Hire backend developers on a pilot first
Add software engineers who design APIs, data models and services that stay reliable under real production load. Each starts on a two to three week pilot against criteria agreed before day one.
Start with a shortlist
Tell us the stack, when you need the team available, and what the role must deliver. A shortlist usually follows in a few days.
Ways to add backend capacity
You are choosing between a person you own and a team you borrow, and each one commits you to something different.
Hire in-house
Choose this when
The work is permanent, the roadmap is yours for years, and this system is what your company is actually made of.
What you take on
You run a search, interview, make an offer, then wait out the ramp before any code is written. This is the right answer more often than you would expect to hear from us.
One software engineer
Choose this when
You have a team and a gap in it, and you need the gap closed while your own hiring runs.
What you take on
Three months or more, usually, because that is when a new developer's output flattens out. The length follows the work rather than the contract.
A backend team
Choose this when
There is nobody in-house to review the work or run the pipeline, and you need both from the start.
What you take on
Developers paired with at least one DevOps and one QA engineer, so that the pipeline and the test coverage both have an owner from the first sprint.
Show data table
| Item | Published average annual pay, US back-end developer |
|---|---|
| Salary.com | 136,541 USD |
| Indeed | 162,033 USD |
| Built In | 173,388 USD |
36,847 USD between the lowest and the highest, which is 27 percent of the lowest.
Salary.com, Indeed and Built In each publish an average for what a back-end developer is paid in the United States. Read on the same day, the three figures are 27 percent apart. That salary is what you would be signing for, so a published average is not a figure you can budget from. None of the three pages says whether payroll taxes, benefits, equipment or a recruiting fee are included.
When we are the wrong call
Worth a conversation
You have a live system and nobody who owns the API or the data model.
You are adding backend capacity to a team that already exists.
You need people your own software engineers can review.
You want the engagement to end cleanly one day, in writing, now.
Where to go instead
You need someone reachable across your whole working day rather than a standup held inside it.
The backend is already live and the real problem is speed rather than headcount, so a hire fixes nothing.
You already know the stack you need rather than the shape of the role you are trying to fill.
This system is what your company is made of and will still be in five years, so the knowledge should stay.
The terms, before you ask
Pilot
Two to three weeks
What is in it
- One vetted software engineer on real tickets, and the evaluation criteria agreed before day one.
What makes it bigger you want to pilot more than one person at the same time
One software engineer
Three months or longer, typically
Interview and reject anyone we propose
What is in it
- A named developer in your repos and your standups, reviewed by a senior software engineer before anything merges.
What makes it bigger the role needs a second stack, or on-call cover outside our working hours
Backend team
Three months or longer, typically
Same pilot terms, per person
What is in it
- Developers paired with at least one DevOps and one QA engineer, so the pipeline has an owner.
What makes it bigger the estate has more than one service, or the compliance load needs its own workstream
We do not publish a rate here, because the number depends on the stack, the seniority and the hours you need covered, and a figure printed without those is one we would have to walk back on the call. We price it on the call, once we know all three. These are our standard terms for hiring backend developers, and the signed engagement is what governs.
Send the briefFrom a branch to your production
01
Brief to shortlist
We take the stack, the hours you need and what the role delivers, and come back with people our own technical team has vetted.
What you get out of it
A shortlist our own technical team has already vetted, which you can interview against or simply take on trust.
02
Pilot
Two to three weeks on real tickets in your own backlog, measured against the criteria you agreed before the start.
What you get out of it
The criteria written into the engagement, so the bar is clear to both sides before the developer starts.
03
Every change
Branch, pull request, review by a senior software engineer of ours, unit and integration tests, and a CI gate that must go green.
What you get out of it
A reviewed pull request with the tests that gated it, on the branching workflow we have written about in public.
04
Architecture decisions
Anything that changes the shape of the system is written into the technical requirements specification, along with the reasoning.
What you get out of it
A document that tells whoever reads the system in two years' time why it is shaped like this.
05
Offboarding
Whenever you choose, including at the end of the pilot, and it is a process rather than a negotiation.
What you get out of it
If the repos and cloud accounts were already yours, nothing moves. If not, we provisioned them and handed you the keys then.
