Hear it from them
Two of our engineers, in their own words. You should hear from the people doing the work, not from us describing them.
- Daniel — software engineer.
- Jose — systems engineer.
How we find them: three ways in. One way through.
We look in three places, because each one turns up a different kind of person. Then all three sit the same test, so we can actually compare them.
- Referrals — We ask one question and keep asking it: who is the best engineer you know? Then we ask that person the same thing. Daniel and Jose came out of this. Neither of them applied to anything.
- Hackathons — You learn more watching somebody build something badly at 3am than you do from any resume. We go, we watch, and we talk to the ones who did not give up.
- Job boards — Plenty of good people are looking right now, and pretending otherwise would be silly. Job boards bring us volume. The test is what turns volume into a shortlist.
All three end at the same scorecard. A referral gets you in the door and nothing else. Whether someone was pointed at us, found at a hackathon, or applied on a Tuesday, they sit the same test and get scored on the same things.
Why they cost less than they should: two things set an engineer's price. Everybody competes on one of them.
A brilliant engineer at $120 an hour has already been found.
The first thing is ability. That one is obvious, and every agency on earth is fighting over it. The second is how many people have already found them. Put a great engineer in a big city surrounded by well funded companies and somebody finds them within months. Put the same person somewhere nobody is looking and they can stay unpriced for years.
Price is those two things multiplied together. Most firms only work on the first one. So we work the second one: hackathons in cities nobody flies to, referral chains that run through people rather than job titles, and AI that reads every single application so nobody gets skipped for being number 700 in the pile.
That is not a discount and it is not offshore labour. It is looking where the competition is not, and then testing hard enough to know what we have found.
It also has a shelf life. A place nobody is looking today is a place somebody is looking in two years. Which is why we keep moving, and why the people we place now are worth more than we charge for them.
The scorecard: everyone gets scored.
Names removed. Everything else is what our recruiters see when they decide. We do not forward you resumes and call it vetting.
A sample sheet, scored on first reply, English, screening call, experience, technical test, GitHub, and an overall score:
- CAND-0417 — first reply 4 min, English C1, screening call 4.7, experience 3 yr, technical 9.6, GitHub active, score 9.4. Outcome: hired.
- CAND-0016 — no first reply, English B2, screening call 3.6, experience 5 yr, technical 9.0, GitHub active, score 7.8. Outcome: passed on.
- CAND-0030 — first reply 17 hr, English C1, screening call 3.7, experience 6.5 yr, technical 8.0, GitHub sparse, score 7.1. Outcome: passed on.
- CAND-0031 — first reply 31 min, English C1, screening call 4.1, experience 0 yr, technical 2.0, GitHub sparse, score 3.9. Outcome: rate vs. skill.
- CAND-0033 — first reply 7 min, English B2, screening call 4.2, experience 1 yr, technical 7.0, GitHub active, score 6.4. Outcome: disqualified.
The six signals we score:
- How fast they answer — Speed is not the job. It is the cheapest honest read on how much someone wants it, and no resume writer can fake it.
- The same topics, every time — The questions change so nobody can pass answers around, and they shift with the role. The topics and the scoring never change, so two people are always compared on the same thing.
- A watched technical test — Timed and proctored, with AI-assistance detection. In our twelfth hiring round that removed 71 people who looked excellent on paper.
- Their commit history — We read the GitHub record, not the GitHub profile. Real, recent, sustained work, or it does not count.
- The resume, ranked — Parsed and scored across several dimensions, with gaps and inconsistencies flagged for a person to chase down.
- Rate against ability — We cut in both directions. Asking well above what your scores support gets you cut, same as not being able to do the work. We price a gap, so the gap has to be real.
Pricing: how high do you want to go?
Most agencies take 30 to 50 percent and hope you never do the math. We print our number.
Standard, 126 to 1: cleared the bar
Engineers who cleared the whole test. Strong, fast, in your time zone, with U.S. oversight. About one in 126 people who apply get this far. This is who you will work with most of the time, and they are very good.
- Prepay hours — $10/hr markup. You buy a block of hours up front and draw it down as they are used.
- Pay on invoice — $15/hr markup. No block up front. We bill you after the work is done.
- A flat dollar markup, never a percentage
- A replacement proposed within 5 business days
- Engineers, AI specialists, analysts, marketing, QA
Same engineers either way, and they are paid the same either way. When you prepay, we are not covering payroll while we wait on an invoice, so we charge less. That is all it is. Ask for rates.
Exceptional, 955 to 1: top of the round, priced per person
The one at the top of the sheet. The person who makes everyone around them ship faster. In our last round, one person out of 955 got here. This tier does not use the markup above. It is one all-in rate, worked out per engineer, because there are never many of them at once and no two are worth the same. Our margin here is bigger and we would rather say so than bury it. For scale, a U.S. staff engineer runs $170 to $240 an hour fully loaded. Available now: 1.
- One rate, all in, nothing added later
- Longer non-solicit and conversion terms
- Six month minimum commitment
- A waitlist when nobody is available
The guarantee: your first week is on us if it is not working. Tell us inside the first 40 hours and you get your money back. Nothing to fill in, nothing to argue about, no notice period. This is separate from how you pay: prepaid or invoiced, the first week is guaranteed either way.
Who we place: not just developers.
- Software engineers — Full stack, backend, frontend, mobile. Python, React, Node, .NET, Ruby, Flutter. Mid and senior.
- AI and automation — Agent builders, ML engineers, automation specialists. The people who make the systems actually run.
- Marketing and content — AI video production, SEO, paid acquisition, growth. Creative work measured against numbers.
- Data and analytics — Pipelines, dashboards, BI, Google Analytics. Plus QA, DevOps and design on request.
Legal, payment and compliance are handled by Agentic Software Inc., so international hiring is not your problem.
Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not.
Across Latin America and Japan there are people whose ability rivals anyone in the world, staying up until three in the morning debugging, competing, building. Many of them write excellent software on borrowed laptops, and not because they have to.
We do not just look for skill. We look for fire. Every dollar we do not take in markup stays somewhere it matters: in your company building your product, or in someone's pocket building their life.
Next step: tell us what you need built. We will tell you who can build it.
No retainer, no exclusivity, no long form. If we do not have the right person right now, we will say so.
Book a call or call +1 (202) 915-9525.
Contact
We find your ROI and capture it. AI agents for every business need.
Address: 2807 N Parham Rd, Suite 320 #6213, Henrico, Virginia 23294, United States
Phone: +1 (202) 915-9525
Email: info@agenticsoftwareinc.com
Schedule a call: 30-minute intro call