Scaling a team of 34 engineers in four months
A fast-growing FinTech company partnered with Rite NRG to build an AI Assist / AI Agent that automates administrative work, improves compliance, and gives financial advisors deeper client insights. By embedding AI into daily workflows, the platform significantly increased productivity while maintaining accuracy, scalability, and regulatory confidence.
Introduction
A rapidly growing technology-first company in online social games, headquartered in Australia, with over 1000 employees and millions of users across its platform, was swiftly transitioning from a highly successful startup to a global enterprise. The client faced significant challenges: their existing platform, capable of hosting only a few brands, couldn’t support their ambition to expand to 30-50+ brands, each with their own unique games set. They needed a new, scalable B2B platform and a robust European presence to overcome time zone differences and talent scarcity in Perth. Recognising Poland, and particularly Krakow, as a prime location for highly skilled and gaming-experienced engineers, the client sought a partner to fulfill their ambitious expansion plans. Rite NRG stepped in to form a high-performing, culturally aligned dedicated team and establish a new R&D center in Krakow, Poland, with the primary goal of ensuring the team’s software delivery was highly effective and efficient from day one.
The Challenge
As the client expanded, several critical challenges emerged, necessitating a strategic move into Europe:
- Legacy platform limitations: The client’s existing platform, built over 10 years, was reaching its limits. Its 70TB databases were pushing the boundaries of AWS capabilities, hindering further growth and the ability to host new brands and games efficiently (currently supporting a few brands, with a need to scale to 30-50+).
- Time zone disparity: With headquarters in Perth, Australia, and a significant customer base in North America, synchronising operations and development across vastly different time zones proved increasingly challenging.
- Talent scarcity: The client faced a shortage of specialised tech talent in Perth. Research indicated Krakow, Poland, as an ideal location due to its rich pool of experienced gaming industry professionals.
- Risks of rapid international growth: Establishing a new structure in Poland involved navigating an unfamiliar market and achieving rapid, efficient scaling. A key concern was the risk of team inefficiency and the potential for significant time loss in building a truly cohesive and delivery-focused team capable of consistently delivering software.
- Bridge the culture: It was paramount that this new entity fully inherited the client’s unique culture, including position nomenclature, performance expectations, delivery processes, and core values, ensuring seamless integration with existing global teams.
Rite NRG's Solution
A comprehensive “Build, Operate, Transfer” (BOT) model was implemented to address the client’s multifaceted challenges, delivering a tailored solution that went beyond mere staff augmentation.
Strategic Staffing:
- A joint recruitment division was established with the client, with our team taking the lead in navigating the intricacies of the Polish talent market.
- Our strategy emphasised identifying and securing top-tier engineers, including a management squad.
- Emphasis was placed on hiring “feature-responsible” engineers capable of working across the full stack (backend and frontend), reflecting the client’s technical philosophy.
Establishing a European R&D Center:
- The full responsibility of setting up a state-of-the-art physical office in Krakow was undertaken, creating a new European R&D center for the client.
- Rite NRG acted as a comprehensive Shared Service provider, taking full ownership of operational matters. This included organising business trips, procuring and configuring high-performance MACs (integrated into Apple Business Manager for immediate, seamless setup), managing payroll, HR, implementing a competitive benefits system adapted to Polish market realities, and actively managing Employee Wellbeing & Engagement, and handling all legal aspects.
Building a Scalable Greenfield Platform:
The core of the technical solution was a greenfield project to develop a new, highly scalable platform. This platform was designed to serve as a central hub for all the client’s games, capable of supporting existing brands and facilitating the launch of 30-50+ new brands. Key features included a robust admin panel (backoffice tool) for content managers to control game availability, seamless integration with external game studios and the client’s own game development efforts, and advanced performance management with intricate statistics per brand. Utilising AWS as the core infrastructure, with close collaboration with AWS architects to push and extend current limits to handle millions of transactions per second (e.g., 14,000 transactions/second per brand for a single “spin” action), the system was architected with Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles for a highly modular and scalable architecture, crucial for horizontal growth to handle the client’s massive user base and ambitious expansion plans.
Operational Excellence & Cultural Integration:
- A robust on-call system was implemented to ensure 24/7 support and maintenance for the client’s critical gaming platforms.
- Effective onboarding processes were meticulously planned and executed, ensuring new team members were quickly integrated into the client’s unique culture and development methodologies.
- Continuous Performance monitoring was also conducted to track team output and efficiency.
- To bridge time zone differences and foster strong team cohesion, quarterly in-person synchronisation meetings were held in Krakow, bringing together the dedicated team and the client’s leadership (40-50 participants).
- The client’s emphasis on career development paths, distributed team philosophy, and even their unique “Thursday poker night” culture were embraced and facilitated.
Technologies Used
We leveraged a robust technology stack including React for the frontend, Node.js, AWS Lambda, and DynamoDB for the backend, all hosted within the AWS Cloud infrastructure. The core AI capabilities were powered by ChatGPT, and OpenAI Whisper was utilized for the crucial audio-to-text transcription functionality.
Results
The 18-month partnership with the leading innovator in online social games yielded exceptional results, solidifying the client’s position as a global iGaming leader:
- Rapid Team Scalability: A full-capability 34-person team, including key management, was successfully built and operational within an impressive 4 months.
- Platform Overdelivery: The new scalable platform was developed and launched, not only meeting but exceeding expectations. Within 6 months, 60 games were successfully launched on the new platform, double the initial target of 30 games.
- Accelerated Market Entry: A fully functional Krakow office was established within the first 3 months, providing the client with a vital European R&D hub.
- Seamless Handover: Demonstrating the success of the Build, Operate, Transfer model, an outstanding 96% of the dedicated team transitioned directly to the client upon the project’s conclusion after 18 months, ensuring knowledge transfer and continuity.
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