For Startups
Hire your first engineer
for $1,000 a month.
Vetted engineers and designers from Lagos, working your hours, embedded in your team. From $1,000 a month for a junior, $2,500 for a mid-level, $3,500 for a senior. All-in. No recruiting fees. Cancel monthly.
Save 60% to 85% versus a US hire. Maestro handles payroll, benefits, devices, and compliance.
- Profiles in 48 hours
- Start in 7 days
- Cancel monthly
- US contract. USD invoicing. Texas jurisdiction.
The math you are stuck with
Hiring your first senior engineer in the US is a quarter and a car.
3 months
Recruiting takes a quarter you do not have
Sourcing, screening, scheduling, offer negotiation. Then a two-month notice period. Meanwhile the roadmap sits still.
$30k
Agency fees before anyone writes a line of code
Contingency recruiters charge 20% to 25% of first-year salary. On a $150k hire that is $30,000 for an introduction.
$195k
A US senior engineer, fully loaded
A $150,000 base becomes roughly $195,000 once you add payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, and software.
Sprint 3
Marketplace contractors disappear mid-sprint
No employer, no supervision, no accountability. When a better-paying gig shows up, your feature stalls.
Effective hourly
The same engineer, three price tags.
A $4,000 per month senior engineer works out to about $25 an hour, all-in. Here is what the alternatives bill.
Maestro senior engineer
~$25/hr
$4,000/mo all-in, at 160 hours a month.
Offshore agency
$40 to $80/hr
Billable rate before your own management overhead.
US hire, fully loaded
$75 to $100+/hr
Salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, and space.
How it works
Brief on Monday. Working on your code by the next Monday.
01
Tell us the role
Stack, seniority, hours of overlap, and what the first 90 days looks like. Five minutes on a form or a 30-minute call.
02
3 profiles in 48 hours
Each with a CV, a work sample, an assessment score, and the exact monthly rate. No shortlists of 40.
03
You interview and pick
Interview however you normally do. Take-home, pair session, system design. Say no as many times as you need.
04
They start within 7 days
On our payroll, on your team, in your standups, with a laptop we bought and a workspace we run.
Roles and rates
Published rates. Every one is all-in.
Salary, payroll taxes, benefits, health coverage, workspace, power, laptop, HR, background check, and the replacement guarantee are inside these numbers.
Technology
Engineers who ship production code, not tickets.
Monthly, all-in, USD
Junior Engineer
1 to 2 years. Ships well-defined tickets under review. The pre-seed entry point.
$1,000 to $2,000/mo
Request profilesMid-Level Engineer
3 to 5 years. Ships independently against a clear spec.
$2,500 to $3,200/mo
Request profilesSenior Full-Stack Engineer
6+ years. Owns features end to end. Reviews other people's code.
$3,500 to $4,800/mo
Request profilesDevOps / Cloud Engineer
AWS, Azure, Terraform, Kubernetes. CI/CD and observability.
$3,200 to $4,500/mo
Request profilesAI/ML Engineer / Data Scientist
Model training, evaluation, and production inference pipelines.
$3,500 to $5,000/mo
Request profilesMobile Developer
React Native, Swift, Kotlin. Store submission handled.
$2,800 to $4,000/mo
Request profilesQA Automation Engineer
Playwright and Cypress suites wired into your pipeline.
$2,200 to $3,000/mo
Request profilesData Analyst
SQL, dashboards, and reporting your team actually reads.
$2,200 to $3,200/mo
Request profilesDesign & Creative
Designers who work from your product goals, not a mood board.
Monthly, all-in, USD
Product Designer (UI/UX)
Research, flows, high-fidelity UI, and a maintained design system.
$2,400 to $3,400/mo
Request profilesGraphic / Brand Designer
Identity, marketing assets, pitch decks, packaging.
$1,400 to $2,200/mo
Request profilesSocial Media Manager
Calendar, copy, creative, and reporting across channels.
$1,000 to $1,500/mo
Request profilesNeed operations or support roles too? See the full rate card.
Overlap guarantee
Minimum 4 hours of daily overlap. Most work full US hours.
Lagos runs UTC+1. A 2pm to 10pm Lagos day covers 8am to 4pm US Central. Standups, pairing, and code review happen live, not over a 12-hour lag.
- Your standup time, not ours
- Slack and your issue tracker, not a portal we own
- Written handoff at end of day when hours do not fully overlap
Risk reversal
First 2 weeks: if it is not working, we replace them or you pay nothing.
No notice period to argue about. Nigerian termination obligations sit with us as the employer. Tell us it is not a fit and we start again, or we close the invoice at zero.
- Month-to-month after the first 30 days
- Replacement sourcing starts the day you ask
- No recruiting fee on the replacement, ever
Side by side
Maestro versus the two other options.
| Attribute | Maestro | US hire | Freelance marketplace |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost, senior engineer | $3,500 to $4,800 | About $16,250 loaded | $4,000 to $12,000 |
| Recruiting fee | None | 20% to 25% of salary | Platform fee 5% to 20% |
| Payroll and benefits handled | Yes, we are the employer | You handle it | Varies by platform, usually an add-on |
| Background check | Included on every placement | You pay per check | Varies by platform |
| Replacement guarantee | First 2 weeks free | Not typical | Varies by platform |
| Equipment | We buy and manage it | You buy and ship it | Contractor's own |
| Supervised workspace | Yes, Lagos center | Your office or remote | Not part of the model |
US hire figures assume a $150,000 base salary at a 1.3x fully-loaded multiplier. Marketplace and agency figures are general market ranges as of 2026 and vary by platform, region, and engagement. Maestro rates and terms are governed by the signed master agreement.
Run your own numbers.
Change the salary to match what you would actually pay in your market.
Savings calculator
What does this role actually cost you?
Edit this if your market pays differently. We add 1.3x for payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, and overhead.
You save
$147,000/year
That is 75% less than the US hire, with payroll, benefits, devices, and compliance already handled.
Illustrative estimate. Your actual saving depends on the salary you would pay, your benefits load, and the seniority you hire at.
Get profiles for this roleQuestions founders ask.
Something not covered here? Ask on a free 30-minute call.
How is $3,500 a month possible for a senior engineer?
Lagos cost of living is a fraction of San Francisco or Austin. A senior engineer in Lagos earns a strong local salary well inside that number, and the rest covers payroll taxes, health coverage, workspace, power, equipment, and our margin. Nobody is underpaid for this to work.
What if the engineer is not good?
For the first two weeks, if it is not working, we replace them or you pay nothing. After that, replacements are covered under the ongoing guarantee at no additional recruiting cost.
Do they work my hours?
Minimum 4 hours of daily overlap with US Central or Eastern time is guaranteed. Most of our engineers work full US hours. Lagos is UTC+1, so a 2pm to 10pm Lagos day covers 8am to 4pm Central.
Who employs them legally?
Maestro Tech Solutions Nig Ltd is the legal employer in Nigeria and runs payroll, taxes, and statutory benefits. You sign one contract with Maestro Innovations LLC, a Texas company, and pay one USD invoice.
Can I hire them onto my own payroll later?
Yes. We publish a conversion schedule on request. There is no permanent lock-in and no surprise buyout fee invented at the last minute.
Tell us the role. We send three people tomorrow.
No recruiting fee. No obligation to hire. If none of the three are right, we send three more.