How to Build a Dedicated Development Team in Serbia

The five steps

Each step is short. The whole path from kickoff to a first developer at work is typically two to four weeks.

1. 1

   Define the team plan

   Decide the roles, seniority, tech stack, and starting team size. A clear plan — even just "one senior React developer and a mid-level backend engineer to start" — is enough to begin sourcing.

2. 2

   Source and interview candidates

   A local partner draws from a pipeline of pre-vetted developers and sends you a shortlist. You interview and make the final call — the same way you would hire in-house. Quality is validated before anyone joins.

3. 3

   Employ them locally

   The developers are employed in Serbia — either by your partner (team extension) or by your own entity (a subsidiary). Team extension means no company setup on your side; the partner handles the local contract, payroll, and statutory contributions.

4. 4

   Onboard into your workflow

   The team joins your tools, your standups, and your standards — treated as part of your own organisation, not a separate vendor. Same timezone (CET) makes real-time collaboration straightforward.

5. 5

   Scale by adding roles

   As the work grows, add developers one role at a time. A dedicated team has low churn, so knowledge compounds instead of resetting with every contract.

Team extension or your own subsidiary?

Step 3 hides the one real decision: who employs the team. Team extension has a local partner employ them — fastest to start, no entity of your own, full day-to-day control. A subsidiary means you own the Serbian entity — higher setup and overhead, but lower long-run cost per head and full legal ownership. Most companies start with team extension and convert to a subsidiary later, once the team is large and lasting enough to justify it.

• •Team Extension — a partner employs the team; you manage it. Fastest start, no entity needed.
• •Subsidiary Setup — you own the Serbian entity and employ the team directly.

A real timeline — Soletis BV

Soletis BV, a Belgian software company, is a concrete example of the path — starting small, validating, then committing.

1. Start

   Began with a single developer through Jezda to validate quality and communication before committing.

2. First months

   The developer worked as a seamless extension of the Belgian team — same tools, same standups, same standards.

3. Within a year

   Scaled to a permanent office in Serbia with four senior developers, plus an internship program nurturing junior talent.

Today the Serbian team ships across 10+ products for Soletis' enterprise clients — an office that grew one deliberate hire at a time, not a big-bang setup.

What the partner handles vs what you control

The split is the whole point of the model: the partner removes the administrative burden of local employment, and you keep everything that shapes the work.