How to Hire Developers for a Startup

How to Hire a Developer for a Startup: A Summary

ScienceSoft is ready to provide all the necessary talents for hire under both team augmentation and dedicated team outsourcing cooperation agreements. We assist with onboarding and team building of our experts as well as help with finding cost optimization opportunities.

In this comprehensive guide below, you'll discover proven strategies to effectively hire developers for startups. We’ll explore startup-friendly hiring models for programmers, offer insightful tips on locating and integrating developers into your team, and provide a detailed comparison between the costs of in-house versus outsourcing options.

Models to Hire Developers for Startup

One of the key steps in hiring programmers for startups is choosing the right model. The models differ in costs as well as in the way employment and management responsibilities are distributed.

In-house employment

You provide long-term employment to a team of developers, fully take care of their onboarding and training, and make sure that each of them has the necessary hardware and software to perform their job (either in your office or remotely).

• Employment and related legal paperwork responsibility – your company.
• Management – your PM or a team lead.
• Payment – developers’ salaries, which include payroll taxes and sick leave payments.

Outsourcing

You partner up with either freelancing programmers or an IT company that lends you its resources under a team augmentation or a dedicated team arrangement.

Among startup-friendly outsourcing options, you can choose between team augmentation and a dedicated team.

If you still don’t know which model to choose, feel free to consult ScienceSoft's article on in-house and outsourcing pros and cons.

Talents ScienceSoft Usually Employs in Software Development

Your team’s composition is usually defined by the scale and type of software your startup creates – a web app, a mobile app, SaaS/XaaS, etc. Below, ScienceSoft gives a list of common developer roles for a startup with a mid-scale software project of any type.

Consider ScienceSoft as Your Outsourcing Partner

With over 35 years in outsourced software development and cooperation with startups, ScienceSoft offers reliable team augmentation and dedicated team services.

Why New Startups Partner Up with ScienceSoft

• Full-service software development company since 1989.

• 750+ IT experts on board.
• Over 4,000 success stories (including projects for Viber, eBay, MTV).
• ScienceSoft is a 3-Year Champion in The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies Rating by the Financial Times.
• 4.8 rating on Clutch.com.
• HIPAA, FDA, PCI DSS compliance.

ScienceSoft's experience in agile development ensured smooth project implementation and iterative development of Enonic XP. This enabled us to adjust to the changing market requirements and incorporate features that made us stand out from competition. ScienceSoft's team has become an integrated part of Enonic, and we appreciate their efforts and passion for the product.

Morten Øien Eriksen, CEO at Enonic, a provider of an innovative CMS platform

How to Hire Developers for a Startup in 6 Steps

CB Insights reports that 26% of startups fail because they lack the right team or team culture. To help you avoid this common pitfall, ScienceSoft provides step-by-step guidance and valuable tips on how to hire programmers for a startup effectively.

Step 1. Define requirements for candidates

ScienceSoft recommends starting your hiring process by clearly defining what skills and qualities you want in your team members. First of all, there's a need to understand the required technical competencies based on your software’s technical stack from a software requirements specification (SRS). However, the hiring process doesn't stop at these primary qualifications. Given the unique environment of a startup, where each individual's role is significantly impactful due to the small team size and broad responsibility spectrum, it becomes equally important to evaluate other valuable skills. These additional skills enable team members not only to meet their direct responsibilities but also to contribute meaningfully to the overarching objectives of the startup:

For developers, architects, QA and DevOps engineers

For UX/UI designers

Step 2. Conduct screening and interviewing

The table below shows the scope of your screening and interviewing responsibilities for both in-house and outsourcing hiring models.

Step 3. Formalize the employment

In case of in-house hiring, you’ll need to allocate a significant amount of HR and legal efforts to enroll each developer you decide to take on board.

Vendor cooperation is based on a Service Level Agreement, which stipulates that the vendor remains the legal employer of all developers while you leverage their skills in your project. In other words, SLA is the only major paper you need to take care of regardless of how many talents you will need to join your team in the long run.

Step 4. Carry out onboarding and training

For startups, in-house onboarding includes instilling company values and sharing motivations behind the software idea in new hires. It implies significant newcomer training efforts that can come at a high cost for the productivity of your in-house resources.

Cooperation with a vendor - even with an offshore one - is a sure way to speed up onboarding, as a vendor’s developer pool consists of experts for whom quick adjustment to new requirements and onboarding in 1-2 weeks are parts of the job description. Regular communication between your startup and a vendor’s developers will streamline your collaboration from the get-go and accelerate the ramp-up even further.

Step 5. Build a team

To build a real team, you need to teach developers to feel and show respect for each other’s skills and duties, communicate in a friendly manner in any situation, and be always ready to request and provide help. In in-house employment, ScienceSoft usually achieves this with the help of long-term HR training or during a small, carefully managed test project.

However, spending so much time and effort on training can be considered a luxury for most startups. A dedicated team cooperation model may be a good alternative since it allows you to enjoy the results of cohesive teamwork without investing in team-building and fully entrusting it to a vendor instead.

Step 6. Scale a team for software evolution

After an MVP release to the market, you can face new challenging needs during software evolution: implementation of advanced features (e.g., AI, blockchain, AR), CI/CD setup, continuous software maintenance and support, etc. For an in-house team, this implies a number of new roles and a months-long wait for the recruiters to fill the openings with the fitting candidates, which can hold back your software growth.

With outsourced cooperation, your needs can be addressed within a few days after signing a ‘team scale up’ addendum to the SLA. When cooperating with ScienceSoft, you get access to the vendor’s pool of experts in cutting-edge tech, DevOps, L1-L3 support, or other fields and can welcome new necessary talents in your augmented or dedicated team in 1-2 days.

Benefits of Cooperation with ScienceSoft

Costs of Hiring Programmers for a Startup

Costs to hire developers for your startup depend on multiple factors: