A Ljubljana software house builds booking software for holiday flats and boutique hotels on the coast and in the Alps. Its five developers barely keep up with fixes, while next year's plan adds new sales channels, a guest app and reworked payments. The advert for a senior back-end engineer has been live for six months. Rather than handing the whole thing to an outside agency, whose knowledge walks out with the final invoice, or patching holes with contractors who come and go, you can bring in a dedicated team. Its members are Apply employees who work solely on your product: in your stand-ups, your ticket tracker, your repository and under your review rules. Recruitment, equipment, training and cover for holidays or sickness are our concern. What gets built, in which order and when a ticket counts as done is decided by you. Firms that benefit most already have a clear roadmap and someone who sets the team's priorities each week.
How the team is put together, how it settles in and how you can tell whether it is working.
Together we write down what the person will actually do in the first three months, who they will work with and what success looks like. Only then do we search: PHP, Python, Java or .NET on the back end, React, Vue or Angular on the front, Flutter for mobile, test automation or business analysis.
Shortlisted candidates can tackle a small exercise resembling your own work. You lead the technical interview and you make the choice.
Access, an architecture tour, business context and starter tickets that grow in size. After thirty days we review progress together.
When a ticket is done, how review works, who approves a release. It fits on one page so everyone, newcomers included, can follow it.
Time from starting a ticket to release, the share of defects reaching production and test coverage, reviewed with you every month.
Company-managed laptops with full-disk encryption, MFA everywhere, least-privilege access and signed NDAs. If you wish, all work happens inside a virtual desktop you control.
Absences are covered, leavers write a proper handover, and headcount can be adjusted within the agreed notice terms.
For mainstream stacks, a few weeks usually separate the first call from the team's first merged change.
What is on the roadmap, which skills are missing, what level of experience and whose direction the team follows.
Shortlist, optional trial task, your technical interviews and a decision.
Thirty planned days followed by a frank joint look at how it is going.
Numbers, code quality, headcount and the coming month's focus.
Give the team one person who owns the priorities. A remote team moves exactly as fast as its backlog is clear. If tickets come from three managers at once and the order changes daily, even the best engineer will spend most of the time waiting or building the wrong thing. One product owner on your side is worth more than an extra developer.
Our model is a service contract: Apply organises and answers for its specialists' work, while you set the business goals. Where a service ends and the supply of workers under ZDR-1 begins depends mainly on how things operate in practice. Have your lawyer look at both the contract and the day-to-day arrangement.
Freelancers can be excellent, but when one falls ill or leaves, the gap is yours. With a dedicated team, cover, handover and finding a replacement fall to us, and the same device and confidentiality rules apply to everyone.
Three months is the sensible floor, because the time spent settling people in is not recovered sooner. Beyond that, the notice terms in the agreement govern any change.
An invoice follows each month, based on logged hours. Apply is a non-EU company, so your accountant should confirm the reverse-charge VAT treatment on your side.
Repositories and technical write-ups are usually kept in English, and the spoken language for calls is settled when we assemble the team. Working hours mirror yours: 9:00 to 17:00 Central European Time.
Which roles, which stack and for how long? We will come back with profiles and a proposal.
Enquiry received
An engineer will write back no later than the following working day. Faults that leave your staff unable to work are always looked at first.
No town by that name here. Check the letters, or settle for the nearest larger place. Our engineers work only over the internet, so Kočevje and Koper get precisely the same treatment.