Show data table
| Item | Share of professional developers reporting each database |
|---|---|
| PostgreSQL | 58.2% |
| MySQL | 39.6% |
| SQLite | 36.9% |
| Redis | 30.7% |
| MongoDB | 24.3% |
In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, the three most-named are all relational: PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite.
Our backend work runs across Node.js, including NestJS, Express, Fastify, Hono and AdonisJS, plus Laravel, Core PHP, Symfony, Magento and CakePHP. We deploy on AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, Vercel and Netlify. Where MySQL queries usually go wrong under load is a thing we have written up. If you already know the stack, go straight to the page for it: a Node.js software engineer, a Python software engineer, a PHP software engineer, or a Laravel software engineer.
Five login systems, one at a time
An enterprise application estate. Named clients stay confidential, and the engagement detail does not.
Where it started
Five applications, each with its own login and its own user store, and password resets nobody owned.
What we did not do
We federated the existing stores into Keycloak rather than migrating them all in one move.
How it landed
OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect replaced the bespoke session handling one application at a time.
What it measured
Five logins became one. Authentication tickets fell 70 percent, and licence and development cost fell 40 percent.
70%Fewer auth tickets
Read the full case studyTheir IT director put it this way: "Offboarding used to be a checklist nobody trusted. Now it is one action, and we can prove it happened."
Send the briefAtyantik pilot and replacement terms, confirmed 2026-05-14
Atyantik ownership and documentation terms, confirmed 2026-05-14
Operational commitment confirmed by Atyantik, 2026-08-31
What happens if this goes wrong
The person is not as good as the shortlist said.
This is the one commitment you can verify inside three weeks of signing, which is why it is first.
What we commit to
The pilot runs two to three weeks against criteria agreed before day one. If it fails we replace the developer and re-run the pilot with the next candidate.
Your code or your data leaves with someone.
Every access grant we hold is one you control and can withdraw, on either path.
What we commit to
NDA from day one, SSO and secure repos, and every access grant we hold sits inside your accounts rather than ours.
You end up locked in.
If you did not have those accounts when we started, we provisioned them, set them up and handed you the keys then, not at the end.
What we commit to
Your IP from day one, code in repos you own, deployments in cloud accounts you own, and offboarding hands over the operational runbook.
What they build does not hold up.
We do not put an uptime number on this engagement. The infrastructure and the deploy pipeline are yours, and your own team has the last word on what ships.
What we commit to
Nothing merges without review by a senior software engineer of ours, with unit and integration tests and a CI gate that has to go green first.
Nobody is awake when it breaks.
We do not promise cover across your whole day, because we would not keep it. The escalation route is agreed at scoping.
What we commit to
A daily standup runs inside your working hours, around thirty minutes with the lead, and the wider team joins it when the work needs them.
Still wondering
These come up on every call, so here they are before the call.
How quickly can someone actually start?
Can we interview the people you propose?
- Everyone we propose has been vetted by our own technical team first.
- If a shortlist does not produce a fit, we send another.
- If our bench does not match what you need, we say so and recruit for the role.
Will they work in our timezone?
- The daily standup is the exception: the lead joins it in your timezone, outside our own hours if that is what it takes, for around thirty minutes.
- The wider team joins it when the work needs them.
- What we do not promise is cover across your whole day, because we would not keep it.
- We agree the standup time and the escalation route at scoping, so nothing is a surprise on day one.
Who owns the code and the IP?
- Code lives in your repos, deployments in your cloud accounts, and any documentation we write is yours to keep.
- If you did not have the repos and accounts when we started, we provision them, set them up and hand the keys over.
- If you offboard us you keep all of it, including the operational runbook.
How do you know the code is any good?
What if the fit is not right?
Are DevOps and QA included in this?
Is there a minimum commitment or term?
Tell us what the role has to cover
Send the stack, when you need it covered, and what the role has to deliver in the first quarter. A shortlist usually follows within a few days, and you interview whoever you want to.
If it turns out you should be hiring in-house instead, we will say that on the call. That costs us the engagement, and we would still rather you heard it from us.
- we usually reply within 24 hours
- everything you share stays private
- pilot criteria agreed in writing before anyone starts