Senior engineers, vetted by engineers, embedded in your team in days, not months.
We source, screen, and embed full-time software engineers into UK, US, and European teams. Every candidate clears a five-stage technical bar set by working developers, so you only interview the top 3%.
Sound familiar?
Hiring engineers is broken, and it's holding your roadmap hostage
If you've been hiring through agencies or job boards, you already know the pattern.
Three months to fill one senior role
Job posts, screening calls, take-homes, panel interviews, offer negotiation. By the time you've hired, your roadmap has slipped a quarter and a competitor has shipped.
Recruiters who don't understand the work
You get five "senior full-stack engineers" in your inbox. One has shipped production React, two have written TypeScript in tutorials, and the others have inflated CVs. You waste cycles filtering noise.
Local salaries that don't match your runway
A mid-level engineer in London or San Francisco costs $140k+ all-in. For an early-stage team trying to ship, every senior hire is a runway decision, and you're competing with FAANG.
Bad hires that take months to unwind
They looked great in the interview. Six weeks in, they're slowing the team down. Now you're managing a PIP instead of shipping product, and your engineering manager is doing damage control.
The Outcome
What changes when hiring stops being a bottleneck
Vetted engineers, embedded in your team, working in your stack, on the same week you decide to hire.
Hire in days, not quarters
We present 2-3 pre-vetted candidates within a week of your brief. You interview, choose, and have someone shipping in their first sprint.
Only see candidates worth your time
Every engineer has passed a take-home, live coding, system design, and founder interview run by working developers. No CV bingo, no surprises in week three.
Senior engineering at startup cost
Get the level of engineer your roadmap needs at a fraction of UK, US, or European salaries, without compromising on technical depth or communication.
How It Works
From brief to embedded engineer in three steps
No long discovery, no procurement loops. We move at startup pace because that's the pace you need.
Tell us what you need
30-minute call with a founder. Walk us through your stack, the role, what success looks like in 90 days, and the must-haves vs. nice-to-haves. We give you a candidate timeline and a flat monthly rate.
We shortlist from our vetted pool
We pull from engineers who have already cleared our technical bar, matched against your stack and seniority. You receive 2-3 candidates with profiles, scorecards, and recorded coding sessions.
Interview, choose, and embed
You run final interviews on your terms. Once you pick, we handle onboarding, equipment, contracts, and payroll. The engineer joins your standups, your tools, and your sprints.
Roles We Place
Senior engineers across the stack you're building on
We focus on mid-to-senior engineers (3+ years of production experience). No bootcamp grads, no generalists. Every engineer has shipped at scale and can hold their own in a system design conversation on day one.
Most active demand right now is for AI engineers and senior full-stack, but we maintain a vetted pool across every category below.
Full-Stack Engineers
React/Next.js + Node/Python
AI/ML Engineers
LLMs, RAG, agents, ML infra
Backend Engineers
APIs, services, distributed systems
Frontend Engineers
React, Vue, design-system depth
DevOps & Platform
AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, IaC
Data Engineers
Pipelines, warehouses, analytics
Mobile Engineers
React Native, iOS, Android
Engineering Leads
Tech leads, staff, EMs
Where our engineers come from
We source and vet exclusively from Pakistan's senior engineering market: a deep pool of product engineers with strong English, full UK and EU time zone overlap, and the technical depth to clear our five-stage bar. We focus on one supply market deliberately. Depth beats breadth.
How We Vet
Five stages. Run by engineers. Only the top 3% pass.
Most staffing platforms run a coding test and call it screening. We treat vetting like a real technical interview loop, because that's what gives you confidence the engineer can actually do the work.
Every stage is run or reviewed by a working software engineer, not a recruiter with a rubric. You get the candidate's full scorecard before you ever meet them.
Application & profile screen
Resume, portfolio, GitHub, and past project depth. We look for shipped work, not titles or schools. ~85% are cut here.
Technical screen with a working engineer
30-minute call covering past projects, decisions, and trade-offs. Communication and reasoning get tested as hard as the technical depth.
Take-home assignment, scored against a rubric
A real problem in their stack, time-boxed to 4-6 hours. We score code quality, design choices, testing, and documentation, not just whether it works.
Live coding + system design (90 min)
Pair-programming session and a system design walkthrough. We're looking for how they think under pressure, not just whether they reach the answer.
