What is a dedicated development team?
A dedicated development team is a group of developers and tech profiles assigned full time to a single client, for a meaningful duration (typically six to thirty-six months). Unlike a one-off T&M contract, a dedicated team is stable — the same people, project after project — and built to fit your stack, methods and culture.
The buyer keeps roadmap control: what gets prioritized, in which order, at what pace. The vendor — Athenix — operates the team: initial hiring, onboarding, continuous training, payroll administration, replacement if anyone becomes unavailable.
It is the model that most faithfully replicates an in-house team, with three structural differences: no employment contracts to handle, no recruitment plan to orchestrate, no HR overhead to bear internally.
Athenix dedicated squad composition
Composition is tailored to your real need. The configurations we operate most often:
| Configuration | Composition | Indicative velocity | Monthly cost (excl. VAT) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum squad | 1 tech lead + 2 developers | 1 major feature / sprint | €11,000 – €14,000 |
| Standard squad | 1 tech lead + 3 developers (front + back) + QA | 2 features / sprint, run + build | €16,000 – €21,000 |
| Full product squad | 1 PO + 1 tech lead + 4 dev + 1 designer + 1 QA | End-to-end discovery → delivery | €26,000 – €34,000 |
All our profiles are mobilized full time — no client splitting, no parallel mission. Developers work exclusively on your product, which guarantees focus and the gradual accumulation of business context over months.
Typical stacks and profiles
Our dedicated squads are built around the stacks we ship daily. The most requested configurations:
- React / Next.js / TypeScript squad: for modern web apps and SaaS platforms
- React Native + Node.js squad: for cross-platform mobile products with their own back end
- Full-stack TypeScript squad: Next.js front + Node back + PostgreSQL, ideal for MVPs and SaaS products
- AI / LLM squad: Anthropic / OpenAI integrations, RAG, business agents, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector)
- Data / back-end squad: Python / FastAPI, data pipelines, ML inference, observability
If your stack does not appear above, we assess feasibility: most of our profiles master several stacks and we train internally on the topics that justify it.
Dedicated team vs T&M: how to choose?
Dedicated teams differ from classic T&M on several structural dimensions.
| Criterion | T&M | Dedicated team |
|---|---|---|
| Commitment | Time spent (daily rate) | Monthly composition fee |
| Team stability | Variable | High (same people 6-36 months) |
| Business context | Rebuilt every mission | Compounded over time |
| Velocity | To be reached, sometimes reset | Stable after 8-12 weeks |
| Best for | Load spike, short mission | Recurring roadmap, growing product |
The deciding factor is the expected duration of your need. Below four months, T&M is simpler: no setup cost, fast ramp-up. Beyond that, the dedicated team becomes mechanically more efficient — every additional month amortizes the initial investment in cultural and technical onboarding.
How we assemble your team
Building a dedicated squad follows four steps.
1. Needs framing (1 to 2 weeks)
We document your stack, methodology (Scrum / Kanban / shape-up), rituals, environments and code standards. We identify the key skills to hire for, profiles to avoid and seniority constraints — a junior may suit a stabilized stack, never an architecture still to be designed.
2. Hiring and selection (3 to 6 weeks)
Athenix screens candidates — each profile passes through a standardized technical test, a tech interview with one of our seniors and a soft-skills interview. We submit a short list of two to three candidates per role. You validate every profile before they enter the squad. No imposed picks.
3. Onboarding (2 to 4 weeks)
The squad starts with an integration period: getting hands on the codebase, business workshops with your teams, tooling and standards alignment. The first sprint already produces deliverables — full ramp-up to target velocity is reached within 8 to 12 weeks depending on domain complexity.
4. Continuous steering
Tech lead embedded in the squad, daily stand-up, weekly demo, sprint retrospective, monthly steering with the sponsor. Open velocity dashboard. If a developer doesn't fit, replacement happens within thirty days.
Our contractual guarantees
A dedicated team commits the buyer over time. We balance that commitment with explicit guarantees:
- Continuity: replacement within thirty days if a squad member leaves or proves unfit, no extra fees
- Confidentiality: standard NDA, Git access restricted to authorized people, isolated development environments
- Intellectual property: full code transfer to you, from the first commit
- GDPR compliance: Data Processing Agreement aligned with French CNIL standards, EU hosting available if your data requires it
- Controlled exit: organized handover to an internal team or another vendor, with a 4 to 8-week overlap period included
When to pick a dedicated team over another model
A dedicated team is the right call in five typical situations:
- You have a growing product with a roadmap running beyond six months and that will only expand.
- Your internal team is complete but saturated, and you want to double your delivery capacity without launching a 12-month hiring plan.
- You operate a rare stack (LLM integration, applied AI, niche back-end stacks) for which the local hiring market is frozen.
- You ship a confidential or strategic product, and the multi-client T&M of a freelancer doesn't offer the required isolation.
- You want a team that compounds: that learns your business, your tech debt, your historical decisions — and avoids re-explaining everything mission after mission.
If none of these five situations describes your context, another model is likely a better fit. Let's discuss: we will be honest about relevance.
Frequently asked questions about dedicated teams
- How long to set up a 4-person dedicated squad?
- Four to six weeks on average between contract signature and the first productive sprint. Three weeks of hiring / selection, two weeks of initial onboarding. For mainstream stacks (React, Node, PostgreSQL), we go below three weeks by mobilizing profiles already identified in our talent pool.
- What happens if a developer doesn't fit after onboarding?
- Replacement within thirty days, no extra fee, based on a new selection process you validate. During the overlap, the outgoing developer remains available for context handover. This guarantee is written into the master contract.
- Can we scale the squad up or down during the mission?
- Yes. Adjustments are foreseen in the contract with one month of notice for downsizing and six to eight weeks for upsizing (the hiring lead time). These adjustments carry no penalty as long as they stay within ±50% of the initial headcount.
- Can the team use our internal tools (Git, Jira, Slack)?
- Always — it's the standard mode of operation. Our squads plug into your tooling. For environments with specific security stakes (private cloud, VPN, strict access management), we set up access at mission start and provide periodic access-review attestations.
- How does day-to-day management work? Who steers the developers?
- The squad's tech lead is our main contact — they steer technical quality, run the Agile rituals and bridge with your product owner or CTO. You retain control over priorities and product trade-offs. We handle HR management (1-on-1s, career planning, continuous training).
- Is the cost of a dedicated squad negotiable?
- The monthly cost is anchored on composition (seniority, profile mix, engagement length). The negotiation levers are engagement length (a 12-month commitment is more favorable than a 6-month one) and profile mix (1 senior + 2 mid-level costs less than a fully senior squad for comparable execution velocity).