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Permanent & Contract · Canada

Hire Software Engineers

Screened for how talented engineers think and debug.

Why STACK IT

Built to hire software engineers, not fill seats.

Most agencies optimize for volume. We optimize for the one hire who’s right, vetted by people who understand the work.

A calibrated 3–5 person shortlistTypically within five business days, candidates chosen for your team, not a résumé flood.

Recruiters who speak engineer

We screen for how an engineer thinks, debugs, and creates code. No candidate reaches you without two of our recruiters signing off.

Every engineer is real

Fake profiles, proxy interviews, and AI-assisted answers are everywhere in tech hiring. We meet each candidate face-to-face on video and screen for AI patterns, so who you interview is who shows up.

Screened to stay, not just to start

A hire that leaves in a year isn’t a win. We align trajectory, growth, and total comp so the engineer grows with your team instead of moving on.

You pay only when they start

Success-based and non-exclusive, no upfront fees, no retainers. We invoice on your engineer’s first day, not before.

The payoff

Great software engineers pay for themselves.

Hiring well costs less than you think, and a strong hire changes far more than the work in front of them.

Without a strong hire
With STACK IT
Roadmaps slip; dates keep moving.

Features ship on schedule.

Predictable delivery is what a strong engineer commits to.

Every change costs more than the last.

Your codebase stays cheap to change.

Clean work keeps the cost of every future feature low.

On-call burns the team out.

Quieter on-call, fewer fire drills.

Production-mature engineers build for failure.

Seniors stuck hand-holding.

Your senior engineers stay leveraged.

A strong hire raises the floor and lifts the whole team’s output.

Growth forces an expensive rewrite.

You scale without re-platforming.

Sound architecture means growth doesn’t force a costly rewrite.

How we screen

The Software Engineers Evaluation Rubric.

We screen for how software engineers actually think. Every shortlist is judged against the same five criteria that predict whether someone delivers in your codebase.

Open any criterion to see what separates a strong hire

Strong signal

Moves between the problem and the implementation without friction, and reaches for the right tool instead of the familiar one.

Falls short

Leans on memorized patterns that fall apart the moment the problem shifts shape.

Strong signal

Writes for the people who come after them: readable, tested, and structured so it survives the next change.

Falls short

Clever over clear. It works today and quietly costs you for a year.

Strong signal

Forms a hypothesis, isolates the fault, and fixes the root so the same bug does not return.

Falls short

Guesses, patches the surface, and ships the same failure twice.

Strong signal

Weighs trade-offs, anticipates where it has to scale, and knows when not to over-build.

Falls short

Builds in isolation, so every change becomes someone else's cleanup later.

Strong signal

Explains technical calls in plain terms and gets alignment before a line of code is written.

Falls short

Disappears into the code and surprises the room at the demo.

A candidate only reaches your shortlist after they meet all of our standards.

Proof it works

Software Engineers who delivered.

Discover what changed once the right hire joined our clients’ team.

SaaS
91%build reliability
from 42% · in 4 weeks

An early-stage SaaS team had lost faith in their CI pipeline: flaky tests, red builds, no one trusting a green checkmark. The engineer we placed audited the failing suites, added coverage tracking, and rebuilt the test layers from unit to end-to-end, taking build reliability from 42% to 91% inside four weeks.

Skills applied
CI/CDTest CoverageE2EFlaky-Test Triage
Fintech
−60%defect tickets
first month

Restructured a fintech billing engine for clarity and added integration tests across the reconciliation flow.

Skills applied
Billing LogicIntegration TestsReconciliation
Healthcare
Zerorollbacks
during a live production incident

Led live debugging to restore a broken workflow without a rollback, then left monitoring and alerting behind.

Skills applied
Live DebuggingObservabilityAlerting

Hire software engineers with confidence.

Real technical screening, a calibrated shortlist in days, and candidates vetted for fit, not just resumes. Let’s start your search.

  • Pay only when they start
  • First candidates in 24–48 hrs
  • Screened for skills and fit

Specializations

Software Engineers, across your whole stack.

Whatever your team runs on, we screen for the people who do the work right.

Back-end

APIs, services, and the data layer everything else depends on.

.NET / C# Java Python PHP C++

Front-end

Interfaces that stay fast, accessible, and maintainable as they grow.

JavaScript Angular React

Full-stack

End-to-end feature ownership, from the database to the UI.

React Node Python .NET

The cost of waiting

An open role isn’t free.

An empty seat doesn’t delay work, it redistributes it. The longer the search drags, the more it costs.

Every week a role stays open, the cost lands on the team you already have.

  • Work waits in the backlog while priorities pile up.
  • They cover work that isn’t theirs, until something slips.
  • The longer the seat stays empty, the harder the restart.

Speed isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between a gap and a setback.

Time to fill this role

Industry average SHRM, 2025
~62 days
With STACK IT typical placement
2–3 weeks
48 hrs
First qualified candidate
3–5 days
Calibrated shortlist
18%
Fewer delivery delays once they start

How you hire

Permanent or contract, your call.

Two models, one standard of quality. Bring on the software engineers you need the way that fits your timeline and budget.

Permanent

Permanent hire

Best when you’re building the team for the long term.

  • You only pay when they start, success-based, no upfront fee.
  • Full-cycle vetting for technical and cultural fit.
  • Backed by our 90-day replacement guarantee.
OR

Contract

Contract hire

Best when you need delivery capacity now, without adding headcount.

  • We’re the employer of record: payroll, compliance, and onboarding handled.
  • Most contractors placed in 5–10 business days.
  • Convert to permanent anytime, with a buyout discount that grows each month.

Not sure which fits? Compare permanent vs. contract

FAQ

Hiring software engineers, answered.

The questions teams usually ask before starting a search with us.

We do not use take-home projects or timed coding tests. Our screening is recruiter-led and scenario-based: we walk through real systems a candidate has built, probe the tradeoffs they made, and have them explain their decisions in plain terms. Someone who can teach back why they chose an approach tells us far more about production judgment than a whiteboard puzzle. It is the core of how we screen.

Seniority here is about scope, not years. We look for engineers who own production impact, make sound architectural tradeoffs, and can explain their decisions to non-engineers, versus strong mid-levels who execute well within a set direction. We calibrate the shortlist to the level you actually need.

Both are common. Long-term product ownership and platform stability usually call for permanent hires, while time-boxed builds, surges, and specialized one-off work often fit contract. We will tell you honestly which the role needs.

You will typically see a first vetted candidate within 24 to 48 hours and a calibrated shortlist of three to five within about five business days, depending on how specialized the stack is.

Permanent hires are success-based: you pay only when someone starts, with no upfront fee, backed by our 90-day guarantee. Contract runs on a transparent hourly rate. We will walk you through the specifics on an intro call.

Still have a question? Talk to a recruiter

Bill 190 compliant by default.

Every search keeps your hiring audit-ready in Ontario.

See the Bill 190 checklist
  • Salary-range disclosure
  • AI-use transparency
  • Decisions within 45 days