The client context
A long-standing technology client had built their entire offshore engineering capability in a single country. For years, the model served them well — the talent was strong, communication was smooth, and the structure supported their growth. But over time, the vendor managing that team became increasingly unreliable. Retention dropped, scheduling became chaotic, and quality suffered as new hires cycled in and out. The client found themselves spending more time addressing operational issues than benefitting from the work.
At the same time, leadership had broader concerns. Relying on a single region no longer felt sustainable. They wanted geographic diversity, stronger operational control, and a long-term plan that would reduce concentration risk while improving overall performance.
The client reached out to explore whether there was a better way to build a global team — one that was stable, distributed, and aligned with their future plans.
The challenge
As the client evaluated their offshore approach, two issues emerged clearly. First, the vendor they relied on simply wasn’t delivering: turnover was high, schedules were inconsistent, and quality varied from week to week. Second, they realized their entire engineering team sat in one country, making them vulnerable to any disruption in that region.
They didn’t want to overhaul everything at once or introduce unnecessary risk. What they needed was a low-commitment, low-risk way to test a new region and see whether a multi-country model could give them the resilience and quality they were missing. The goal wasn’t just to add more people — it was to build a more reliable, future-ready global talent strategy.
The solution
After several discussions, we recommended a different approach: instead of shifting all work to another single country, we proposed building a distributed team model across several of our global locations. This would allow them to diversify gradually, reduce dependency on one region, and tap into deeper talent pools — without committing to a large upfront transition.
We began in Southeastern Europe, where we had strong engineering talent with excellent communication skills. The client was preparing for a major migration initiative, so we focused the first hires on roles essential to that work: cloud engineers, application support analysts, DevOps specialists, QA automation engineers, and systems analysts who could support both legacy systems and the future architecture.
The early success of that team gave the client confidence to expand. From there, we introduced consultants from our hubs in Brazil for front-end and mobile development, Canada for architecture and senior leadership, and Pakistan for infrastructure, L2/L3 support, data engineering, and extended-hours coverage.
Throughout the process, we kept the approach low-risk. We never asked for a large commitment. We started with one hire at a time — evaluate, adjust, scale. Each successful placement reinforced trust, and the distributed model grew naturally based on performance and evolving needs.
Today, the client operates a fully distributed engineering and operations function across multiple regions, supported end-to-end by our global teams.
The results
What began as a small pilot has grown into a high-performing, multi-country team of over 35+ consultants working across several of our global locations. The client now has a resilient, scalable talent model that no longer depends on a single region or a single vendor. Quality improved, turnover dropped, and the diversity of skills across regions strengthened their entire engineering function.
Distributed teams now support their migration work, application support, infrastructure, DevOps, QA, data engineering, and front-end development. Time-zone coverage is smoother, communication is clearer, and the client feels supported by both our on-the-ground teams and our leadership in North America.
Most importantly, the client now has the confidence that their talent strategy can withstand change. They’ve moved from a fragile, single-region dependency to a balanced, strategic global model that gives them more control, more flexibility, and a stronger foundation for the future.
