Hire a Dedicated Development Team: A Senior Studio for US Companies
To hire a dedicated development team without recruiting or managing a body shop, US companies can retain RAIN Design Studio, a senior design and engineering studio in Casablanca, Morocco, working remotely with US product teams. Retainers start at $7,500 per month for 45 hours, and the Casablanca afternoon covers the US Eastern morning.
Growth retainer, 45 h per month
Scale retainer, 100 h per month
From signature to kick-off
RIVER ERP commits, May–Oct 2026
A dedicated development team, without the body shop
Most offers to hire a dedicated development team sell headcount: a rate card per developer, a few CVs, and a vendor project manager between you and the people writing code. That model works for some companies. It also leaves you doing the management, the quality control and the product thinking.
RAIN Design Studio sells something different: a senior design and engineering squad that takes responsibility for outcomes. We are a small studio in Casablanca, Morocco, shipping work since 2014, working with AI specialists and led by our founder, MrZaKaRiA, after 11 years inside agencies. We have no US office. We work with US companies remotely, in English, with a schedule built around your morning.
What you get on a dedicated team retainer
Every retainer includes the same working model:
- One senior lead who owns scope, quality and communication for your product.
- Design and engineering together: UI/UX, front end, back end and release pipeline in one team, so specs do not get lost between vendors.
- One Slack channel shared with your team for questions and decisions.
- A working increment every Friday, with a Loom walkthrough you can watch in ten minutes or forward to stakeholders.
- Human sign-off on every merge and every design, even where AI tools speed up research, drafting and testing.
Growth and Scale
| Growth | Scale | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $7,500 per month | $15,000 per month |
| Hours | 45 per month | 100 per month |
| Active projects | Two | Unlimited |
| Syncs | Twice weekly | Daily |
| Response time | 24 hours | Same day |
Be clear-eyed about the numbers: 100 hours a month is less than one full-time engineer’s schedule. What you buy is senior hours with design, engineering and project leadership already combined, not a roster of full-time seats. For companies that need five or ten full-time developers, a staff augmentation firm is the right tool, and we will say so on the first call.
Dedicated development team options compared
US companies usually compare four models when they look for dedicated software development teams:
| Criterion | In-house US hire | Staff augmentation vendor | Freelancers | RAIN retainer (Casablanca) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to start | Recruiting, often months | Weeks, depends on the bench | Fast for one person | 3–5 business days |
| Who manages the work | You | You, plus a vendor PM | You | RAIN’s senior lead |
| Design included | Separate hire | Rarely | Separate contract | Yes, brand and UI/UX in the same team |
| Overlap with US Eastern | Full | Varies by location | Varies | Three to four hours of your morning |
| Cost model | Salary, benefits, tooling | Per-developer monthly rate | Hourly | $7,500 or $15,000 per month |
| Scaling | Slow both ways | Add or remove heads | Add or drop people | Switch plans, or add fixed-scope work |
Working across the Atlantic
Casablanca runs on GMT+1 for most of the year, which puts it five hours ahead of New York in summer and six in winter. In practice:
- East Coast teams get a standup at 9:00 Eastern, which is mid-afternoon in Casablanca, and questions answered the same day. By the time your team signs off, the next day’s work has often started.
- Central and Mountain teams get a slightly shorter shared window in their morning.
- West Coast teams are eight or nine hours behind. We hold one early call, usually around 8:00 or 9:00 Pacific, and run the rest of the week through written updates, pull requests and the Friday Loom.
This pattern rewards clear tickets and written decisions. We handle that side: specifications, acceptance notes and pull request descriptions are part of the work, not an extra.
What a dedicated team from RAIN builds
Our stack in 2026–2027 is TypeScript, Vue 3, React, Laravel and PHP, Tailwind CSS, Astro, Tauri for desktop, Capacitor for mobile, MySQL and PostgreSQL, and Figma for design. The work we take on most often:
- SaaS products and client portals: subscriptions, billing, admin dashboards. See SaaS development.
- ERP, CRM and back-office platforms with roles, documents and accounting. See custom ERP development.
