Engineering demand in transport and travel tech rarely grows evenly. It spikes: at peak season, on a new contract, when entering another market, or during a platform migration that has to close within a fixed window. The trouble is that classic recruitment moves in quarters, while a transport business moves in weeks. For a CTO or a delivery director, that boils down to one question: where do you find capable people before the opportunity or the deadline passes.
In our experience, the hard part is not finding a single developer but delivering vetted people fast and at scale, people who join an existing team without a long ramp-up. We did exactly that for a global aviation and travel technology provider, where more than 1,100 of our specialists passed through over more than eight years, and over 110 were hired permanently. We bring the same approach to transport, logistics and travel tech.
Why do transport and travel tech run short of hands at peaks?
The industry lives by seasons and events. The pre-holiday parcel wave, the summer peak in bookings, black friday in logistics e-commerce, a new route or a carrier campaign, and then a regulatory change that forces system updates. Load and the pressure to build rise unevenly, so a permanent team sized for average demand will be either overloaded at the peak or underused outside it.
On top of that comes a shortage of specialists with a specific profile. Reservation systems, GDS integrations, pricing engines, shipment tracking and carrier platforms are fields where domain context matters as much as the technology. You can’t recruit skills that narrow on short notice, and you need them precisely when talent is hardest to find on the market.
How fast and at what scale do we staff teams?
We work at a pace that keeps up with the business. Instead of opening a search from scratch, we reach for people we already know and run a proven matching process. First profiles reach the decision-maker in days, not months, and we add further people gradually as the project grows.
The scale is not theoretical. For one client in aviation and travel, over more than eight years of cooperation we engaged more than 1,100 specialists, and the team grew and shrank with demand. The same mechanism handles both a single reinforcement and the build-out of a whole department, without changing how people work along the way.
Which roles do we staff in transport and travel tech?
We shape the team around the actual work, not a ready-made template. On transport and travel tech projects we most often staff:
- Java and C++ backend for high-volume systems with demanding performance needs,
- frontend building panels, portals and apps for customers and operations,
- QA and test automation, without which you can’t safely release to production in season,
- DevOps maintaining the pipeline, infrastructure and deployments,
- TPMs and technical leads (Leads) who own delivery and hold the team together.
That last element is key. We supply not only implementers but also people who lead others and delivery, so the team doesn’t need micromanaging on the client’s side.
How do our people join the client’s team?
We plug into the client’s way of working, not the other way around. Our specialists work in Scrum or Kanban, take part in planning, code reviews and daily stand-ups just like the in-house team. We don’t build a separate island next to the project; we become part of it.
As a nearshore partner from Poland we operate in a close time zone, so contact is real-time, not asynchronous with a multi-hour lag. In practice that means a new person catches the project’s rhythm in the first days, not after weeks of learning the process. This model proved itself over years of aviation work, where our people worked side by side with the client’s teams.
Staff augmentation, a dedicated team, or BOT?
This isn’t an ideological choice but a fit between the model and the situation. In short:
- staff augmentation works when you have a running team and want to reinforce it fast with specific skills while keeping full control of delivery,
- a dedicated team makes sense when you need a separate, self-reliant group owning a carved-out part of the product,
- the BOT model (Build-Operate-Transfer) fits when you ultimately want to take the team in-house and build the capability yourself.
We don’t force a single answer. We often start with team augmentation and, as the cooperation matures, move toward a dedicated team. We laid out the differences in our article on IT engagement models.
How do we ensure quality and fit before the start?
Speed can’t mean randomness. We verify skills before the start, not after the first sprint, when a hiring mistake already costs the whole team’s time. We check not only the technical side but also the fit with the client’s stack, domain and way of working.
The best gauge of this approach is how clients rate us. On the aviation and travel project we ranked first in the quarterly vendor review, and over 110 people who started on a flexible engagement were hired permanently. It’s hard to find a better sign that we pick people worth keeping.
Why is aviation our proof of scale?
Aviation and travel is one of the most demanding engineering environments. Systems have to stay available around the clock, carry huge volume, integrate with many external platforms and absorb seasonal peaks without a drop in quality. If delivering people works here, it works in transport and logistics too.
That’s why we treat our aviation experience as proof that we can hold quality at scale and over time, not just in a short, comfortable project. More than eight years of cooperation and over a thousand engaged specialists is a track record that doesn’t happen by accident.
How do we do it at RITS?
We do it as a nearshore partner from Poland, with real experience in aviation and travel:
- for a global aviation and travel technology provider we engaged more than 1,100 specialists over more than eight years, and over 110 were hired long-term,
- we ranked first in the quarterly vendor review,
- we staffed roles across Java, C++, frontend, QA, DevOps, plus TPMs and technical leads,
- our people worked in Scrum and Kanban, embedded in the client’s teams.
Most often we do this as team augmentation and, where the client needs a self-reliant group, we build a dedicated team.
Where do you start scaling an IT team?
Start by naming the single most urgent gap: the missing role, the part of the product without an owner, or the peak you can already see coming that you know will stretch you. That defines the profile of the first people, the scale of the engagement and the model that will make the most sense for you. If you’re torn between team augmentation and a dedicated team, our article on IT engagement models will help.
Need to scale engineering fast in transport, logistics or travel tech? Let’s talk - we’ll match the people and the model to your project.