What exactly is X-Team?
X-Team is a software development company that has spent the last decade building a community of motivated developers from around the world. Today, we provide our developers (individually or as a team) to companies that need help scaling or leading their development team.
How is X-Team different from other software development companies?
When compared to freelance developers, X-Team’s biggest differentiator is that you don’t have to be afraid that X-Teamers will leave your team a few months in to take on other projects. X-Teamers work for you for as long as you like, no matter how long that ends up being. That’s also why we don’t rotate developers. Some X-Team developers have been working with the same client for years and are as much part of their company as they are part of X-Team.
When compared to software development agencies, X-Team’s biggest differentiator is its community. We believe that motivated, inspired developers write the best code, and have several initiatives to support this, from a $2,500 a year Unleash+ budget to Seasons to a Vault full of epic collectibles. We challenge you to find another software development agency that’s as developer-centric as X-Team is.
Compared to freelancers and agencies, X-Team’s biggest differentiator is its emphasis on becoming a part of your company. X-Teamers aren’t external developers that help you for a while. X-Team developers are your developers. They are part of your team. We are deeply committed to your success and want to be there every step of the way.
How soon can X-Team developers join my team?
This can range from a few days to a few weeks and will mostly depend on your requirements.
Can you provide a team of developers?
Yes, we can. We’ve built teams that have dozens of developers for leading brands such as Riot Games, Fox Sports, and Kaplan. Check out some of our case studies here.
How do you vet your developers?
Big question. Hiring extraordinary developers for our clients is our bread and butter. Less than 1% of our applicants get hired, so getting into X-Team is no easy feat. And the secret sauce to our vetting is simple: hard work.
But that's why we exist – to take that hard work of evaluating 100,000+ engineers per year off your shoulders. Here's a peek at what our process looks like for every engineer we allow into our evaluation track:
First, the Culture Fit Interview. In this interview, we look for whether they align with our values:
Next, Technical Interview I. In this interview, former senior engineers (now technical recruiters) dive into their engineering experience. At this stage, we walk through their background and dive deep into their "war stories" from every project.
We want to know how they approached technical obstacles, what tools they used, what trade-offs they made, how they handled staging crashing during a stakeholder demo, what bugs they're most proud of solving, their approach to unit testing and code reviews, etc.
Finally, Technical Interview II. In this interview, they meet an active X-Team senior engineer who is trained in technical interviewing and specializes in the same area (JavaScript, iOS, etc.). Together, they'll dive deeper into common, real-world technical scenarios to see if they can perform well on large-scale applications.
Our senior engineers have worked on sites/apps that serve hundreds of millions of people, and have a wealth of experiences that help them craft the perfect testing scenarios. They know how to spot someone who isn't quite ready, so this is the hardest phase to pass since X-Teamers hold a very high bar.
These interviews cover our General Interview phase that decides if we want to hire them to X-Team. For those who don't pass, feedback is given to engineers to help them learn and grow. Those who do join X-Team Engineering and work on our platforms and products.
When deciding whether to present an engineer to you, we repeat a similar process with additional technical & culture fit interviews to make sure there's alignment with your specific team's needs.
The hiring platform we've built over the last decade uses machine learning to help us quickly identify perfect X-Teamers to present to you. When our clients say "Get me another Timothy", our platform can immediately identify a similar, available engineer based on timezone, skillsets, interests, etc.
We also encourage our clients to meet with any of our engineers first before adding them to your own team.
Where do you source engineers from?
Everywhere. We’re not joking. The X-Team community has X-Teamers from over seventy countries and growing. Chile, Belgium, Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines, you name it. X-Team has always firmly believed that talent can come from anywhere. When we’re looking for engineers, we’re not looking for the best in your backyard. We’re looking for the best in the world.
This gives you the flexibility to create the developer team you want. Are you based in Israel and do you want a back-end team two hours east or west of your timezone? We’ll find the right developers. Do you want a DevOps team that covers you 24 hours a day? We’ll find the right developers. Are you a conglomerate based in the US and do you want a front-end team that helps your Japanese branch? We’ll find the right engineers.
Will I get a list of developer candidates to choose from?
We keep our form short so we can focus first on what you need. Once we’ve gained a better understanding of the challenge at hand, we’ll then discuss with our teams and put forth the best X-Team engineers for your needs. So yes, you will eventually receive a list of candidates to choose from.
What’s your minimum contract length?
Ninety days.
Do you provide engineers on a part-time basis?
Our engineers normally join our clients on a full-time, fully dedicated basis. This being said, if you’re interested in building a long-term partnership that starts with part-time developers, we’re down to chat.
How do I know you’re sending me your best engineers?
The best engineers for you are those you’re supremely satisfied with. Delivering those developers is our primary objective. Once you have them in your team, we don’t swap them out unless you want us to. It doesn’t matter if you have a hundred thousand employees or four. We will always strive to send our best available engineers to you.
What if an X-Teamer on my team underperforms?
Every single one of our clients has an account manager who’s there to understand your requirements and concerns. If a developer isn’t the right fit, the account manager will try to understand why and send you another developer who’s better suited for your team based on their learnings.
Can your engineers come onsite?
X-Teamers are remote engineers and join X-Team because we’ve created one of the best remote environments. This being said, X-Teamers have in many instances come onsite to visit our clients. It’s something we very much encourage whenever possible and it can be arranged with proper notice and agreement beforehand.
Do X-Teamers use their own hardware?
They do. But a few of our clients have shipped their hardware to X-Team developers, so they have tighter control over the security of the devices that X-Teamers use. This being said, X-Teamers are fully aware of the importance of cybersecurity and use password managers, VPNs on public wifis, and multi-factor authentication wherever possible.
Are you considering hiring an X-Team developer? Contact us today