We Screen for Two Things Most Hiring Approaches Pick One Of
AI-tool fluency, and the engineering judgement to know when the tool is wrong. Almost every alternative sells one and quietly drops the other. This page is about why we think that is a mistake, and who we are and are not the right fit for.
AI Coding Tools Are Genuinely Powerful and Genuinely Risky
Both halves of that sentence are true at once, which is inconvenient for anyone trying to sell something simple. An AI coding assistant genuinely does make a good developer faster — scaffolding, boilerplate, a first draft of a function, a plausible fix for an unfamiliar error. The same assistant genuinely does hand a careless developer confident, plausible, subtly wrong code, because that is what these tools are built to produce: output that looks right, not output that is right.
Most hiring approaches resolve that tension by ignoring one side of it. A pure AI-tools pitch treats the speed as the whole story and glosses over the risk. A traditional staffing agency that ignores AI tools entirely screens for judgement the way it always has and has no answer for how a candidate actually works day to day, when a large share of their output starts as a suggestion from a tool. We built this marketplace because neither of those is honest about what hiring a developer now actually involves.
Staffing and Delivery Are Different Businesses
The choice behind almost everything else on this site.
What a delivery agency sells
An agency takes your requirements away, builds something, and hands it back. That is a reasonable model when you have no engineering team of your own. It stops being the right one the moment you do have a team, because handing a slice of your roadmap to an outside organisation means writing specifications you would otherwise discuss in five minutes, and merging someone else’s idea of your conventions back into your codebase.
What a dual-vetting marketplace sells instead
A developer who joins your process directly — your tickets, your standup, your pull request review — screened on both halves of what the job now requires. The commercial relationship is with us; the working relationship is entirely yours. It is also the harder model to fake: a delivery agency can hide a weak engineer behind a project manager for months, whereas a developer who opens pull requests into your codebase is visible in the first week.
What We Do When the Convenient Answer and the Honest One Disagree
Not values in the poster sense. These are the rules that decide what happens when a commercially easier answer and an honest one point in different directions.
Both Axes Are Assessed Separately, Not Averaged
A developer who is fast with AI tools but weak on fundamentals does not average out to acceptable. A developer who is strong on fundamentals but has never learned to review AI-generated output critically does not average out either. Each candidate has to clear the fundamentals evaluation and the AI-assisted work review independently, or they do not reach your shortlist.
You Talk to the Developer, Not to Us
Briefing, priorities, code review, the awkward conversation about an estimate that slipped — all of it goes straight to the person doing the work. We stay in the loop for contracts, invoicing and anything that needs a commercial decision. If you find yourself waiting on us to pass a technical message along, something has gone wrong and we would like to hear about it.
You Interview. You Choose.
We never place a developer on your team without you meeting them. Run your normal loop: a technical conversation, a pairing session, your own take-home if you use one. We would rather you spend an hour interviewing than accept our judgement and discover a month in that you disagree with it.
The Replacement Guarantee Is a Consequence of the Vetting, Not a Substitute for It
If the fit is wrong inside the first two weeks, we replace the developer at no extra cost. We can offer that because the vetting is live evaluation on both axes rather than a light screen, so genuine surprises in week one are rare. A marketplace that vetted lightly could not afford this clause, which is why it is worth reading as a statement about the vetting rather than as a marketing line.
No Position on Which AI Tool Is Best
Tools change, and a specific product recommendation goes stale within a year. What we screen for instead is a way of working — using an assistant well and checking what it produces — that holds regardless of which tool a developer happens to prefer, or which one your team has standardised on.
Monday to Friday, 10:00–19:00 IST
That is the window in which the business itself operates — contracts, invoicing, replacements, anything that needs us rather than the developer. It is a real constraint and we would rather state it plainly than dress it up as more flexible than it is.
What it means depends on where you are. For Europe and the UK, our day covers essentially all of yours. For US Eastern, standard hours give almost no live overlap — 19:00 IST is roughly 09:30 Eastern — so developers working with US teams commonly shift their day later by agreement. For US Pacific, expect asynchronous by default unless a later shift is agreed up front. For Australia and New Zealand, the overlap sits toward the end of our day, which is your afternoon.
Say how many hours of live overlap you actually need when you send the brief. It is a real constraint on who can be shortlisted, and it is far better handled before the interview than negotiated after someone has already started.
How engagements are structuredWhen We Are Worth Contacting, and When We Are Not
Reading the right-hand column and deciding against us is a good outcome. It costs you an afternoon instead of a bad hire.
- You want AI-assisted speed with a real check on the output, not either one alone
- Someone on your side can brief a developer and review their work
- The work is not tied to one language or framework — we are not stack-specific
- You want to interview candidates yourself rather than accept an allocation
- You might also want your own developers trained rather than replaced
- You want the cheapest possible AI-generated code with no review attached — that is not what is sold here, and it never gets cheaper by using us
- You have no technical person at all and need someone to own an outcome end to end — that is an agency engagement, not a hire
- You have a blanket policy against AI-assisted work of any kind on your codebase, with no room to discuss it
- The role genuinely requires someone in your office, or full live overlap with a US Pacific working day on standard hours
- Nobody has time to onboard anyone — a new developer needs a first week from someone on your side
If you are on the right-hand side, say so when you write. We will tell you plainly rather than send a profile to fill a shortlist.
Checkable Against Your Own Calendar, Not Our Word
Every one of these is something you can hold us to. There is nothing here you have to take on trust.
2 axes
Fundamentals and AI-assisted work, assessed and cleared separately
2 weeks
Window in which a wrong fit is replaced at no extra cost
USD
Rates quoted per developer, per project, or per training engagement
10:00–19:00 IST
Business hours, Monday to Friday, stated plainly rather than as "flexible"
The Pages That Answer the Rest
How We Vet
The two evaluations a candidate clears independently before a profile reaches you.
See the processEngagement Models
Project, part-time and full-time augmentation, and team training compared side by side.
Compare modelsContracts & IP
Who owns the code, contractor status, NDAs and what happens when an engagement ends.
Read the termsSend the Role. See Who Is Available.
Matched, dual-vetted developer profiles within days, a replacement at no extra cost inside the first two weeks, and an honest answer if we are not the right fit.