Zitec is one of Romania's most established software and digital-services companies — 20-plus years old, roughly 500 people, and a genuine track record delivering for banks, retailers, and government. If you want a managed team in the EU that can own a product or project end to end, Zitec is a serious, credible choice. Whether it's the right fit depends on whether you want a team delivered to you, or a specific engineer you pick and direct. Zitec was founded in 2003 in Bucharest by Alexandru Lăpușan and Simona Lăpușan, former colleagues from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. Two decades on, it employs around 500 tech and business experts and reports serving 350+ clients across 30+ countries, reaching more than 20 million end-users a year through its projects (zitec.com/about-us). It is a full-service digital company, not a staffing marketplace. Alongside client delivery it builds its own SaaS products — Regista (document management), Mirro (HR and performance management), and Movacy (last-mile delivery software). It's also a certified B Corporation, a Microsoft Premier Partner, and a Google Premier Partner, and was named Microsoft Partner of the Year and Google Cloud EMEA Partner of the Year for Social Impact in 2024 (zitec.com/about-us).

Zitec sells delivery, not headcount. Its two main engagement models are Product Team as a Service and Project Team as a Service — you bring the outcome, and Zitec assembles and manages the team that delivers it (zitec.com). Its work spans tech strategy and consulting, digital solutions development, AI engineering, UX and design, data and machine learning, DevOps and security, and cloud transformation. The AI engineering practice is real and current: process automation, intelligent virtual assistants, internal AI agents for team augmentation, and AI-powered product features, built on Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Zitec reports 150+ delivered projects across those ecosystems and says 90% of its proofs-of-concept reach production (zitec.com/services/ai-engineering).

Longevity and stability. Twenty-plus years and ~500 people is a different risk profile than a young agency. Zitec has survived multiple tech cycles and describes a strong financial foundation — meaningful if you're committing to a multi-quarter build. Named enterprise and public-sector clients. The client list is concrete: Nexent Bank, SAMEDAY, KFC, Leroy Merlin, Decathlon, Regina Maria, and Romanian government ministries. Regulated and enterprise work like that demands process maturity, and it shows. Platform depth. Premier partner status with both Microsoft and Google, plus a Databricks partnership, is hard to earn. If your stack lives in Azure or Google Cloud, that alignment is a genuine advantage. Full-stack ownership. Because Zitec covers strategy, design, engineering, data, and DevOps under one roof, it can take an ambiguous idea and carry it to a shipped product without you stitching vendors together.

You get a managed team, not a hand-picked engineer. The Team-as-a-Service model is the point of Zitec — they staff and run the team so you don't have to. That's ideal when you want the outcome and not the management. It's a different thing from choosing one specific engineer and directing them yourself day to day. AI capability lives at the team level. Zitec's AI practice is strong, but you're buying a practice, not vetting an individual's AI-native fluency directly. If your priority is knowing exactly how one engineer works with modern AI tooling, that's a conversation to have upfront. Best fit is project-shaped work. The model shines when you have a defined product or project to hand off. If what you actually need is one embedded engineer inside your own team, reporting to you, that's a different engagement than what the Team-as-a-Service structure is built for.

Here's the thing about any delivery firm: the best AI engineers aren't sitting on a bench between projects, waiting to be assigned to yours. The ones you actually want are already working — booked on a contract somewhere else, heads-down, not available to be staffed onto a managed team. Nextdev reaches the top 1% of AI engineers — the ones who aren't looking. We give each a real problem to build and watch how they actually work, so you know they're AI-native because you've seen it, not because a bench profile or a partner badge said so. And then we do the part a services firm leaves on your side of the table anyway: we employ them for you. You get one named engineer you picked and direct yourself — and the contract, payroll, and compliance never touch your desk. With a managed team, you're trusting the firm's assignment and still owning the outcome. Here, you own the choice, and we own the paperwork. You're not renting a team someone else assembled. You're getting the one engineer who never would have shown up on a bench.

Zitec is a strong, credible, EU-based delivery partner with real scale, real clients, and a real AI practice. If you want a managed team to carry a product or project from strategy to production, it belongs on your shortlist. If what you actually need is a specific AI-native engineer — one you choose, direct, and keep close, without running employment yourself — that's a different shape of hire, and it's the one Nextdev is built for.