Hiring in-house vs. an embedded engineer
This is the comparison that actually decides most budgets, and it is the one where the honest answer is most often "it depends." An employee and an embedded engineer are not the same product.
What follows is the real fully loaded arithmetic, and then the cases where hiring in-house is genuinely the better decision.
The cost
The average US senior software engineer base salary was about $175,559 in 2026. Fully loaded — payroll taxes, health and dental, 401(k) match, PTO, equipment, software and overhead — the all-in year-one cost lands at $250,000–$300,000, or roughly $20,800–$25,000 per month. On top of that, contingency recruiter fees run 20–30% of first-year salary, or $35,000–$52,500 on a $175,000 base, usually payable within 30 days of the hire starting. An SDL engineer is $3,000 per month with no recruiter fee at all.
Permanent headcount. Fully loaded cost of $250,000–$300,000/year including payroll taxes, benefits, 401(k), PTO, equipment and overhead.
Recruiter fees of 20–30% of first-year salary — $35,000–$52,500 on a $175,000 base.
Full-time, one senior engineer, per month. None of these vendors publish a per-engineer rate card, so these are ranges reported by third-party 2026 pricing roundups, linked above and retrieved September 2026. If you think a figure here is wrong, email hello@sdl.engineering and we'll correct it.
What US in-house hire does better
Permanence and institutional memory
An employee accumulates context about your product, your customers and your decisions in a way a contractor structurally does not. For the people who will still be here in three years, hire them.
Equity alignment
You can give an employee equity. That changes how someone thinks about the company's long-term outcomes, and there is no contractor equivalent.
Full control over role design
Employees can own on-call, security-sensitive access, people management and hiring — responsibilities most companies are rightly reluctant to hand to an external engineer.
No dependency on a vendor
If we go away, your engineer goes with us. That is a real risk and you should price it.
Where SDL is stronger
The cost difference is not marginal
$3,000 per month against $20,800–$25,000 fully loaded. That is the difference between one engineer and a team.
No hiring cycle
A senior US engineering hire typically takes two to four months from opening the role to a start date, plus the recruiter fee. We start in days.
Reversible
30 days notice, no severance, no redundancy process. Getting a headcount decision wrong is expensive; getting this one wrong is not.
Capacity without headcount
You are buying output rather than growing a seat count, which matters if you are managing burn against a board-approved plan.
Choose US in-house hire if
- The role is core, permanent and needs deep institutional context
- You want to grant equity and build long-term alignment
- The role involves people management, hiring, or security-critical ownership
- You have the runway to absorb a 2–4 month hiring cycle and a recruiter fee
Choose SDL if
- You need capacity now and the hiring cycle is the bottleneck
- You are validating whether the work justifies permanent headcount
- Burn rate is the binding constraint on what you can build
- You want the option to convert to a direct hire later without a fee
Frequently asked questions
What is the fully loaded cost of a US senior software engineer in 2026?
About $250,000–$300,000 in year one against an average base salary of roughly $175,559, once payroll taxes, benefits, 401(k), PTO, equipment and overhead are included. Fully loaded cost typically runs 30–70% above base salary. Recruiter fees add a further 20–30% of first-year salary.
Is it cheaper to hire offshore or in-house?
Materially cheaper offshore on direct cost — $3,000 per month against $20,800–$25,000 fully loaded. But they are different products. An employee gives you permanence, equity alignment and institutional memory that an embedded engineer does not.
Can I convert an SDL engineer to a full-time employee?
Yes, and we do not charge a conversion fee. Several staffing vendors charge $14,000–$50,000 for this.
Try one engineer for a month
$3,000 a month, cancel with 30 days notice. That's the whole commitment.