A Dedicated Development Team in Egypt for UAE and GCC Companies: Hours, Week, Language and Contract
A dedicated development team in Egypt for UAE and GCC companies: the overlap hours, the Sunday–Thursday week, Arabic, Egypt vs India, and the contract.
A dedicated development team in Egypt gives UAE and GCC companies engineers who share most of their working day, work the same Sunday-to-Thursday week as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, and read Arabic natively. Whether it suits you comes down to four practical things: the hours you share, the week you share, the language the work happens in, and who holds the contract.
Why choose a dedicated development team in Egypt?
Quick answer: Hours, week and language. Egypt is one to two hours behind the UAE, and level with or one hour behind Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. It works Sunday to Thursday, the same week as those three, and shares Monday to Thursday with most UAE companies. Its engineers are native Arabic speakers who work in English.
Planning a team for the long term? Plan a dedicated team →
What the wrong location costs you
Hiring every engineer locally means recruitment fees, visas and notice periods, one person at a time. An offshore team solves the hiring speed but can add a delay of its own: on a distant time zone, a question asked at 10:00 is answered the next morning, and a team that doesn’t read Arabic needs every Arabic requirement translated first. Each costs a day here and there, and over a year they add up to releases that land weeks late.
The hours you share
Egypt runs on UTC+2, and on summer time (UTC+3) from the last Friday of April to the end of the last Thursday of October, under the 2023 law that brought summer time back (Egypt Independent). The Gulf states don’t change their clocks. This year, Egyptian summer time ends on 29 October 2026.
Assuming a 09:00 to 18:00 day in both places:
- Dubai and Abu Dhabi (UTC+4). Egypt is two hours behind in winter and one in summer, so you share seven to eight hours a day. The team’s afternoon runs past your office’s close, so a request sent at 17:00 Dubai time still lands inside their working day.
- Riyadh, Doha and Kuwait City (UTC+3). Egypt is one hour behind in winter and level in summer, so you share eight hours, or the whole working day.
Work outside the overlap continues through written handovers in your Slack or Teams and your tracker.
The week you share
Egypt’s weekend is Friday and Saturday, so the team works Sunday to Thursday, the same five days as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. For companies there, every working day is shared.
The UAE is different. The federal government moved to a Monday-to-Friday week in January 2022 (u.ae), and most UAE companies now work Monday to Friday as well, although private companies set their own weekend. If yours does, you share four weekdays, Monday to Thursday. On Sunday the team works while your office is closed, which suits focused work with no meetings. On Friday your office works and the team doesn’t, so plan releases, demos and decisions for Monday to Thursday.
How we set up a dedicated team in Egypt
- Your brief, with the hours in it. Roles, skills, seniority, the overlap window you need and the language each role works in. If your stand-up is at 09:30 Dubai time, put that in the brief.
- We recruit, you choose. We source candidates for each role from the market, and from our core team where one fits, then screen them with a technical interview and a practical assessment. You interview the shortlist and approve every person.
- Contract, then access. The NDA, master agreement and statement of work come first, signed with Flojics in Dubai. Then named accounts in your tools and access to your repositories.
- Run it on the shared days. Stand-ups inside the overlap, sprint demos from Monday to Thursday, and a monthly written report. You own the priorities, and our delivery lead runs the team’s process.
- Grow it, or take it in-house. Add people to the same brief, each approved by you. With Build-Operate-Transfer, you can take over the engineers we recruited for you when the contract ends, on terms agreed up front.
Egypt or India for a GCC development team?
