Compare your options
Five ways to add engineers, compared.
There are five common ways to grow an engineering team: hire locally, use an agency, contract freelancers, employ people abroad through an Employer of Record, or build a dedicated team abroad with a partner who employs and supports them. Here's how they compare on control, cost structure, team building and risk.
The full table
Control, cost structure and team building, side by side.
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| Hiring at home | Agency | Freelancers | Employer of Record | Topcode CoE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who finds the engineers | You and recruiters | The agency | You | You | We do |
| Who approves them | You | The agency | You | You | You |
| Who they work for | You | The agency's clients | Themselves | You | Only you |
| Recruiter fees | 15–25% of salary | Built into the rate | Your time | Your time or recruiters | None |
| Payroll, tax, benefits | You manage | Hidden in the rate | Their problem, your risk | Handled | Handled |
| Office and equipment | You provide | Varies | None | None | Included |
| Working together | On-site | Varies | Scattered | Scattered | Office-based team |
| Training and growth | You build it | The agency's priority | None | None | Built in |
| Product knowledge | Stays | Leaves with the agency | Leaves with the contractor | Stays | Stays with your team |
| Time to first engineer | Often months | Fast, from their bench | Fast, but one by one | Fast, once you found the person | About a week or two for one engineer |
| Best for | Core leadership roles | Short, fixed-scope projects | Small, isolated tasks | One-off hires of people you already found | A long-term team you want to own |
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Last updated: October 2026. Recruiter fees: Dover (2025).
When each option makes sense
Every option has a place. Here's where each one fits.
Hiring at home
Right for core leadership roles and people who need to sit with your executive team every day. Expensive and slow for building out engineering capacity, because you carry recruiting, payroll, benefits and equipment yourself.
Agency
Right for short, fixed-scope projects where you want a finished deliverable and do not need the people to stay. Less suited to long-term product work, because the agency decides who works on your product and people rotate.
Freelancers
Right for small, isolated tasks with a clear brief. Hard to turn into a team: every freelancer is a separate contract, works alone, and contractor-status rules can create risk for you.
Employer of Record
Right when you have already found one specific person and just need them employed in their country. It handles payroll and compliance, but it doesn't find people, give them an office, or turn individual hires into a team.
Topcode Center of Excellence
Right when you want a long-term team that is truly yours. We find and propose engineers, you approve every one, and we employ them, give them an office in Ljubljana and help them grow. You set the priorities and pay one hourly rate.
Go deeper
Detailed comparisons
Detailed comparisons with agencies and freelancers are coming soon.
Against other dedicated-team providers
Not every dedicated team is yours.
Plenty of companies sell dedicated teams. Here is what is different about ours.
Hired for you, not from a bench.
Most providers staff your team from people they already employ and decide who you get. We hire for you from the open market, and you approve every engineer.
Small teams by design.
Typically 3 to 15 people. Large enough to own a product, small enough that everyone knows it.
One office, one team.
Your engineers sit together in Ljubljana, not across three countries and a dozen home offices.
One all-in rate.
Salary, taxes, benefits, office, equipment and HR in one hourly rate. No recruiter fees, no hidden margin lines.
Questions, answered.
With staff augmentation, an agency lends you engineers from its own pool, often for a project or a few months. A dedicated team, like a Topcode Center of Excellence, is built for you: you approve every engineer, they work only on your product, and they stay long term.
An Employer of Record only puts people you found on a payroll. We also find and propose the engineers, give them an office and equipment, run HR, and train and mentor them, so individual hires become a team.
With an agency, you rent their people and they decide who works on your product. In a Center of Excellence, you approve every engineer, they work only for you, and they stay. The team, the product knowledge and the priorities are yours.
Most providers staff your team from their own bench and decide who you get. We hire for you from the open market, and you approve every engineer. Teams are small by design, typically 3 to 15 people, work together in one office in Ljubljana, and the rate is one all-in figure with no recruiter fees. And your team sits inside the EU and the euro.
Hire in-house for core leadership roles and anyone who must sit with your executive team every day. For building engineering capacity around them, a dedicated team gives you senior people without recruiter fees or the cost of employing them yourself.
You pay one hourly rate per engineer. It covers salary, taxes, benefits, office, equipment and HR. There are no recruiter fees. Larger teams and longer commitments get better rates. We give you an estimate after the discovery call.
You do. Your contract assigns all intellectual property your team creates to your company.
Your next great engineer is already out there. Let's find them.
Tell us what you're building and who you need. In 30 minutes you'll know what your team could look like and how we'd set it up.
Prefer email? info@topcode.si