Outsourcing software development to Bangladesh: what to check before you sign

Bangladesh has become a serious option for companies that want experienced engineers without paying onshore rates. It's also where our own engineering team works, from our office in Dhaka. This guide covers what outsourcing software development to Bangladesh involves in practice: where it works, where it goes wrong, and what to check before you sign with anyone, including us.

Why companies look at Bangladesh

Three things bring most buyers here.

• Cost. Senior engineering time is the largest cost in any software project. A Bangladeshi engineer with years of production experience costs far less than one in Sydney, London or New York, so the same budget buys more senior people or a longer runway.
• Depth of talent. Dhaka has a large, growing software industry, with engineers working daily in modern web, mobile, cloud and AI stacks for international clients.
• Workable time zones. Dhaka is four hours behind Sydney (five during Australian daylight saving) and five to six hours ahead of the UK. That leaves a real shared window each working day, not a handover by email overnight.

Cost alone is a weak reason to choose a partner. The rest of this article is about the things that decide whether the saving actually reaches you.

The three ways to outsource

We run the third model: your contract is with Corexlab, an Australian company, and the engineering is done by our team in Dhaka. We've written about how our hybrid delivery model works in detail.

What usually goes wrong, and how to prevent it

Most failed outsourcing projects fail for the same handful of reasons. None of them are about the country.

Vague scope

"Build an app like X" invites a fixed quote that's either padded or wrong. Insist on a written spec with acceptance criteria before the main build starts. If a partner won't scope properly, they will be negotiating change requests with you later.

No visibility until the end

If you only see the work at the end of the project, you find problems when they're most expensive to fix. Ask for small, reviewable changes every week, a weekly demo, and access to the repository from day one.

Code you don't own

Make sure the repositories live in your accounts and that the contract assigns the IP in custom work to you. If the code sits in the vendor's GitHub and the contract is silent, you're locked in.

Quality nobody checks

Ask how code is reviewed. Every change should pass automated tests and checks, and be reviewed by an engineer other than its author before it merges. You should be able to see that history in the pull requests, not take it on trust.

Turnover

Freelancers and some agencies rotate people between clients. Ask who will actually work on your product, and what happens to knowledge if someone leaves. Documentation and a named lead protect you here.

Questions to ask any Bangladesh outsourcing company

1. Who will be on my team, and how senior are they?
2. Which company will I contract with, and in which country?
3. Will the code be in my repositories from day one?
4. What are the shared working hours with my time zone?
5. How is every change tested and reviewed before it merges?
6. What will I see each week?
7. How do you handle my data, access and credentials?
8. What happens if I want to change the team size, pause, or take the work in-house?

You should get specific answers to all eight. Vague answers to questions 2, 3 and 5 are reasons to walk away.

Where outsourcing to Bangladesh fits

It works well for work that can be specified, reviewed and demoed: building an MVP, adding features to an existing platform, taking over and stabilising inherited code, and shipping AI features such as document extraction or search over your own data. It's a weaker fit if the work needs someone physically on site, or if your team needs live conversations with engineers throughout your morning.

How we work with clients

• A contract with an Australian company, and an NDA before you share anything sensitive.
• Senior engineers in Dhaka, led by one accountable person you deal with directly.
• A shared window every working day, with weekly priorities, written updates and demos.
• Your repositories, your IP, from the first commit.
• Fixed-price starting points: a scoping Sprint from A$5k, and Pilots from A$15k for a first release. Ongoing teams run month to month, priced by team size.

You can see the products this team has built on our work page, and how each change is checked on how we work.

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If you're comparing outsourcing options, a 30-minute scoping call is the quickest way to find out whether a Bangladesh-based team suits your product: who would be on it, what the overlap with your hours would be, and what it would cost.