India is the usual comparison, and it has real strengths: a much larger pool of engineers and vendors, and depth in almost every stack. Take this table to whoever decides where the team sits.
| Egypt | India | |
|---|---|---|
| Time difference from Dubai | 1 to 2 hours behind | 1.5 hours ahead |
| Shared hours with Dubai, 09:00 to 18:00 | 7 to 8 | About 7.5 |
| Shared hours with Riyadh, Doha or Kuwait City | 8 to 9 | About 6.5 |
| Working week | Sunday to Thursday | Monday to Friday at most IT firms |
| Shared weekdays with a Monday-to-Friday UAE office | 4 | 5 |
| Shared weekdays with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait | 5 | 4 |
| Arabic | The native language | Rarely a native language |
| Size of the talent pool | Smaller | Much larger |
| Fits when | Arabic is part of the product or the conversations, or your business runs on the Sunday-to-Thursday week | You need scale or a rare stack, and the work happens in English |
The honest reading: for a Dubai company that works Monday to Friday in English only, India matches the week better and the hours about as well. Egypt pulls ahead when Arabic is part of the work, or when your company, your clients or your stakeholders are in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Kuwait. What Arabic should mean role by role is covered in our guide to Arabic-speaking developers for hire.
Send us a role brief. The roles, skills and seniority you need, your working week and the overlap window you want. We reply with how we would recruit the team and who you would interview. Start dates and rates are agreed in your proposal. Plan a dedicated team →
Not ready for a call? Ask for our company profile and we’ll send it to you.
Who holds the contract
You sign with Flojics, a UAE company, and the contract is held from our headquarters at Dubai Digital Park, Dubai Silicon Oasis. Our core team works from Alexandria, and the engineers recruited for your team work from our Alexandria office or wherever your brief sets. HR, payroll and replacements sit with us, so recruitment and employment in Egypt never land on your side. Code, pipelines and documentation sit in your repositories from the first commit.
Same week, same region: Qargo
Qargo is a car rental and ride-hailing platform we built for Qatar. Talk to the team that built it: book a meeting.
Qargo was a project rather than a dedicated team, and Qatar works the same Sunday-to-Thursday week as our team in Alexandria. Planning a product for Qatar rather than a team? See our software development company in Qatar page.
Two of our pillars carry into every dedicated team we run. CTO oversight: every project is supervised by senior technical leadership, so architecture calls never rest on one engineer. Transparent delivery: clear milestones, reporting and communication, so you see delivered work from across the border, not only hours logged.
Plan your team around your working week
Since 2014 we have worked with more than 100 clients across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the USA and Canada, from our offices in Dubai, Houston and Alexandria. See how we set up dedicated development teams in Dubai, from vetting to onboarding.
Plan a dedicated team → We ask about your goal, what you use today, your timing and who else should be involved. You leave with clear next steps. The call commits you to nothing, and we sign an NDA first if you want one.
Frequently asked questions
What is the time difference between Egypt and the UAE?
Egypt is two hours behind the UAE in winter and one hour behind during Egyptian summer time, which runs from the last Friday of April to the last Thursday of October. The UAE doesn't change its clocks. On a 09:00 to 18:00 day in both places, you share seven to eight hours.
Does a development team in Egypt work on Fridays?
No. Egypt's weekend is Friday and Saturday, so the team works Sunday to Thursday, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. With a Monday-to-Friday office in the UAE you share Monday to Thursday, so plan releases and demos for those days and decide who on your side handles anything urgent on a Friday.
Who do we sign the contract with?
With Flojics, from our headquarters at Dubai Digital Park, Dubai Silicon Oasis. The NDA comes first if you want one, then the master agreement and statement of work. HR, payroll and replacements for the team sit with us, and the code sits in your repositories from the first commit.
How much does a dedicated team in Egypt cost?
A monthly fee per team under a long-term contract, agreed in your proposal. It moves with the roles, seniority, team size and term. Recruitment, payroll and employment in Egypt sit with us, so you see one fee rather than a set of local obligations.
Can we take the engineers in-house later?
Yes, with Build-Operate-Transfer. When the contract ends, you can take over the engineers we recruited for you, on terms agreed up front, through your own entity in Egypt or an employer you choose. Our delivery lead and QA stay with our core team and hand over the process and documentation.
