AriesDevs engineering team Engineering notes
6 min read
Hiring a development partner in another country can give you senior talent at a sensible price, and it can also go badly if you skip the basics. Whether you are a business in India, the US, Canada, Australia, the UAE or anywhere else, the same checks apply. Use this list before you sign anything.
1. Working hours and communication
Ask which hours the team will be reachable and how they will overlap with yours. A good remote partner adjusts to your business day for calls and replies to messages within one working day. Ask how updates are shared: a written weekly summary, a demo at the end of each sprint and a shared board you can see at any time are a healthy baseline.
2. Who will actually build it?
Some agencies sell with senior people and staff the project with juniors. Ask for the names and experience of the engineers who will work on your product, and whether you can speak with them directly. In a small team the people who scope the project are usually the ones who build it, which removes most hand-off mistakes.
3. Ownership and legal basics
- The contract should say that code, designs and data belong to you on payment.
- Work should live in repositories you control from the first day.
- Ask for a mutual NDA before you share requirements.
- Check that scope, change requests, payment milestones and termination are written down.
4. Security and privacy
Ask how they handle access to your systems: least-privilege accounts, multi-factor authentication, access removed when the work ends. Ask whether they understand the privacy rules that apply to your customers, such as the GDPR, the DPDP Act (India), PIPEDA in Canada, the Australian Privacy Act or the UAE data protection law.
5. Evidence of quality
- Ask to see how they test: automated tests, code review and a release checklist.
- Ask for references you can speak to, or for examples of past work. Be wary if everything is under NDA and nothing can be shown.
- Look for a team that asks hard questions about your business before quoting.
Red flags
- A fixed price quoted in the first call without asking about your users or goals.
- No written scope, or a scope that never says what is excluded.
- Pressure to pay a large share upfront with no milestones.
- Refusing to share the repository or give you admin access.
The best test is a small first step: a paid discovery sprint or a short pilot. You learn how the team communicates and delivers before you commit to a larger build.
