If you want to keep the engineers and leave the supplier, the order of operations decides what it costs. Sign the new paper first — the next studio's statement of work, the engineer's agreement to move, a named start date — then give notice on the old contract, so the notice period becomes your overlap instead of your gap. Before any of it, read five clauses: term and notice, non-solicitation, any conversion fee, the intellectual property chain, and whether the engineer is the incumbent's employee or its contractor.
The engineers are good and the work is shipping; what you want to end is the account management, the margin, or a substitution you did not approve. There is nobody neutral to ask about it, though. Every supplier you can put the question to is either the incumbent that loses the account or the candidate that gains it, and this page is written by one of the two — so read it as reasoning you can check against your own contract, not as advice from a disinterested party.
Name what is actually wrong first
A supplier change fixes supplier problems and carries client-side problems across intact. It genuinely fixes a contract that lets the vendor move your engineer onto another account, a rotation where the person you interviewed quietly became someone else, and exclusivity that lived in a sales conversation. It does not fix a brief that describes a stack instead of a problem, or decisions scheduled in hours your engineer cannot attend — the piece on engagements that do not work out covers those.
The five clauses that decide what this costs
- Term and notice. Read this one first, because it sets the size of every window below. Thirty days is the reasonable norm and the one the rest of this article assumes; a ninety-day notice, or a minimum term with a termination fee, changes the plan rather than the price.
- Non-solicitation. Check who it binds and for how long after termination. What decides this case is whether it reaches engaging the person indirectly or through a third party — which is what moving them to another supplier is. A clause against "employing" them may not reach it; one against "employ or engage, directly or indirectly" is written for it.
- Conversion or buy-out fee. The conversion piece covers the fee itself. What it does not cover is this case: most of those clauses are drafted for a move onto your own payroll, and a move to another supplier falls in the silence between the words. Silence is not permission; it is an argument you would rather not have.
- The intellectual property chain. Two links, and you only see the second: engineer to supplier, supplier to you. Check that the supplier hereby assigns rather than agrees to assign later, that it survives termination, and that it warrants the engineer assigned the same rights to it in writing — the assignment checklist has the language. If assignment is conditioned on payment in full, a disputed final invoice becomes a dispute about who owns the code. Narrower versions exist — reversion of the rights in one overdue invoice rather than a hold on everything — and ours is one of them: the terms on the contract page revert the work covered by an invoice unpaid for more than thirty days. Ask any supplier which of the two shapes its clause is, because the summary never says.
- What the engineer is to the incumbent. A Brazilian supplier may engage them as a PJ contractor through their own company or employ them under CLT — the PJ explainer covers both. Either can carry a restrictive covenant, and an employee has notice of their own. That contract is not yours to read, so ask the engineer early. This is not legal advice; anything resembling a non-compete is worth twenty minutes of a Brazilian lawyer's time.
Why haste with the notice costs more than the notice
The intuitive sequence — decide, give notice, then arrange the move — goes wrong four ways at once.
- Your notice period — thirty days in a reasonable contract, ninety in a bad one — runs with an incumbent that has no reason to spend it well. Handover quality is discretionary, and you just removed the discretion.
- The engineer learns their income has an end date before it has a start date, and the careful ones start interviewing that week — right for them, the opposite of what you wanted.
- If a non-solicitation clause exists, you have announced the event it covers while it is in force, with nothing in place and nothing to trade.
- You lose the overlap: used well, that window is time when the old account is live, access works, and the engineer writes down what only they know.
The cheap sequence puts every reversible step before the single irreversible one. Confirm the engineer wants to move, and on what terms. Read the next supplier's assignment clause before its price. Name a start date. Sign. Then give notice, in writing, with a date. One exception: a security or trust failure, where you pay the notice and cut access the same day.
Expect one number to move, and it is the rate. A supplier quoting for an engineer who already has the job is not filling an empty seat, and the engineer now sees both sides of the margin, so budget flat rather than cheaper.
What to require of the next supplier
A transfer is the one moment you hold real leverage, and the thirty-day replacement guarantee is worth little here — you already know the person. Spend that leverage on the terms that do matter on a transfer, and treat any supplier that asks you to give up the guarantee to get them as having answered a different question:
- An assignment covering work created before signature, since work happens during the overlap.
- A named-engineer clause, with no substitution without your written approval.
- Exclusivity in the contract, not in the sales thread.
- Month to month, thirty days notice, symmetrical, no placement or termination fee.
- No conversion fee, with a stated path to your own payroll. A supplier that will not write that down is telling you that standing between you and the engineer is part of its business model.
Each of those five is in the terms HireBrazilDevs publishes in full, reversion clause and all. Published or not, ask for the clause text rather than the summary — the gap between a pricing page and a signature block is where these problems live.
When staying is the better move
- Price is the only complaint. Ask the incumbent for the number first. A renegotiation costs one email, a transition costs weeks of attention, and a refusal leaves every option open.
- Several engineers sit with one supplier. Every risk here multiplies. Move one, live with it for a month, then decide about the rest.
- The supplier does something you would have to replace. A legal entity where you need one, or a compliance posture your buyers audit. A cheaper studio is not an upgrade if that goes with it — we do not sell a ready-made HIPAA or SOC 2 package, and nor do most small studios, so check rather than assume.
- The engineer is lukewarm. They may have signed something, or have a relationship with the supplier you are not party to. A signed clause and an enforceable one are different questions, and neither you nor this page settles the second — that is the Brazilian lawyer's twenty minutes above, reading their document rather than yours.
In the right order a supplier change is paperwork and one quiet month. In reverse it is a resignation, an argument about a clause nobody read, and a seat to fill twice.