Case Study (Anonymised)
Accelerating UK IT Delivery with Near‑Shore Contractors in Bulgaria
Client: UK‑headquartered IT services company with offices in England, Bulgaria, Asia, and North America
Engagement Type: On‑demand contractor augmentation (near‑shore, Bulgaria)
Period: Multi‑project engagement (rolling starts)
Partner: GigsRemote
Client Context & Challenge
- Context: Fast‑growing UK IT services provider delivering software for multiple end clients.
- Operating footprint: UK HQ with established presence in England, Bulgaria, Asia, and North America
- Challenge: Meet tight timelines and high quality standards across several projects while traditional permanent hiring was too slow and resource‑intensive.
- Key constraint: The client wanted to “taste” the Bulgarian market as well as the Eastern European in general (capability, collaboration, reliability) before committing to a full delivery centre.
Engagement Overview (What We Did)
- On‑Demand Matching: GigsRemote sourced and pre‑vetted contractors aligned to each project’s stack and seniority.
- Rapid Starts: Successful candidates were onboarded in 3–14 days (role‑dependent), including environment access and project induction.
- Flexible Resourcing: The client scaled teams up and down as milestones shifted, ensuring efficient burn without idle capacity.
- Quality Focus: Quality engineering reinforced test coverage and release confidence; full‑stack engineers accelerated feature throughput.
- Market Validation: Running real delivery from Bulgaria allowed the client to assess collaboration, stability, and talent depth ahead of any entity decision.
Team Composition & Durations
- Quality engineers engaged long-term 2+ years
- Quality engineers engaged for short-term (3 month) projects
- Lead and Full‑Stack Developers engaged long-term 2+ years
- Full‑Stack Developers engaged for short-to-mid term — 3–6 months
Engagements ran across multiple projects; cohorts overlapped to meet specific milestones and handovers.
Results
- On‑Time Project Delivery: Program increments shipped to the client’s end customers as scheduled.
- Fast Onboarding: 3 days to 2 weeks from selection to productive start, depending on role/access.
- Quality Maintained: quality engineering involvement improved test discipline and supported reliable releases.
- Flexible Cost Control: Contractor model allowed budget to track real demand, avoiding long hiring cycles and idle bench.
- Near‑Shore Validation: Bulgaria proven as a credible delivery base, supporting future scaling decisions.