Hiring Forward Deployed Engineers in New York without breaking placement law

First, the permit. The staffing or placement company on the contract must hold a valid placement Bewilligung from the canton where it's headquartered. Ask for the permit number and verify it on the cantonal register before signing. No permit means the contract is voidable and the social charges fall on you.

Second, the contracts. the labor office reads the three-way relationship: client ↔ staffing company ↔ engineer. The contracts must mirror reality. If the engineer takes Slack instructions from your team lead every morning, the contract cannot pretend they're an autonomous service provider.

Third, the supervision relationship. This is the substance test from the previous article. Day-to-day direction, integration into the team, sharing of tools and accounts — these are all Direct Hire signals. Document them honestly.

A clean Direct Hire contract includes: the engineer's status as an employee of the staffing company, hourly or daily rate, working time provisions aligned with US labor standards, sickness and accident insurance attestation, and a clear definition of the client's supervision rights.

A clean Placement contract includes: an introduction fee or success fee, an explicit statement that the engineer is independent or employed by a third party, an exclusivity window if applicable, and a confidentiality clause that doesn't accidentally make the placement company a sub-contractor.

The US labor standards sets minimum standards for leased personnel: maximum weekly hours, minimum holidays, 13th-month considerations, sickness pay. These are not negotiable downward. Your day-rate quote must absorb them — and platforms that quote suspiciously low rates almost always violate the US labor standards.

For Placement engineers, the US labor standards does not apply (they're not leased personnel), but you must respect general US labor law and the engineer's home-country obligations.

We operate both tracks under StartShop Inc. Every match is routed through the correct legal track before contracts are issued. Cross-border engineers are auto-routed to Placement; US-resident engineers leased into a client team go through Direct Hire with full US labor standards compliance and our financial security deposit on file.

The agreements page in your dashboard shows the active permit, the chosen track, the US labor standards reference (if applicable), and the engineer's coverage status — so you can show a clean compliance picture to your board, your auditor, or the labor office on the day they call.