Frequently asked questions

The short version

Engineers cost $3,500 to $6,400 per month depending on seniority, work U.S. business hours from UTC−3, are contracted by HireBrazilDevs so you need no Brazilian entity, and can be ended with 30 days notice. Candidates arrive within five business days for common stacks.

Cost and contracts

How much does it cost to hire a Brazilian developer?

$3,500 per month for a mid-level engineer, $4,900 for a senior and $6,400 for a tech lead — full time, dedicated, billed monthly. No recruiting fee and no annual minimum.

Is there a recruiting or placement fee?

No. Nothing to search, nothing to introduce, nothing on top of the monthly rate.

What is the minimum contract length?

There is none. Thirty days notice in either direction, from the first month.

Does the rate change by technology?

No. A Go engineer and a PHP engineer cost the same, which means the saving is much larger on skills that are scarce in the U.S.

What is included in the rate?

The engineer full time, their hardware, their software licenses, their Brazilian taxes and contributions, and the replacement guarantee.

How do we pay?

One monthly invoice in U.S. dollars, by bank transfer or card. No payroll, no benefits administration.

Do you offer part-time engineers?

No. A half-time engineer on a product team gets less than half the context. If your need is small, a fixed-scope project fits better and we will say so.

Time zones and working hours

What is the time difference between Brazil and the United States?

Brazil is UTC−3 with no daylight saving. São Paulo is one hour ahead of New York in U.S. summer and two hours ahead in U.S. winter; four to five hours ahead of Los Angeles.

How many hours will they overlap with my team?

On ordinary Brazilian hours (9 AM to 6 PM): seven to eight with U.S. Eastern, six to seven with Central, five to six with Mountain, four to five with Pacific. If the engineer shifts their day to end at 8 PM their time, Mountain rises to seven or eight and Pacific to six or seven — something we agree explicitly with them rather than assume.

Will they work night shifts?

No. Engineers shift their day within normal working hours in Brazil. If your requirements need someone awake at 2 AM their time, we will tell you this is the wrong model rather than agree and lose them in six months.

What about Brazilian holidays?

They differ from U.S. ones — Carnival is the one that surprises people. We send the calendar during onboarding so it lands in your sprint planning, not in your sprint.

Legal, IP and payment

Do I need a legal entity in Brazil?

No. Engineers are contracted by HireBrazilDevs and you receive a single invoice for services, like any other vendor.

Who owns the code they write?

You do. The agreement includes a present assignment of all intellectual property created under it, and we hold the matching assignment from each engineer. Ask to see both links of that chain from any vendor.

Do you sign NDAs?

Yes, yours or ours. Also MSAs, DPAs and security questionnaires.

Is there misclassification risk for us?

The employment relationship sits between the engineer and the studio, not between the engineer and you. That is one of the main reasons companies use this structure rather than contracting individuals directly. Ask your own counsel — we are not lawyers.

Can you work with regulated data — HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI?

Yes, with the access controls and contractual terms those regimes require. Work carrying U.S. citizenship or clearance requirements we cannot staff at all, and we say so upfront.

Hiring and quality

How fast can you present candidates?

Five business days for common stacks. Ten to fifteen for scarcer ones such as Go, Elixir or specialized machine learning. We tell you which category your role is in on the first call.

How do you screen candidates?

A 60-minute pairing session on real code, an unscripted technical conversation in English, and a production-experience check. We do not use take-home assignments — they filter out senior engineers who already have jobs.

How good is their English?

Written English is close to universal at senior level; spoken fluency varies and is what we screen for. Every engineer we place holds a technical conversation in English, including disagreeing with you.

What if the engineer is not a good fit?

Tell us in the first 30 days and we replace them, with no billing for the overlap.

Can we interview several candidates?

As many as you want, in as many rounds as you want, at no cost.

Will the engineer be shared with other clients?

No. Full time, one client. That is a contractual term, not a preference.

Working together

Who manages the engineer?

You do. This is staff augmentation — they join your standup, your board and your code review. If you have nobody available to direct them, we will tell you the model is a poor fit.

Is there an account manager between us?

No. You talk to the engineer directly. We check in monthly to catch problems that people are too polite to raise.

Can they travel to us?

Yes, arranged at cost. Budget time for a U.S. visitor visa if the engineer does not already hold one.

What tools do they use?

Yours. They work in your repository, your CI, your ticket tracker and your chat, on their own machine.

How long until they are productive?

Four to six weeks for a senior engineer on a normally documented codebase — about the same as a local hire. If it takes twelve, the problem is onboarding.

Tell us the role. We come back with candidates.

A 20-minute call to scope the role, then vetted profiles within five business days. No fee to talk, no retainer, no exclusivity.

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