Build-Operate-Transfer in Ukraine
We recruit, contract, pay and run an engineering team in Ukraine to your specification, operate it for an agreed period while you get the output without the administration, and then transfer the team to you. You end up with your own people in Ukraine, without spending the first eighteen months learning how that is done.
Three phases, agreed at the start
Build
We agree the roles, the seniority and the schedule, then recruit against them. Technical interviews are run by people who write the same code, not by a recruiter with a keyword list. Contracts, NDA and intellectual-property assignment are signed and onboarding is tracked before anyone starts.
Operate
We carry employment, payroll, tax filings, equipment, leave, reviews and replacement for an agreed period. The team works to your priorities in your repositories and your process, while the administration stays entirely on our side of the border.
Transfer
At the trigger agreed at the start, the people move to you: onto your own Ukrainian entity, onto an entity set up for the purpose, or under whatever arrangement your lawyers prefer. Documentation, process and tooling configuration go with them.
The trigger for the transfer is written down at the beginning: a date, a headcount or a readiness checklist. Which one it is matters less than the fact that it is agreed before either side has an interest in reading it differently.
Why not just register a company and hire
You can, and one day you probably should. The cost is not the registration; it is what follows it. Which contract form applies to which person, and why the answer changed when Diia City arrived. What a Ukrainian payroll cycle actually requires and when. How to read a local engineering market you have never hired in, and what it pays. What happens to all of that when the person who set it up leaves.
Build-Operate-Transfer separates the two decisions. You hire the team now and take on the administration later, once there is a working team to attach it to rather than an empty entity and a job advert.
What already exists on our side
A BOT arrangement is only as good as the machinery behind it. This is ours, in use every day rather than assembled for a proposal.
Two registered companies
BIG TREE 108 LLC is the contracting party. BIG TREE 108 SECURITY LLC is a resident of Diia City, Ukraine’s legal regime for technology companies, which is what makes the gig-contract form and its tax treatment available.
A hiring pipeline that runs
Nineteen people on the team are active technical interviewers. Sourcing, screening, technical interview, probation and onboarding are a process we operate continuously, not one we would start for you.
A management platform we built
Hiring, onboarding, contracts, time tracking, leave, compensation and invoicing run on one system we wrote and use every day. You get visibility into hours and status from it rather than from a monthly slide.
The paperwork before access
Every specialist signs an NDA and assigns all work product to the company before being given access to anything, so the ownership chain to you is complete on day one and stays complete through a transfer.
Local knowledge you would otherwise buy
Which contract form applies to which person, how Diia City changes the tax position, what a Ukrainian payroll cycle requires, and what the market pays. All of it already learned, and paid for.
Written engineering rules
Tests ship with the feature, the build ends with zero warnings, security is deny-by-default, infrastructure is code. A team built this way is one you can take over without a quality reset.
The platform is not a claim you have to take on trust: it is described in the case study of the system we run the company on.
What a transfer actually moves
The people, with their consent, which is the part that matters and the part most descriptions of this model skate over. Ukrainian specialists are engaged as contractors or under Diia City gig contracts rather than being assets that can be assigned, so a transfer is a conversation with each person, not a clause. We structure the engagement from day one so that nobody has a reason to refuse: the team knows the arrangement, knows the direction and is not being handed somewhere worse.
Around them the transfer moves the documentation, the process, the tooling configuration and whatever entity arrangement was agreed at the start. The code and the intellectual property were yours throughout, assigned onward from each specialist through BigTree108 to you before any access was granted, so there is nothing to negotiate at the end about who owns what.
What we will not pretend
We have built and run this team for ourselves exactly this way, and we run dedicated teams for clients who have not taken the transfer step. We will not show you a list of completed transfers we do not have. What we can show you is every component the model depends on, working, and a first cohort small enough to judge before anyone signs up to five years.
If you want the team but never the entity, that is simply a dedicated team and it is a perfectly good place to stop. BOT that quietly turns into a long engagement is a fine outcome, and we price the operate phase so it is not a trap you have to escape.
The company that would build it
- 30+
- people on the team
- 20+
- client organisations
- 20+
- client projects delivered or running
- 13
- engineering and operations disciplines
Source: BigTree108 staff directory, 4 September 2026
Questions about Build-Operate-Transfer
What is Build-Operate-Transfer?
A three-stage arrangement. We build a team in Ukraine to your specification: recruiting, interviewing, contracting and onboarding. We operate it for an agreed period, carrying the employment, payroll, tax, equipment and management. Then we transfer it to you, either by the people moving onto your own Ukrainian entity or by handing over an entity set up for the purpose. You get a working team instead of a standing start.
Why not just open our own company in Ukraine?
You can, and eventually you may want to. The cost is not the registration, it is the eighteen months of learning that follow it: which contract form applies to which person, how Diia City changes the tax position, what a Ukrainian payroll cycle actually requires, how to interview a local market you do not know. BOT lets you hire the team first and take on the administration once the team is already producing.
What do you already have in place that we would otherwise build?
Two registered companies, one of them a resident of Diia City, Ukraine’s legal regime for technology companies. A hiring pipeline with nineteen active technical interviewers. A management platform we built and run ourselves that carries hiring, onboarding, contracts, time tracking, leave, compensation and invoicing. Signed NDA and intellectual-property assignment from every specialist before any access is granted. None of that is a slide; it is what we run the company on every day.
How long does the operate phase last?
It is agreed at the start rather than left open, and in our experience the honest range is one to three years: long enough for the team to be productive and for you to see how people perform, short enough that nobody is paying a management fee for a team that no longer needs managing. The trigger for transfer can be a date, a headcount or a readiness checklist, and we would rather write down which one it is than argue about it later.
What exactly transfers at the end?
The people, with their consent, which is the part that matters. Around them: the documentation, the process, the tooling configuration, and whatever entity arrangement we agreed at the start. Ukrainian specialists are engaged as contractors or under Diia City gig contracts rather than being assets that can be assigned, so a transfer is negotiated with each person, and we structure the engagement from day one so that nobody has an incentive to refuse.
What if we decide not to transfer?
Then nothing happens and the team keeps running as a normal engagement with us. BOT that quietly turns into a long outsourcing relationship is a perfectly good outcome for both sides, and we price the operate phase so that it is not a trap you have to escape from.
Is this something you have done before?
We have built and run this team the same way for ourselves, and we run dedicated teams for clients who have not taken the transfer step. We will not claim a list of completed transfers we do not have. What we can show you is the machinery the model depends on, in use, and we would rather start with a small first cohort you can judge than with a five-year commitment.
Thinking about your own team in Ukraine?
Tell us the roles, the timescale and whether you want the entity at the end or only the people. You get a written answer within one business day, including an honest view of whether BOT beats simply hiring us.