Nexora: ×2 delivery velocity with a dedicated IT squad.
Nexora, a B2B SaaS for HR management (Series B, 180 people), was facing a classic dilemma: a backlog that kept growing, in-market hires that dragged on, and contractor costs that kept climbing. We structured a 12-engineer squad in Casablanca.
Initial context
In mid-2024, Nexora had just closed its Series B. The goal: launch 3 new product modules in 12 months (public API, payroll module, learning module). The problem: the tech team (28 people in-house) was struggling to hire at the required pace (6-month time-to-hire on a senior fullstack), and local contractors at €900/day were straining cash flow.
Proposed approach
Rather than classic "staff augmentation" — plugging in isolated devs — we proposed a structured squad:
- 12 engineers (8 fullstack + 2 DevOps + 1 QA + 1 Tech Lead) based in Casablanca
- A full "mini team" able to deliver end-to-end features
- Full integration into Nexora rituals: standups, sprint planning, retros, demos
- IHAENG Delivery Manager as single escalation point
All candidates were presented to the Nexora team for individual sign-off. Shared technical tests. Replacement possible within 5 days in case of a mismatch.
"We'd been sold nearshore a dozen times before. The IHAENG approach was different: senior tech leads, real process, commitment to quality. We signed off after a 2-month pilot." — Aurélien N., CTO Nexora
Squad composition
- 1 Tech Lead (8 years of experience, ex-OCP Morocco) — architecture and code reviews
- 5 Senior Fullstack TypeScript/NestJS + React/Next.js
- 3 Confirmed Fullstack (3-5 years) — feature delivery
- 2 DevOps SRE — AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, observability
- 1 QA Engineer — Playwright + k6
Integration & operations
Month 1: onboarding
3-week product onboarding: pairing with Nexora teams, documentation of the HR business domain, tool access (GitHub, Jira, Datadog, AWS), reading of the existing codebase.
Months 2-4: pilot on the public API module
The squad took on development of the "Nexora public API" module. Scope: REST endpoints & webhooks for partner integrations. The Nexora team approved every PR via review. Quality measured via Code Climate (technical debt), Sonar (coverage), Datadog (production errors).
Pilot outcome: module delivered 2 weeks ahead of schedule, 92% coverage, 0 major incident at rollout.
Months 5-18: scale
The squad grew to 12 people and took on the payroll and learning modules in parallel with the in-house teams handling the core.
Measurable results
- Total product-team velocity: 142 SP → 286 SP per sprint (×2.0)
- Average cost per engineer: −38% vs. in-house contractor, −22% vs. local full-time hire (loaded costs)
- Time-to-hire: from 6 months (in-house) to 3 weeks (IHAENG squad)
- 18-month turnover: 0% (versus ~15% average in the Moroccan IT sector)
- Production bugs per feature: on par with internal teams (no quality regression)
- Nexora developer satisfaction: from 3.1/5 to 4.4/5 (lower context load thanks to squad support)
Key success factors
- Squad vs. isolated talent: the squad's internal cohesion makes it possible to deliver complete features without fragmenting the product.
- Senior IHAENG Tech Lead: code-quality filter, mentoring, reduced review load on Nexora.
- Time-zone proximity: Casablanca is at CET-1, shared rituals happen without friction.
- Proactive retention: IHAENG offers career paths to its engineers (AWS certifications, modern stack, ambitious clients) → zero turnover.
- Total transparency: same dashboard access, same accountability as an internal engineer.
Extension
Nexora has now also entrusted us with the Data team (3 data engineers + 1 analytics engineer) to build its internal data platform.
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