Can you join our team as a dedicated engineer?

Yes. alien-dev takes long-term embedded engagements alongside project work — joining an existing engineering team full-time or part-time, working in their repositories and their process. That is the current arrangement at Microsoft, through Akvelon, on the AI for Science initiative.

How is this different from hiring an outsourcing agency?

You talk to the engineer doing the work. There is no account manager translating between you and a developer you have never met, and no substitution: the person who starts the engagement is the person who stays on it.

What does a trial or notice period look like?

Engagements usually open with a short paid trial — a few weeks, a real ticket, your actual codebase — because that tells both sides more than an interview does. After that, a month’s notice either way keeps it honest.

Dedicated Engineer & Team Extension

An engineer who joins your team, not a stranger an agency sent.

Sometimes the thing you need is not a project with a scope document. It is one more engineer in standup, reviewing pull requests, holding context across quarters. This is that: long-term embedded work inside your team, your board and your release process — contracted directly, with no account manager in between.

What this includes

Embedded in your team

Your repositories, your ticket tracker, your code review culture, your definition of done. The point of an embedded engineer is that after a few weeks the seam stops being visible.

Long-term context, not ticket churn

Two years at TransPerfect and a year at YouTestMe were exactly this arrangement. The value of a long engagement is the accumulated knowledge of why the odd parts of a codebase are the way they are — which is precisely what rotating contractors destroy.

Overlapping hours and written handover

Central European Time, with overlap arranged for teams in other time zones, and decisions written down rather than left in a call. Remote work across time zones is the default here, not an accommodation.

Senior work, not just throughput

Code review, design review, accessibility, test coverage and the unglamorous reliability work — the contributions that make a team faster rather than just busier. Currently that includes reviewing and approving pull requests on a Microsoft engineering team.

Numbers

9+years of professional engineering, nearly all of it remote
2 yrsembedded inside one product team at TransPerfect
3languages available for standups and written handover

Evidence

This is the arrangement currently in place at Microsoft, where the work is done as a vendor engineer through Akvelon on the AI for Science initiative — embedded in a Microsoft engineering team, reviewing and approving pull requests and contributing to design decisions. Before that: two years inside a product team at TransPerfect and a year at YouTestMe, both long-term embedded rather than project-scoped.

Tech stackReact · Next.js · TypeScript · Node.js · React Native · PostgreSQL · AWS

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A secure, scalable Translation Memory Cloud platform for enterprise-level translation-unit management, built and maintained over two years at TransPerfect.
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Puzzle: a Storybook design system for a whole product organisation
Puzzle is a team-wide Storybook UI library built and maintained at TransPerfect, alongside Dispatcher — a custom state-management tool used with it.
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Common questions

Can you join our team as a dedicated engineer?: Yes. alien-dev takes long-term embedded engagements alongside project work — joining an existing engineering team full-time or part-time, working in their repositories and their process. That is the current arrangement at Microsoft, through Akvelon, on the AI for Science initiative.
How is this different from hiring an outsourcing agency?: You talk to the engineer doing the work. There is no account manager translating between you and a developer you have never met, and no substitution: the person who starts the engagement is the person who stays on it.
What does a trial or notice period look like?: Engagements usually open with a short paid trial — a few weeks, a real ticket, your actual codebase — because that tells both sides more than an interview does. After that, a month’s notice either way keeps it honest.