A US SaaS Startup Built a 12-Person India Engineering Team in 8 Weeks

The Brief: Scale Without Burning Runway

The client's roadmap required five additional senior engineers, three mid-level engineers, two QA engineers, a DevOps engineer, and a product-facing engineering manager — twelve people in total. Their US team was hiring for two senior roles that had been open for four months without a hire. The time and cost of US-market engineering recruitment at that scale, on top of the salary cost, was incompatible with their runway.

They had heard India was the answer but had no direct experience and significant scepticism based on stories from other founders about offshore quality. Our job was to source the team, but more importantly, to give them confidence that the people joining their product team were genuinely good — not just available.

Sourcing and Vetting: What Actually Takes Time

Eight weeks sounds fast for twelve senior hires. It is — but only if the sourcing and vetting process is already operational. We did not start from scratch: we maintain an active network of vetted engineers in Ahmedabad who have been assessed through our technical screening process.

The first two weeks were spent shortlisting profiles that matched the client's stack (React, Node.js, PostgreSQL, AWS, Kubernetes) and culture requirements. Each shortlisted candidate went through three stages: a technical assessment matched to their stated experience level, a live coding session with one of our senior engineers, and a direct interview with the client's VP of Engineering. We presented twelve candidates for twelve roles.

Eleven were hired on first interview. One was replaced from our pipeline after the client felt the communication style was not the right fit — we had a replacement interviewed and offered within four days.

Onboarding: The Part That Actually Determines Whether It Works

Hiring twelve engineers in India and expecting them to contribute immediately to a complex US product is not realistic without structured onboarding. We ran a two-week onboarding programme in Ahmedabad before the team began working on the client's codebase. This covered the client's engineering standards and practices, their development toolchain, their deployment process, and — importantly — their communication expectations.

We ran daily standups, introduced the India team to their New York counterparts over video calls, and assigned each India engineer a New York-side buddy for the first month. The engineering manager we hired on the India side played a critical bridging role: they had experience working with US product companies and could translate context in both directions.

Six Months Later

At week nine — one week after onboarding completed — the India team shipped their first feature to production. At the six-month mark, the India team accounted for sixty percent of the engineering output measured by story points completed and code merged. Three India engineers had taken ownership of significant product areas.

The engineering manager had been promoted to a broader role covering both the India team and coordination with the New York team's technical roadmap. Attrition in the first six months was zero — all twelve engineers were still with the company. The client's VP of Engineering told us it was the best hiring decision they had made since founding the company.

We hear this regularly from clients who transition from scepticism about offshore quality to genuine conviction — the quality is there, if you find it correctly.