Engineers in your stack.
Shipping from week three.
Senior engineers embedded inside your team, your repos, and your on-call rotation. Managed from Berlin and Amsterdam. GDPR-compliant by design. No hiring cycle. No visa risk. No staff rotation.
Scaling a European engineering team is broken
Hiring senior engineers in Europe has become a structural bottleneck. Salaries keep climbing and lead times keep stretching. Roadmaps slip and product teams ship understaffed.
The standard alternatives all force a trade you cannot afford: quality, compliance, or engineering ownership. Usually all three at once.
That is exactly what Serana Tech solves.
See how it works →Top-quartile salaries, roles open for months
Senior engineers in Amsterdam and Berlin command top-quartile salaries and roles still sit open for three to six months. Roadmaps slip. Product teams ship understaffed.
Most offshore models break GDPR
Standard offshore models move code, credentials, and data outside the EU, leave endpoints unmanaged, and rely on vague DPAs. The compliance exposure compounds with every engineer added.
Three to six months to hire, costs climbing
Sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding a senior engineer locally takes three to six months. The fully-loaded cost of an EU hire keeps climbing toward €120k+.
Global SIs and freelance marketplaces don't fit
Global SIs rotate people off your account without warning and are not built for agile delivery. Freelance marketplaces trade ownership for speed. Neither model works inside a product team.
Built for product teams that need to ship faster
We work with scaling product companies that need senior engineering capacity inside the team, fast, and inside EU governance.
Scaling beyond your first squad
You are a product company with a European footprint and engineering capacity is the bottleneck on your roadmap. Local senior hires take three to six months and break the budget.
Engineers in your stack, not on a dashboard
You need engineers inside your repos, your sprint cadence, and your on-call rotation. Not external contractors emailing weekly status reports.
EU-only data. No negotiation.
You operate under GDPR and need every line of code, every endpoint, and every access path to stay inside EU borders. Schrems II is non-negotiable.
The biggest tech talent pool in Sri Lanka
With the deepest reach into the country's engineering talent, you don't settle for whoever's available. You get the best possible candidate for the role. Every search, every time.
Largest tech talent pool in Sri Lanka
Best-fit engineer, every search
Senior engineering specialists
Choose your delivery model
Grow your in-house engineering team with embedded hires, or ship a defined build with a project squad. Pick the model that fits where you are today.
Ship the build, on a fixed scope
An EU-led squad takes a defined scope from discovery through to delivery, with fixed timelines and a clean handback to your team.
Build & Ship
Greenfield products, platform work, AI features.
Modernise
Migrations, refactors, cloud and data upgrades.
Squad on demand
Pod of engineers with a tech lead, ready to plug in.
Discovery & MVP
From brief to working MVP with a path to scale.
Ready to talk?
30 minutes. We cover your stack, your timeline, and your GDPR posture.
Live in 3–4 weeks
Most providers take months to mobilise. Here is exactly what the first four weeks look like.
Scope
Define the engineering gaps, your stack, and your delivery timeline.
Match
We shortlist engineers against your seniority bar, tools, and culture.
Deliver
Engineers embed in your team and start shipping inside three weeks.
Optimise
Reviews and roadmap re-planning. Scale the team up or down as priorities change.
Diagnose
Understand the gap, the stack, and the delivery cadence before a single CV is sent.
1–2 weeksStabilise
Engineers embed, ramp on the codebase, join the on-call rotation, and start owning tickets.
2–4 weeksOptimise
Quarterly reviews. Scale, redirect, or extend the engagement as the roadmap evolves.
OngoingWhy Serana Tech? Six reasons, and one honest comparison.
What sets us apart from in-house hiring, global SIs, and freelance marketplaces, and how we compare on the criteria that actually matter to a CTO.
Right-fit matching, not rostering
We shortlist against your actual tech stack and seniority bar. Each candidate is technically pre-vetted by a senior engineer before you see them. No bench, no bait-and-switch.
Embedded engineers, not external resources
Our engineers work in your Jira, your repos, your CI, your on-call rotation. They review PRs, write RFCs, and own production code as part of your team.
Weeks to productive, not months
First shortlist in 5–10 days, team embedded in 3–4 weeks. Scale up, down, or redirect without recruiting cycles, severance costs, or visa lead times.
European engineering management
A dedicated engineering manager based in DE or NL runs delivery cadence, performance, and escalations. Your CTO talks to an engineer, not an account manager.
GDPR by design, not by policy
Access via EU-hosted VDI only. No data leaves the EU, no local storage on engineer devices, full session logging. Pre-signed DPAs and Schrems II-aligned controls available on day one.
