Hire full-stack developers
End-to-end product engineers
One engineer who takes a feature from database schema to shipped interface. The right hire when the roadmap is broad, the team is small, and handoffs cost more than they save.
Full-stack is an overused word. Plenty of developers claim it because they can call an API from React. What a small team actually needs is somebody who can design the schema, write the endpoint, build the interface, deploy it, and then debug it in production at seven in the evening when something breaks.
Our full-stack engineers live in the TypeScript ecosystem: Next.js or React on the front, Node with NestJS or route handlers behind, PostgreSQL or MongoDB underneath, deployed on Vercel or in containers in your cloud account. They have shipped enough features end to end to know where the time actually goes, which is almost never the part the ticket describes.
The honest trade-off is depth. A full-stack engineer will not tune your Postgres query planner the way a dedicated backend specialist would, and will not build a design system like a front-end specialist. What they remove is coordination cost, which is usually the thing making a small team slow. They will also tell you when a specialist has become necessary, which is the useful half of the arrangement.
When a dedicated full-stack developer is the right call. You are pre-product-market-fit and the roadmap changes monthly. You have one or two engineers and need a third who does not create another dependency. You are building an MVP where speed matters more than optimisation. Or an internal tool nobody owns and everybody complains about needs an owner.
When it is not. Once front-end and back-end roadmaps run in parallel, two specialists ship more than two generalists. If the product is data-heavy or latency-critical, hire a backend engineer first and add a front-end one later.
Rates sit slightly above single-discipline roles, because the pool of genuine end-to-end engineers is smaller and because one of them frequently replaces the overhead of coordinating two.
What they do
Features end to end
Schema, endpoint, interface, tests and deployment for one feature. No handoff, no waiting on another team's sprint boundary.
MVPs and prototypes
A working product in weeks with auth, payments and an admin, built so version two extends it rather than replaces it.
Internal tools
Admin panels, operations dashboards and reporting for the processes currently held together by spreadsheets and one person's memory.
Integrations
Payments, CRM, email, storage and third-party APIs with webhooks, retries, and somewhere a human can see what failed.
Auth and multi-tenancy
Clerk, NextAuth or Auth.js, role-based access, organisation and workspace models designed once and designed properly.
Deployment and CI
Vercel or Docker in your cloud, preview environments, GitHub Actions, monitoring and error tracking wired up in the first week.
Skills
Seniority & rates
Sample profiles
Engagement models
Hourly
For bursts of work and part-time needs. Minimum 40 hours. Time tracked in Hubstaff, reported weekly.
- Pay for logged hours only
- Scale up or down weekly
- Same senior engineer throughout
Dedicated monthly
One engineer, full-time, inside your team and your tools. Eight hours a day, five days, in your timezone window.
- 15-day risk-free trial
- Free replacement, no argument
- Daily stand-up, sprint reporting
- NDA + 100% IP assignment
Dedicated pod
Tech lead, three engineers and QA, run as a Scrum team with a delivery manager included in the price.
- Fixed sprint cadence
- Delivery manager at no cost
- Architecture and code review built in
How to hire
Describe the product, not the roleDay 0
What it does, who uses it, what has to exist by when. For an MVP that is more useful to us than a list of technologies.
Profiles plus a scope read48 h
Two or three CVs, each with a product they took end to end and the trade-offs they chose. On MVP briefs we add our own read, sometimes the answer is one engineer for six weeks rather than three for a quarter.
Interview across both halves2–4 days
Ask a schema question and an interface question in the same conversation. That is where genuine full-stack shows. No charge and no pressure.
A thin slice, fully workingDays 1–15
One shippable slice of your product in the first fortnight, narrow but complete, database through to deployed interface. You judge working software rather than a plan.
Decisions documented as you goOngoing
NDA and IP before the first commit, stand-up in your timezone, and architecture notes written while the reasoning is fresh. Add a second engineer whenever the roadmap splits.
FAQ
Is one full-stack developer really enough for an MVP?
Often, for the first three or four months. After that either the roadmap splits into front-end and back-end streams, or the codebase grows past what one person can hold. We flag that when we see it rather than quietly extending the engagement for another quarter.
What stack will they use?
TypeScript throughout: Next.js or React, Node with NestJS or route handlers, PostgreSQL by default and MongoDB when the data is genuinely document-shaped rather than when it is fashionable. If you already have a stack, they work in yours.
Can they also handle design?
They build competently against an existing design system or a Tailwind kit. They are not product designers. If the interface needs research and original design, add the UI/UX designer part-time. That combination costs less than rebuilding the screens in six months.
How do you avoid the jack-of-all-trades problem?
By being explicit about depth. Every full-stack profile we send says where the engineer is genuinely senior and where they are merely competent. If your brief needs deep database or infrastructure work, we tell you to hire a specialist instead of overselling a generalist.
Can they deploy and monitor what they build?
Yes. Docker, GitHub Actions, Vercel or ECS, plus Sentry and uptime checks, all inside your own cloud account. For Kubernetes or a multi-account AWS estate, add a DevOps engineer part-time rather than hoping.
What if we need to add a second engineer later?
It is the normal path and it goes better when the first engineer documented decisions along the way, which is part of the engagement. New people come from the same bench, are briefed the same way, and overlap with the incumbent for two weeks.
Tell us the role. Profiles in 48 hours.
No retainer to see CVs, and no invoice until the trial ends and you say yes.