Allergan partnered with HappyFunCorp to recruit, vet, and embed 32 engineers in Costa Rica and North America over 14 months. The team shipped some of Allergan's highest-priority digital products, including Allē, the loyalty platform that now serves more than 3 million users, and the A4B platform, a centralized gateway connecting providers to Allergan's product network.
Allergan
Allergan is a global pharmaceutical brand inside AbbVie’s roughly 50,000-person operation. Its product line includes more than 30 brands, from BOTOX® and JUVEDERM® to treatments spanning oncology and eye care. In the years leading up to AbbVie’s acquisition in 2020, Allergan built an internal technology arm, Allergan Data Labs (now Allergan Aesthetics Technology), focused on transforming its medical aesthetics business through digital products.
The ambitions were significant: launch direct-to-consumer experiences for some of the most recognized brands in aesthetics, build the loyalty infrastructure to support them, and create B2B tools for the thousands of providers who administer Allergan’s treatments. What the team needed was engineering capacity and technical leadership that could match the pace.
The Challenge
Allergan’s digital roadmap was extensive. The team needed to build and ship consumer-facing products starting with Allē, a loyalty platform connecting patients with providers and BOTOX®, JUVEDERM®, and other treatments. Behind it sat a pipeline of B2B tools, mobile experiences, and campaign infrastructure that would drive hundreds of millions in DTC revenue.
The constraint was time. Building a team of senior JavaScript engineers, especially one based in Latin America to support Allergan’s nearshoring strategy, is not something you do quickly through conventional recruiting.
Allergan needed a partner who could source, vet, and place engineers fast, but who would also take ownership of quality and technical leadership. These engineers would work on revenue-critical products in front of millions of users. Slow onboarding or poor culture fit wouldn’t just cost time. It would stall the product roadmap.
The Approach
HappyFunCorp recommended Costa Rica based on direct experience building high-performing teams there. The talent market is strong, the time zone alignment with U.S.-based product teams are favorable, and HappyFunCorp had an existing network of engineers across seniority levels in the region. Allergan also had an office in Costa Rica, making the location particularly appealing.
The engagement used HappyFunCorp’s embedded team model. Engineers hired through HappyFunCorp weren’t engineers working in isolation. They were placed directly into Allergan’s squad structure, working alongside Allergan’s own engineers and product managers. Each placement was deliberate: HappyFunCorp matched engineers to squads based on technical competency, stack familiarity, and the specific demands of the product that the squad owned.
This mattered because Allergan ran a model where each team owned a distinct product surface. An engineer placed on the Allē loyalty squad needed different skills than one working on provider onboarding tools or campaign infrastructure. HappyFunCorp’s approach was to treat each placement like a product decision, not a staffing one. The question wasn’t “who is available?” It was “who is the right engineer for this squad, this product, this team composition, and this stage of development?”
HappyFunCorp placed the first 13 engineers within four months. The hiring rhythm settled at six to eight roles per quarter, with each new cohort integrating into existing squads rather than forming a separate team. By the end of 14 months, 27 HappyFunCorp-placed engineers were working across six squads.
13 engineers placed in 4 months
HappyFunCorp’s first cohort was sourced, vetted, and embedded into Allergan’s squad structure within the first quarter of the engagement. By month 14, the team had grown to 26 across six product squads.
The Work
HappyFunCorp engineers were assigned to Allergan’s highest-priority projects. The most prominent was Allē, Allergan’s first direct-to-consumer platform and the loyalty program that ties together its aesthetics brand portfolio.
Allē is the kind of product that sounds simple in a strategy deck and gets complicated fast in execution. Patients use it to find providers, book treatments, earn and redeem rewards, and track their treatment history. Providers use it to manage their profiles, onboard into the platform, and run campaigns. The system handles complex loyalty logic, payment processing, provider attribution, and regulatory compliance across mobile, web, and backend infrastructure simultaneously. The platform grew to serve more than 3 million users.