Retention by design
Above-market compensation, structured career paths, and continuous training for every engineer. Retention by design, not by lock-in clauses.
| Serana Tech | In-house EU hire | Big-4 / Global SI | Freelance marketplace | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | ~40% below equivalent EU FTE, all-in | €80k–€120k+ fully loaded | €900–€1,600/day, slow to mobilise | Low day rate, high churn |
| GDPR / EU data | EU-only VDI, Schrems II controls, pre-signed DPAs | Compliant, they're your team | Data often leaves EU, vague DPAs | No controls, no DPA, no audit trail |
| Speed to deploy | Shortlist in days, productive in 3–4 weeks | 3–6 months to recruit and onboard | Fast to start, frequent resource rotation | Fast to start, slow to integrate |
| Expertise | BSc/MSc engineers, technically pre-vetted | Limited to local talent pool | Strong technically, not built for agile | Variable quality, unvetted |
| Ownership | Own tickets, PRs, and on-call | High, they're your team | Low, clients are accounts | Low, transactional |
| Flexibility | Dedicated team, staff aug, or project-based | Slow and expensive to flex | Very expensive to rescale | Easy to scale, quality unpredictable |
| Continuity | Retention >95%, tenure builds codebase knowledge | High key-person risk | Resource rotation is standard practice | High churn, no continuity |
What good looks like in practice
“Within three weeks our first Serana engineer was in the on-call rotation and owning PRs. We had that role open for four months. It felt like a hire, not a vendor.”
“We needed LLM integration work done on a fixed scope and did not want to hire for it. The project squad delivered a working integration in six weeks, with clean handover documentation. The code is ours from day one.”
Amsterdam
Berlin
Colombo
Priced around your roadmap. Not a rate card.
Every engagement is scoped after we understand your stack, team, and delivery cadence. Here is what most product-team engagements look like.
Embedded Engineer
Engineering Pod
Project Squad
- 30-day exit clause. No lock-in.
- All IP assigned to you from day one.
- GDPR processing agreement included in standard contract.
- EU-hosted infrastructure. Data never leaves EU borders.
Indicative pricing only. Final fee is scoped after discovery; stack, seniority, and pod size all affect scope. No quote until we have completed a diagnostic.
Transparent monthly rates
Per engineer or per pod. No hidden setup fees, no markup on tooling.
One contract, reviewed once
Single SoW or MSA covers contract, IP assignment, and GDPR data processing.
Quarterly flex
Scale up, down, or redirect engineers each quarter without severance overhead.
You own everything
All code, repositories, credentials, and access are yours at all times.
Frequently asked about
embedded engineering teams
Stack compatibility, IP ownership, GDPR posture, time to start, the questions every CTO asks before signing.
Yes. Before we shortlist anyone, we map your exact stack and seniority bar. Our engineers have production experience across Java/Spring Boot, Python, PostgreSQL, AWS, TypeScript, React/Next.js, and AI/LLM integration frameworks. You run the technical interview, you decide whether the engineer meets your bar.
You do. All IP is assigned to you from day one, covered in the SoW or MSA. Engineers work in your repos, commit to your branches, and all credentials and access remain yours at all times. There is no proprietary platform and no data lock-in.
All engineers access your systems exclusively via EU-hosted virtual desktops (VDI). No code, credentials, or data leave EU borders. We provide full session logging, pre-signed Data Processing Agreements, and Schrems II-aligned access controls on day one of the engagement.
First shortlist in 5–10 days. Engineers embedded and shipping in 3–4 weeks from the signed agreement. If you have an urgent gap, a departure or an imminent product deadline, we can prioritise the matching process accordingly.
Embedded Tech means a named engineer joins your team on our payroll, reporting to your engineering manager and working inside your sprint cadence. Project Tech means we take a defined scope from discovery through to delivery and hand back clean, documented code at the end. Most clients start with a project engagement to validate the model, then move to embedded for ongoing capacity.
Yes. Our Colombo delivery team works hours that overlap with CET/CEST business hours, managed by a dedicated engineering manager based in Berlin or Amsterdam. Sprint ceremonies, code reviews, and technical discussions happen in your working day. Your CTO talks to an engineer based in Europe, not a shift supervisor in a different timezone.
You run the technical interview before any engagement starts, so the risk of a mismatch is low. If an issue arises during an engagement, your European engineering manager owns the escalation and resolution. We replace the engineer without charging a new placement fee.
No minimum term for project engagements, single SoW, fixed scope. For embedded engagements, we recommend a three-month initial period to allow the engineer to reach full velocity. After that, 30-day exit clause for both parties. You are never locked in.
Let's fix your engineering function
Tell us what's broken. We'll tell you how we'd fix it, and what it would cost.
Book a discovery call
30 minutes. No commitment. We learn your situation and tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.
Book now →Get a quick diagnostic
1-2 weeks. A hands-on assessment of your engineering function with a written action plan and a scoped proposal.
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Share internally with your CTO, board, or investors. Covers our model, pricing logic, and client outcomes.
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