- Marketing sites that need to load fast and be readable by search and AI answer engines.
Evidence from our own products
The best test of a dedicated team is a product it maintains week after week:
- RIVER ERP, our Laravel 13 and Vue 3 ERP, received 1,226 commits between May and October 2026 and carries 965 PHPUnit test files and 381 Vitest specs across 23 modules and 154 screens.
- Enterprise CRM, our B2B pipeline product, runs a React 18 front end over GraphQL and NestJS, with PostgreSQL, Redis job queues and ClickHouse analytics.
- RAIN Store, our e-commerce admin platform, spans 58 modules on Vue 3 and Laravel 13.
What the first month looks like
- Week one: access to your repository, tracker and environments; a written review of your codebase or designs; one small change shipped so the pipeline is proven.
- Week two: the first real feature or design flow, broken into tickets with acceptance notes your product owner can check.
- Weeks three and four: a steady rhythm of pull requests during the week and a Friday increment, plus a short note on technical debt or UX risks we found along the way.
By the end of the first month you should know whether the retainer level is right. If 45 hours is too tight, move to Scale; if the roadmap is quieter than planned, stay on Growth or switch to a fixed-scope project.
Contracts, IP and payment for US companies
- Contract. A master agreement plus a short statement of work, or your own MSA if your legal team prefers it.
- IP. The contract assigns code and design ownership to your company, and we work in your accounts from the start.
- Confidentiality. An NDA can be signed before you share any code or product detail.
- Payment. Monthly invoices in USD by bank transfer.
- Data. The US has no single federal privacy law, and state laws such as the CCPA may apply to your users. We follow your data-handling policies and work in your environments rather than copying production data to ours. If you also serve European users, we are used to GDPR-aware delivery.
This is general information, not legal advice; your counsel should review the agreement.
How a dedicated team engagement starts
- Free 15-minute call about your product, team and roadmap.
- Scoping session and a short written proposal: Growth, Scale or fixed scope.
- Contract with ownership, access and confidentiality terms.
- Kick-off within 3–5 business days: access, codebase review, first small task.
- First Friday delivery, so you see the rhythm in week one.
If you want the background on time zones and outsourcing models, read our nearshore vs offshore development guide and our honest take on nearshore software development for US teams.
Talk to us about a dedicated team
If you are ready to hire a dedicated development team that designs, builds and ships without you managing every ticket, book a free 15-minute call. Tell us what you are building and where your team sits. We will recommend Growth, Scale or a fixed-scope project from $10,000, or tell you plainly if a staffing vendor fits better.
Related work
Frequently asked questions
A dedicated development team is an external group of designers and engineers that works on your product continuously, on a monthly arrangement, rather than on a single fixed project. With RAIN, the team is a senior squad led by one project lead, working in your repository and your Slack channel, with a working increment every Friday.
Growth includes 45 hours per month, two active projects, twice-weekly syncs and a 24-hour response time, for $7,500. Scale includes 100 hours per month, unlimited active projects, daily syncs and same-day response, for $15,000. If you need several full-time engineers at 40 hours a week each, a staff augmentation vendor is the better model.
Casablanca is five or six hours ahead of US Eastern Time, depending on the season, so the studio's afternoon overlaps roughly the first three to four hours of the Eastern working day. For Pacific teams the difference is eight or nine hours, which means one short early-morning call and mostly asynchronous work.
Yes, and we recommend it. We work inside your GitHub or GitLab organization, your issue tracker and your cloud accounts, so your company holds the repositories, credentials and pipeline from day one. Code ownership and access terms are written into the contract before kick-off.
Kick-off happens within 3–5 business days of signature. The first week covers access, a review of your codebase or designs, and a first small increment so you can judge the working rhythm.
Yes. You can move between the Growth and Scale retainers as your roadmap changes, or switch to a fixed-scope project from $10,000 for a well-defined build. There is no headcount to hire or release.
Related pages
Let's build what's next.
Custom projects from $10,000, monthly plans from $7,500. Kickoff within 3–5 business days.