The HappyFunCorp team also contributed to Allergan’s DTC campaigns, the digital marketing infrastructure that drove over $400 million in direct-to-consumer sales. That work included building campaign landing pages, optimizing conversion flows, and supporting the integrations that connected marketing spend to measurable patient acquisition. Improvements across this stack drove a 41% reduction in cost-per-acquisition. Allergan leveraged this foundation for digital products like Flash Rewards, a program that sends personalized offers to users when they walk into a provider’s office. Flash Rewards blends the power of a tailored offer with a medical professional’s in-person recommendation, and it’s the kind of product that only becomes possible once the underlying stack is rebuilt to support it.
The Costa Rica team also created the A4B platform, a centralized gateway to the Allergan network that connected providers and exposed products across the ecosystem. The goal was to migrate the existing Allergan platform to a completely new site, transforming the online buying experience from the ground up. A4B gave providers the ability to purchase products, pay bills, and access detailed account information in a single place. The rebuild delivered faster communication with integrations like Salesforce and SAP, a more intuitive and user-friendly interface, and simplified access to tracking numbers, invoices, and product purchases.
Within its first year, the platform onboarded 33 new providers to the DTC ecosystem. The Allē and Flash Rewards campaign reach exceeded 72 million people and generated over 6 million site visits and more than 700,000 new loyalty members.
41% reduction in cost-per-acquisition
Improvements to Allergan’s DTC campaign infrastructure, built and optimized by HappyFunCorp-placed engineers, drove measurable gains in patient acquisition efficiency across BOTOX®, JUVEDERM®, and other Allergan brands.
The Results
Product and revenue outcomes. Allergan’s digital products generated over $400 million in DTC sales. The Allē loyalty platform grew to more than 3 million users. Campaign infrastructure improvements drove a 41% reduction in cost-per-acquisition. Total reach across DTC campaigns exceeded 72 million people.
Team velocity. HappyFunCorp placed 13 engineers in the first four months and 32 total within 14 months, distributed across six product squads. The embedded model meant new engineers were vetted, interviewed by Allergan, and onboarded by HappyFunCorp team members so new engineers were contributing to sprint work within their first weeks, not spending months stuck in recruiting or ramping up on an unfamiliar codebase from the outside.
Operational impact. HappyFunCorp’s vetting process and network-based sourcing reduced Allergan’s time-to-hire and time-to-onboard compared to conventional recruiting. Retention was high. The squad-based placement model meant engineers were productive faster because they were matched to work that fit their skills, not just assigned to whatever seat was open.
$400M+ in DTC sales
Allergan’s direct-to-consumer platform, built and scaled with HappyFunCorp-placed engineering talent, generated more than $400 million in sales across its aesthetics brand portfolio including BOTOX®, JUVEDERM®, and the Allē loyalty program.
Why It Worked
The embedded model is a delivery mechanism, not a staffing arrangement. The distinction matters. Allergan didn’t hire HappyFunCorp to fill seats. They hired HappyFunCorp to build a team that could ship products. That framing shaped every decision: who got hired, where they were placed, how they were supported, and what they were accountable for.
HappyFunCorp’s existing presence in Costa Rica meant the team wasn’t starting from scratch in a new market. They had a network. They understood the local talent landscape. They knew which engineers had the React Native depth that Allergan’s mobile products demanded and which had the backend architecture experience the platform required.
The result was a team that operated as part of Allergan, not adjacent to it. Engineers participated in product strategy, not just ticket execution. They shipped features on Allē, built the DTC campaign infrastructure, and contributed to products that generated hundreds of millions in revenue. The model scaled cleanly from six engineers in the first quarter to 26 across six squads in just over a year.
About HappyFunCorp
HappyFunCorp is a digital product studio with over 15 years of experience and more than 200 products shipped for startups and Fortune 500 companies. The team designs, builds, and scales custom software across mobile, web, and connected platforms. Learn more at happyfuncorp.com.
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