical for faster project execution and for reducing recruitment fees.
- Team scalability. Swift growing or reducing your existing team to meet project needs ensures operational flexibility and cost-efficiency.
- End-to-end administrative support. As providers handle legal, accounting, and admin tasks and IT infrastructure, businesses can stay focused on core activities.
- Long-term cooperation. You can leverage the cost-efficiency and innovation of augmented tech teams not only for one-off specific projects but also for long-term engagements.
IT Staff Augmentation Model: Potential Challenges and Solutions
No solution comes with benefits alone, and below, we’ll explore possible concerns of IT staff augmentation and ways to address them.
- Data privacy and compliance. Businesses want to protect sensitive information and comply with regulations when sharing data with third parties. So, staffing providers use strict security protocols, role-based permissions, compliance frameworks, NDAs, and regular audits to ensure legal adherence.
- Control over your offshore team. Companies can worry about insufficient control of their remote engineers. However, DDT partners ensure setting up transparent communication channels and provide task visibility, time tracking, and performance monitoring. Additionally, they help effectively address cultural and time zone differences.
- Integration of remote developers. Without proper integration, augmented teams can face communication gaps and operational slowdowns. Reliable IT augmentation agents implement a structured approach to integrating off-site programmers. It includes team engagement efforts, cultural alignment, and other practices. We discuss our top 3 ones in the next section.
Benefits and Challenges of IT Staff Augmentation Models
| Benefits Cost efficiency Access to the global talent poolRecruitment within 2-6 weeksFast team scaling up or downBack-office support for your teamStrategic collaboration | Potential ChallengesControl over your remote developersData privacy and compliance Off-site team integration |
Best Practices for Integrating Your Distributed Teams
As a seasoned provider of dedicated tech teams and on-demand engineers, Mobilunity follows these principles to bring virtual teams together and help them stay productive.
- Structured Onboarding
Your collaboration with remote engineers starts with their onboarding, so this process must be well-planned. From access to necessary tools and systems to clear instructions and structured guidelines, your engineers’ adaptation should be smooth yet effective. This way, your team will integrate into your company’s structure and workflows.
- Effective Communication
Cloud-based collaboration takes top priority when it comes to efficient and impactful interaction between remote and on-site specialists. Scrum teams using Agile development usually rely on PM tools like Jira, Azure DevOps, and Trello.
Dev teams use Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meets, and other tools for collaboration and communication. It’s also vital to document key updates and run regular check-ins and standups.
- Continuous Retention
Mobilunity believes ongoing retention efforts are essential to keeping your tech professionals engaged and motivated. So, our resource managers regularly meet with engineers one-on-one to anticipate potential issues and ensure everyone’s expectations are met.
Also, top-tier tech staff augmentation providers build a supportive and friendly remote culture so teammates can sometimes have fun in a relaxed, non-formal atmosphere. It helps off-site skilled tech professionals feel valued, connected, and in sync with the company’s vision.
Salaries of Software Developers Worldwide
Let’s explore the remunerations of tech experts in popular nearshoring and offshoring destinations. We’ll check the annual salaries of engineers in the United States, European Union, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and India (Glassdoor).
These numbers can help you choose the right location for your remote programmers and understand the hiring costs.
Country | Average Annual Salary of a Software Developer |
United States | $134,000 |
Germany | $67,000 |
Netherlands | $50,00 |
France | $49,000 |
Ukraine | $35,000 |
Poland | $36,000 |
Romania | $25,000 |
Brazil | $17,000 |
Argentina | $18,000 |
Mexico | $21,000 |
India | $9,000 |
The table shows that US or EU-based companies can hire engineers in India and Latin America with a cost reduction of over 70%.
While demanding slightly higher costs, engineers from Eastern Europe can become a better alternative in terms of a more substantial tech background and cultural fit.
Final Words
Mobilunity can confirm that 2025 IT staff augmentation trends like shifting to hiring nearshore and long-term while prioritizing hybrid tech teams are gaining traction, as the company has succeeded in IT staff augmentation for 14+ years. This provider hires top-tier dedicated and on-demand coders worldwide and offers tech recruiting, technical interviews, and other related services.
So it witnesses firsthand how IT staff augmentation allows many businesses to get tech experts with specialized skills at reasonable costs, ensuring flexibility and innovation. Meanwhile, following best practices for aligning distributed teams helps organizations keep their dev teams productive, scale efficiently, and stay competitive.
Raksha