Founder interview: communication & ownership
Final conversation with a founder. Ownership mindset, written communication, and how they handle ambiguity. If we wouldn't hire them ourselves, you won't see them.
What You'll See
Every candidate comes with a full scorecard
When we send you a candidate, you don't get a CV and a coding test result. You get the full picture, written by the engineer who screened them.
Built a production RAG service handling 50k+ docs at a previous role. Strong reasoning under ambiguity, walked through three design trade-offs unprompted. Would hire onto our team without hesitation.
How We Compare
Different from the platforms you've already tried
Most staffing platforms run a coding test and a recruiter call. We run a full technical loop, led by working engineers, before you ever see a profile.
ObjectSingle Talent | Toptal / Turing Marketplaces | In-house hiring Direct, in-market | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vetted by working engineers | Yes | Recruiter-led | DIY |
| Five-stage technical loop | Yes | Test + interview | DIY |
| Time to first candidate | 5-7 days | 2-3 weeks | 1-3 months |
| Full-time embedded, not freelance | Yes | Mixed | Yes |
| Matches your time zone | Guaranteed | Varies | Yes |
| 30-day risk-free trial | Yes | Limited | Probation |
| Single invoice, no payroll | Yes | Yes | No |
| Replace anytime, no penalty | Yes | Limited | No |
| Cost vs local senior hire | 50-65% lower | 20-40% lower | Baseline |
- · 90+ days to first hire
- · £110-140K / $140-180K / €130-170K all-in per senior
- · 20-25% recruiter fee on top
- · 3-6 month notice if it doesn't work out
- 7-14 days to first hire
- From £47K / $60K / €54K per year equivalent
- No placement fee, single monthly invoice
- 30-day trial, replace anytime
Fit Check
Is this right for you?
ObjectSingle Talent is a fit if any of these describe your situation.
You need senior engineers fast and full-time
Your roadmap is slipping because hiring is taking months. You need someone in standups within two weeks, not next quarter.
You're tired of CV-bingo from recruiters
You want to interview people who have already proven they can do the work, not filter through ten profiles to find one signal.
Your roadmap is bigger than your hiring budget
You need senior-level output at a cost structure that doesn't burn runway. Cutting scope isn't an option, hiring abroad smartly is.
You're scaling AI or product capabilities
You need engineers who can ship LLM features, build agent workflows, or own a product surface end-to-end, and you need them now.
You don't want to run international payroll
Hiring a contractor in another country means contracts, taxes, equipment, compliance. You want a single invoice. We handle the rest.
You want optionality, not a 12-month commitment
Month-to-month engagement, 30-day trial on every placement, replace anytime. You stay in control of your team composition.
Engagement
Single hire or full pod. One flat monthly rate.
Every engagement is a single monthly invoice per engineer. No placement fees, no agency markup percentages, no surprise line items. Final rate confirmed on the brief call once we understand seniority and stack.
Single engineer
One vetted engineer embedded full-time in your team. Right for filling a specific role, replacing a contractor, or extending team capacity without a six-month hiring cycle.
Engineering pod
A team of 3+ engineers with a dedicated tech lead, plus a shared talent operations partner. Right for companies scaling a function (AI, platform, product) quickly without losing the bar.
Indicative monthly rates
Single engineer, full-time embedded. Final rate confirmed on the brief call.
| Tier | GBP | EUR | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
Mid-level 3-5 yrs production | from £3,900/mo | from €4,500/mo | from $5,000/mo |
Senior 5-8 yrs, owns features | from £5,200/mo | from €6,000/mo | from $6,500/mo |
Staff / Tech Lead 8+ yrs, leads scope | from £6,900/mo | from €8,000/mo | from $8,800/mo |
AI / ML specialist Premium on any tier | +£900-1,300/mo | +€1,000-1,500/mo | +$1,100-1,650/mo |
Every rate includes
No hidden line items, no agency markup percentages. One monthly invoice covers everything below.
"The bar for engineers we present is the bar we'd set if we were hiring them onto our own team. That's the only standard we know how to run."
FAQ
Common questions
Everything you need to know before booking a hiring call. If your question isn't here, let's talk.
Have more questions? Let's talkReady to stop hiring blind?
Tell us what you need. We'll come back within a week with 2-3 candidates worth your time, each with a full scorecard, recorded coding session, and a clear answer to whether they can do the work.