Nearshore App Development in US Time Zones

What nearshore app development means when Tepia does it

Nearshore development usually means hiring a team in a country a few time zones away from yours, so meetings happen during the day and the bill is lower than a fully domestic agency. The problem with most nearshore and offshore arrangements is not the geography. It is the accountability. A vendor in another country with its own management, its own priorities and its own bench will rotate people through your project, and your product suffers when the person who understood your codebase leaves.

Tepia runs a different version of the model. Leadership is US based: your project manager, your design lead and your engineering lead sit in one of Tepia’s six US offices. Engineers are individually sourced global talent, chosen one at a time for your project, named on the roster, and working in hours that overlap with yours. Tepia calls this human intelligence, because the people matter more than the location.

Tepia has run this model for thirteen years and clients report about 90% customer retention, which is the number that tells you whether the model holds up after launch.

Overlap hours by US time zone with a Tepia team

The practical question buyers ask is simple: when I have a problem at 10 a.m., is someone who can fix it awake? The table below shows how Tepia covers each US business day. US based leadership sits in Eastern, Central and Pacific offices, and Tepia’s engineers are selected in part for their ability to work the overlap your project needs.

Compare that with a typical offshore arrangement, where the overlap with a US Eastern team can be two hours or less and every question waits overnight. Tepia’s nearshore vs offshore development comparison covers that tradeoff in more detail.

How Tepia sources and vets engineers

Tepia is not a body shop. There is no bench of interchangeable developers waiting for an assignment. When a project is scoped, Tepia’s Director of Engineering, Brianna Martison, and Technical Lead Manager, Fahad Baig, identify the specific skills the product needs (for example Swift and SwiftUI for an iOS app, Kotlin for Android, React Native or Flutter for cross platform work, Node.js or .NET on the backend) and select individuals who have shipped that kind of product before.

Vetting covers four things. Technical depth in the stack the project uses. Communication in written and spoken English, because engineers talk to clients directly. Reliability over time, which Tepia measures by working history rather than a single interview. And availability during the client’s business hours, which is a hard requirement rather than a preference.

Once on a project, engineers stay on it. Tepia builds teams for the life of a product, through Discovery, Development, Launch and Support, so the person who wrote the sync layer is the person who maintains it. That continuity is most of what clients mean when they say they want a nearshore team that feels in house.

How Tepia approaches nearshore app development

Every Tepia engagement, regardless of where engineers sit, runs through the same six phases described on the Tepia process page: Discovery, Design, Development and Testing, Training, Launch and Support. The nearshore model shapes who does what in each phase.

Discovery

Led by your US based project manager. System investigation, user interviews and third party integration review, producing an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and User Stories. Discovery typically takes 1 to 3 months, shorter if you arrive with specs.

Design

Led by your US based design lead. Design questionnaire, moodboards, style guide, detailed wireframes and sample designs, reviewed with you in your business hours.

Development and Testing

Your named engineers, under a US based engineering lead, work Alpha and Beta schedules with written test plans for functional, user acceptance and non functional testing. Development and QA typically take 2 to 6 months. You see working software at every sprint demo.

Training, Launch and Support

Training is hands on, in person at a Tepia office or on site, or remote. Launch covers data migration, transition from the old system and support reps on rollout, about 1 month.

IP ownership, contracts and security with Tepia

Buyers considering nearshore development worry about who owns the code and what happens to their data. With Tepia, the answers are short.

• Contract. You sign with Tepia, a US company, under a US contract. You never contract with an individual engineer or a foreign entity.
• IP. Work is performed as work for hire. Code, designs and documentation are assigned to you, and Tepia delivers the repositories, cloud accounts and app store listings in your name.
• Confidentiality. Every engineer on your project is bound by confidentiality terms that flow down from Tepia’s agreement with you.
• Data handling. Tepia follows SOC 2 aligned practices and handles GDPR and CCPA requirements. For healthcare products, Tepia builds HIPAA aware architecture with PHI handling, BAAs with vendors, audit logs and encryption in transit and at rest. For payments, Tepia scopes PCI DSS with tokenized payments through Stripe or Square and never stores card data.
• Access control. Engineers receive least privilege access to your environments, and Tepia revokes access at the end of an engagement.

If your procurement or legal team has a vendor questionnaire, Tepia will complete it during Discovery rather than after a contract is signed.

Frequently asked questions