How to fill an engineering position that stays open.
If a position has been open for five months, two finalists took other offers, and a roadmap item has moved three times, this page is for you.
First, look at the profile before your process
When a search runs long, the instinct is to look inward: rewrite the description, add a channel, loosen a requirement, or run a referral push.
Sometimes that’s the answer. More often, the search is long because the profile is scarce, and that scarcity comes from the market. Rewriting the description won’t create an engineer who has spent two years learning what breaks when a model meets real traffic.
The months it takes to discover that are the most expensive part of the search.
What it has already cost you
An open role costs you money while it stays open.
It costs you the roadmap items that keep sliding, the two people covering the gap while doing their own job, and the recruiting hours spent on a search that hasn’t closed.
Most teams track the salary they haven’t paid yet. Few track the delivery they’ve already lost.
If that number keeps growing, the open role has become a delivery problem.
Four ways to fill an engineering position
Including the two that are rarely offered to you, and the situations where our model isn’t the right fit.
Most teams consider two options: keep searching locally, or give the project to an agency. There are two more in between, and they usually fit better.
1 · Hire directly, in your own market
- When it’s right: the profile exists near you at a price you can pay. For most roles, this is still the right answer.
- When it stops working: the search has been open so long that the delay costs more than the alternative. That threshold is different for every team, and it’s worth calculating.
2 · Set up your own entity where the talent is
- What you get: full control of the employment relationship, no third party, and a permanent presence in that market.
- What it costs: registration, local filings, statutory reporting, and someone who understands the labor law of a country where you don’t operate. It’s a permanent cost.
- When it’s right: you plan to hire several people in one country for several years, so the overhead pays off. For a single engineer, it rarely does.
3 · Employer of record
- What it does: a third party becomes the legal employer of someone you already chose.
- Where it starts: once you already know who you want. An employer of record doesn’t search for candidates.
- When it’s right: you found the candidate yourself, through a referral, your network, or a rehire, and you need them employed legally without building an entity.
- A note on PEOs, because the terms often get mixed up: a PEO is co-employment for a company that already has employees. It manages the people you already have.
4 · Staffing with employment included
- What it does: the partner finds the person and employs them.
- When it’s right: finding the profile is the hard part, which is usually the case in AI, security, and data engineering today.
- This is the model we offer. An employer of record steps in once you’ve found the person; we start earlier, when you still can’t find them. The legal setup is the same, but it solves a different problem.
How to choose, in one question
Is the hard part finding the person, or employing them?
If the hard part is employing them, options 2 or 3 fit. If the hard part is finding them, option 4 is the one that helps: options 2 and 3 only come in once the person is found.
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Looking for a specific technology or role?
Send us the stack and the seniority you need. We’ll confirm whether we can find that profile.
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