I'm a co-owner of Data Science UA, the company, which builds complete ecosystem around DS/ML/AI in Ukraine. We host large international conferences (>600 paritcipants), host events and workshops, provide SW development, consulting and recruitment services. We also build AI R&D centers for our clients.
Before Jun'2019 I was GM in Ring Ukraine (acquired by Amazon) since Mar'2017. I was running software development and QA production organization (around 250 engineers). I reported to CEO of Ring Ukraine.
Previously I was on different roles in large outsourcing company Luxoft (NASDAQ: LXFT) where I was leading projects, accounts and divisions up to 100 engineers. The most complex and challenging projects were with clients AMD, LGE, Ford, BMW etc. During 5 years in Luxoft I built accounts and teams from scratch, delivered projects, which are still used by billions of customers around the world, participated in business development activities, meetings and presentations with analysts from companies like Forrester, represented the company in international exhibitions and conferences (like IBC, MWC, Automobil Elektronik Kongress), etc. I have a deep understanding of SW development specifics and R&D (both in product company mode and outsourcing mode) in countries of Eastern Europe, U.S., India, China, South Korea and other APAC countries.
My main expertise is in the following areas:
- Embedded software and hardware
- High-performance computing
- Neural networks and Machine Learning
- Telecom
- Automotive
- Consumer Electronics (TVs, video surveillance)
- Agile and Scrum Project Management
Before Luxoft I was working for ±8 years for U.S. company called Mindspeed Technologies (spin off from Rockwell and Conexant), who developed complex multiprocessor system-on-chip solutions for voice over IP and video over IP. In this company I grew from engineer to project manager running distributed SW team (Ukraine, France, U.S. and China).
Right now most of the mobile applications would need a significant development of backend side of the solution. So, if you implement backend in-house - do mobile in-house, if you can. Otherwise, you would always deal with issues in the interface between app and cloud. In terms of service provider - i can consult you what company you can choose in Ukraine, if this location looks too risky for you, Clutch is the best service to find proper service provider.
It strongly depends on the purpose of your group and the value you give to its subscribers. Right now the best way to achieve organic growth of your group is to use all other channels besides FB, which would have a link to your group (they are different in each industry/country/etc.). 1 suggestion: don't use any services, which would add a lot of non-relevant users to your group, this would destroy its ability to deliver organic traffic from your posts to the real users of your group.
(to extend the answer from previous commenter) Python is also heavily used in all Data Science and Machine Learning applications.
There are a couple of products like this already designed. Producing such product requires a lot of certifications and if you are not a large electronics manufactures, it might be hard to achieve all these certifications.
1. It's important to specify non-solicitation and buyout options in the contract with the client. This is something you need to put attention of your lawyers to. It will strongly depend on your country, country of your client and the laws of which country you will use in disputable cases.
2. Not sure how it's possible to sign SLA without mentioning the company name. Never saw such cases.
3. Depending on the level of the integration with the client and Agency maturity, the Agency can do pretty much everything - product, project management, UI/UX, QA, requirements... anything you can do yourself, but fail to do because of lack of right specialists.
4. The main reason why you may want to work with the Agency is the quality and expertise of their resources. Price should be always a secondary thing (unless you want to offload some simple things - like manual QA, or data labeling, or something like that). Sometimes Agency can have significantly more expertise then you have. Use it properly - and, of course, find the right Agency. Clutch is a very good data source.