Scaling a PropTech Startup from 3 to 15 Engineers
A UK property management startup needed to triple their engineering capacity without London hiring costs. We embedded a dedicated 6-person team that shipped their tenant portal, automated maintenance workflows, and reduced infrastructure costs by 40%.
Key Results
The Challenge
Our client, a London-based property management SaaS with 500+ landlord customers, had a scaling problem. Their platform managed 8,000+ rental units, but their 3-person engineering team couldn't keep up with customer demands:
- Tenant portal was the #1 requested feature — tenants needed to pay rent, submit maintenance requests, and view documents online
- Maintenance workflows were manual — property managers coordinated repairs via email and phone
- Infrastructure costs were ballooning — their AWS bill had doubled in 6 months without corresponding traffic growth
- Technical debt from early-stage shortcuts was slowing every new feature
They tried hiring in London. After 2 months and 30+ interviews, they'd hired zero engineers. Senior full-stack developers in London command £90,000–£120,000, and competition from fintech and big tech made recruitment nearly impossible for a Series A startup.
Our Approach
Month 1: Team Assembly + Integration
We carefully selected a 6-person team based on the client's tech stack and working style:
- 2 senior full-stack engineers (Next.js + Node.js)
- 1 senior DevOps engineer
- 1 mid-level frontend engineer
- 1 mid-level backend engineer
- 1 QA engineer
Integration was critical. We didn't just "hand over" engineers — we embedded them:
- Added to the client's Slack workspace, Notion, Linear, and GitHub
- 1-hour daily standup at 10:00 GMT (11:00 CET — perfect timezone overlap)
- Pair programming sessions between Soatech engineers and the existing London team
- Two-week onboarding sprint focused on understanding the codebase, domain, and customer needs
By week 3, the Soatech team was shipping code to production independently.
Months 2–3: Tenant Portal
The first major deliverable was the tenant portal:
- Rent payments — Stripe integration with automated reminders and receipt generation
- Maintenance requests — Photo upload, categorization, and real-time status tracking
- Document vault — Tenancy agreements, inspection reports, and correspondence in one place
- Mobile-responsive — 65% of tenants access the portal on mobile
The portal launched after 8 weeks. Within the first month, 72% of tenants had activated their accounts.
Months 3–5: Maintenance Automation
This was the highest-impact project — replacing a chaotic email-based workflow with an automated system:
- Smart routing — Maintenance requests automatically categorized and assigned to the right contractor based on type, location, and availability
- Contractor portal — External tradespeople could accept jobs, update status, and upload completion photos
- SLA tracking — Automatic escalation if repairs weren't acknowledged within 4 hours or completed within the agreed timeframe
- Cost tracking — Every maintenance job linked to the property with full cost history
Property managers reported saving 3–4 hours per day on maintenance coordination.
Month 5–6: Infrastructure Optimization
Our DevOps engineer audited the entire AWS infrastructure:
- Right-sized EC2 instances — Most were over-provisioned by 2–3x
- Moved to reserved instances — 40% savings on compute costs
- Implemented caching layer — Redis for frequently-accessed property and tenant data
- Database optimization — Query analysis and indexing reduced average response time from 800ms to 120ms
- CI/CD pipeline — Automated testing and deployment replaced manual processes
Monthly AWS bill: reduced from £8,200 to £4,900.
The Results
After 6 months:
- Feature releases: From 1–2 per month to 5–6 per month
- Tenant portal adoption: 72% of tenants active within 30 days of launch
- Maintenance efficiency: Property managers saved 15+ hours per week
- Infrastructure: 40% cost reduction, 85% faster average response time
- Zero turnover: All 6 Soatech engineers remained on the project for the full engagement
The client extended the engagement to an ongoing dedicated team model.
Why It Worked
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Timezone alignment is underrated. Our Tirana team works CET — just 1 hour ahead of London. Standups, pair programming, and Slack conversations happened naturally, not at awkward hours.
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Embedding > outsourcing. The team used the client's tools, attended their retros, and understood their customers. This isn't body shopping — it's a genuine team extension.
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DevOps pays for itself. The infrastructure optimization saved £3,300/month. The DevOps engineer's monthly cost was less than that. The ROI was immediate and obvious.
Technology Stack
“We interviewed 30+ candidates through traditional recruitment over two months and hired nobody. Soatech had six qualified engineers embedded in our workflow within four weeks. They feel like our team, not outsiders.”