Case study: a 5-engineer dedicated React team that cut time-to-feature from 3 weeks to 5 days for a Series A German SaaS startup.
Key Results
StepTo provided a 5-engineer dedicated React team — 1 tech lead and 4 senior/mid-level engineers — for a Munich-based Series A B2B SaaS startup over 18 months. The team shipped 14 features in their first quarter, up from 3 in the prior quarter. Time-to-feature dropped from 3 weeks to 5 days. Zero engineers left during the engagement (0% attrition). All engineers integrated into the client's existing Slack, Jira, and standup cadence within two weeks. Fully-loaded cost ran approximately 40% below equivalent German engineering hiring, enabling the client to hit Series B product velocity targets without the 4–6 month local hiring timelines typical in Germany.
A Series A B2B SaaS startup in Munich had raised €8M and needed to double their product surface within 12 months to hit the metrics required for their Series B. Their engineering team of 2 was stretched, and local hiring in Germany was taking 4–6 months per role with fully-loaded costs of €120–160K per engineer.
StepTo provided a dedicated 5-person React team — fully integrated into the client's processes — within 3 weeks of first contact. 18 months later, the team is still together, has shipped over 60 features, and two of the StepTo engineers have become informal tech leads on major product areas.
The client's product was a workflow automation platform for mid-market operations teams. After their Series A, their roadmap had 40+ features committed to enterprise pilots — but their 2-person engineering team could realistically ship 4–5 per quarter at safe velocity.
Hiring locally in Munich was not viable at the pace needed. The most recent hire had taken 5 months to close and cost €145K all-in for the first year. Freelancers had been tried — the context-switching overhead and quality inconsistency made them net-negative on the sprint velocity.
They needed engineers who would own their work, stay long enough to accumulate context, and operate in CET hours without the management overhead of a distributed freelancer pool.
Architecture decisions, code reviews, sprint planning, primary client contact. 8+ years React experience.
Feature development, performance optimisation, mentoring. 5+ years experience each.
Feature development, component library contributions, test coverage.
Codebase onboarding, meeting the in-house team, establishing working agreements, sprint 0.
First feature delivered. Identified 3 performance bottlenecks in the existing codebase — fixed within sprint.
Full 5-person team operating at consistent velocity. Weekly demos with founder and product team.
Client expanded team from 3 to 5 engineers based on output quality. Added Storybook component library.
Team continues to grow the product. Two StepTo engineers have become informal tech leads on their respective product areas.
“I was sceptical about outsourcing. We'd had bad experiences with freelancers and I didn't want a ‘vendor relationship’ — I wanted engineers who cared. The StepTo team genuinely cares. They push back on bad ideas, they flag risks before they become problems, and two of them have been with us longer than most of our in-house hires.”
The in-house team was 2 engineers based in Berlin. From day one, the StepTo team joined their Slack, attended daily standups (9:00 CET — overlapping perfectly), used their Jira board, and reviewed each other's PRs. Within two weeks, there was no operational distinction between "StepTo engineers" and "in-house engineers" — just one team.
The client provided a technical brief: senior React engineers with TypeScript and GraphQL experience, ideally with B2B SaaS product backgrounds. StepTo presented 8 candidates within 5 days. The client interviewed and selected 3 within one week. The remaining 2 were added 3 months later. Every engineer was pre-vetted by StepTo's technical leads before the client saw their profile.
One of the original engineers moved into a different role at StepTo after month 4 — it was a mutual decision. StepTo had a replacement engineer onboarded and productive within two weeks, with no disruption to the sprint. The replacement's senior experience actually accelerated output in the following sprint.
StepTo engineers follow the client's own documentation practices — they commit code with detailed comments, write ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) for significant choices, and maintain Confluence pages for system documentation. Everything lives in the client's own repositories and tools. If the engagement ended tomorrow, the client would have complete ownership and understanding of every line of code.
We can have your first dedicated engineer introduced within 5 days. Full team operational within 3 weeks.
Build your teamContact Us
Ready to start your next project? Let's discuss how we can help bring your vision to life.
We'll get back to you within 24 hours.
Work with accountable, English-fluent professionals who communicate clearly, protect quality, and deliver with a steady operating rhythm. Cost efficiency matters, but performance is why clients stay with us.
