Employer of record alternative
Don't incorporate. Don't rent an employer. Lease the engineer. An EOR still leaves you recruiting, interviewing, and waiting out a 90-day notice period. Ours is already at a desk.
Same engineer, same market salary. What differs is how long you wait and how much of the work stays yours.
Set up your own Indian subsidiary.
Only rational at 15–25+ engineers with a long-term commitment.
Rent an employer. Deel, Remote, Velocity Global.
Right answer when you want them to be your employee. See below.
The engineer already exists, already has a desk.
First 14 days free. Code is yours either way.
An employer of record solves payroll and compliance. Those were never the hard parts. Six things stay yours:
An EOR is payroll and compliance software. It does not find you an engineer. You still write the JD, screen the pipeline, and run the loop — 6,000 miles away, in a market you don't know.
Experienced engineers at Indian firms typically serve 60–90 days' notice. You can sign an offer in week 6 and still be waiting for a first commit in month 4.
You buy the laptop, ship it or reimburse it, and hope the home internet holds through standup. No office, no backup machine, no on-site IT.
There is no tech lead reviewing their code but you. A first offshore hire with nobody senior beside them is the single most common way this goes wrong.
If it doesn't work out in month two, you start the whole loop again — plus a termination handled under Indian labour law.
An EOR employee is still an employment relationship. Ending it means notice, statutory dues, and a conversation with counsel.
Here is the honest version: monthly, these land close together. The difference is the six weeks, the recruiting, and what it costs to be wrong.
| Line item | Via an EOR | DontHireDevs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineer salary (India market, mid-level) | ~$3,000/mo | $2,800–$3,200/mo | Same market. Our engineers earn ~20% above it. |
| EOR / management fee | $500–$700/mo | $700/mo | Ours covers workspace, hardware, HR, admin, account management, quality oversight. |
| Recruiting | 8–12% of annual salary, or your own time | $0 | 72-hour match from an existing bench. |
| Laptop and workspace | $1,200–$2,000 one-time | Included | Real offices in Pune and Ahmedabad. |
| Time to first commit | 6–14 weeks | Under 1 week | Six weeks of a frozen roadmap is the real cost. |
| Cost to find out it isn't working | Salary paid + notice + severance + restart | $0 for 14 days, then 30 days' notice | One free replacement inside the pilot. |
The short version. An EOR bills you from day one of employment — after you spent six weeks recruiting. We bill you from Day 15, after you have read the pull requests. Our full rate card, salary band and management fee split included, is on the pricing page, and the cost calculator will run your own role and city.
Your counterparty is a 14-year-old company, not a contractor network.
Salt Technologies — ISO 27001 certified, real offices in Pune and Ahmedabad, engineers on our payroll and our managed equipment.
One services agreement, one invoice, and an engineer who was already at work before you signed anything.
Full-time Salt Technologies employee, already at a desk in Pune, already has a tech lead. 72-hour match, not a 6-week search.
One B2B services agreement and one invoice. No subsidiary, no payroll registration, no PF or gratuity administration, no misclassification question.
No vendor portal, no account-manager telephone game. They join your standup with 4+ hours of US overlap, and more with the extended-overlap add-on.
Salary band plus management fee, published on the pricing page. Nobody else in this market shows you the split.
30 days' notice. No 12-month lock-in, no notice period, no severance, no wind-up.
Real tickets, real PRs, your code review. The code is yours whatever you decide on Day 14.
Sometimes it is, and you should hear that from us rather than find out three months in.
You want the engineer to be your employee — your equity plan, your culture, your org chart, for years.
You already found the specific person you want, and you just need a legal way to pay them.
You're hiring outside engineering, or in a city or country where we have no bench.
You're placing 20+ people long-term, in which case your own entity may beat both options.
Everything else — you need engineering capacity shipping this month, you do not want to run a hiring loop 6,000 miles away, and you would rather not carry an employment relationship to find out whether it works — leasing wins on every axis. Losing a deal we are wrong for is cheaper than winning it.
Tell us the stack and the seniority. We match in 72 hours and the first 14 days are free — real tickets, real PRs, your code review. The code is yours whatever you decide on Day 14.
An EOR employs a person on your behalf — you still recruit them, onboard them, equip them, and manage them, and you carry the employment relationship through a third party. We lease you an engineer who is already employed by Salt Technologies, already has a workspace, hardware, and a tech lead. You direct the work; we carry everything else. See how it works.
No. You need no entity, no payroll registration, and no local counsel. You sign one services agreement with Salt Technologies and receive one monthly invoice in USD.
Ours. They are a full-time employee of Salt Technologies with a salary, benefits, and a desk in our Pune office. That is the point: you get the output without the employment relationship, the statutory obligations, or the severance exposure.
No. Misclassification risk arises when you engage an individual directly as a contractor while treating them as an employee. Here you are contracting with a company for services, and the engineer is that company's employee. Your counsel will want to read the MSA — that is a normal and reasonable step, and the agreement is short.
You do, 100%, including everything written during the free 14-day pilot, regardless of whether you continue. IP assignment is in the 2-page pilot agreement.
Monthly, it usually isn't dramatically cheaper — that's the honest answer. What you save is the recruiting fee, the laptop, the 6–14 weeks of waiting, the management overhead, and the cost of being wrong. An EOR bills you from day one of employment; we bill you from Day 15, after you've seen the work. Run your own numbers in the cost calculator.
During the 14-day pilot, one free replacement and the clock resets, or you walk away owing nothing. After that it's 30 days' notice. Compare that to terminating an EOR employee under Indian labour law.
Salt Technologies is ISO 27001 certified with 14+ years of delivery from real offices. Engineers work from our premises on our managed equipment, not from home on personal laptops — which is a materially different security posture from a remote EOR hire.
Ask us on the discovery call and you'll get a straight answer rather than a clause you find later. We would rather have that conversation openly than pretend it never comes up.
If you want a long-term employee of your own company, on your equity plan, and you already know who you want to hire, use an EOR. If you want engineering capacity shipping this month without a hiring cycle, lease it. We publish that distinction because losing a deal we're wrong for is cheaper than winning it.
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No entity. No EOR. No hiring cycle.
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