Software Developer Recruiters Who Know Who Actually Ships

In practice the titles overlap, but we split the desks by where the work lives. Developer recruiting leans toward people who build and ship product in a language or framework. Engineer recruiting leans toward systems, architecture, and platform.

Plenty of teams use the two words interchangeably. No problem. What matters isn’t the title on the req. It’s the work behind it. If you’re hiring someone to ship features in React, Java, or Swift, you’re on the right page. If the role is really about distributed systems, scale, and platform ownership, our software engineer recruiters cover that angle, and our DevOps recruiters handle infrastructure and reliability. Same firm, same standards. We just point you at the recruiter who’s screened the most people doing your kind of work.

Most contingency developer recruiting runs 18% to 25% of the hire’s first-year base, billed only when someone actually starts. Contract placements bill at an hourly rate with the markup built in, and senior or leadership searches sometimes use a retained model.

The fee isn’t the number that matters. The cost of the seat staying empty is. Do that math first. An open senior developer role quietly drains more than a placement fee in slipped releases, features nobody can build, and the occasional bad self-sourced hire who churns at month four and takes a chunk of team momentum with them. We’re happy to walk through which model fits your budget before you commit, and to be honest about when a contingency search is the wrong tool for the job.

A developer recruiter is the person who runs your search. A staffing agency is the wider operation around them: engagement models, compliance, payrolling, and a deeper bench. KORE1 is both, so the recruiter on your req is backed by 20-plus years of infrastructure.

Want to know who picks up the phone and actually works your search? That’s the recruiter. That’s this page. If you want the full menu of how we engage, with contract, contract-to-hire, and direct hire laid out side by side, our staffing pages cover that in detail. Same desk behind both. We just split the pages so the people don’t get buried under the process.

The good ones don’t start with a job posting. They start with a network of developers they already know, built over years of staying in touch with people who aren’t looking. Boards and outreach come second, only to widen a search the network already started.

Here’s the part most clients never see. We start ahead. By the time your req lands with us, half the sourcing is already done, because we’ve been talking to senior front-end, full-stack, and mobile people all year, not just the week you called. That’s also why we can be honest early. If a role is genuinely hard, say a Rust developer in a thin market, we’ll tell you on day two from real signal on our bench, not a sales script.

First shortlist in 3 to 5 business days. Average hire in 17 days across our recent developer placements, against an industry average that runs past 60 days for developer roles and longer for senior seats where the pool of people who’ve actually shipped is small.

Speed comes from relationships, not outreach volume. We’re not starting from zero when you call, so the first names usually move fast. It also means we can be straight when a role needs a longer runway. A lead developer who’s owned a product at scale isn’t a three-day shortlist, and we’d rather tell you that on day two than waste a week feeding you a thin list of maybes. If you’re still scoping the role, our engineering recruiters can help set the level and comp band before the search even starts.

Yes. Our desk covers the whole application stack, and a recruiter who hits the edge of their lane pulls in a colleague who lives in the next one. Front-end, full-stack, backend, mobile, and the specialty framework work most agencies can’t screen.

Most product problems don’t respect tidy title lines. The feature needs a builder, the launch needs someone who’s shipped to a store, and the whole thing needs someone who can explain a tradeoff to a PM without losing the room. Because we staff across the stack, you get the specialist without shopping for a second agency. When a search crosses into data, our IT recruiters and broader tech recruiting team are one call away.

Yes, all three. Contract for builds, launches, and surge work. Contract-to-hire for higher-risk roles where a trial period lowers the cost of a wrong call. Direct hire for core team members and leads.

The model should follow the work, not the other way around. A four-month mobile launch doesn’t need a permanent hire. A founding developer on a growing team almost certainly does. If you ask for a structure that doesn’t fit the work, expect us to say so. Usually we’re right, and it’s far cheaper than finding the mismatch four months into a contract that should have been a direct hire from day one. For longer builds, the project staffing model often beats a string of single contracts.