How to choose a nearshore software company: eight checks

Ask for the hourly rate by seniority and the price of a fixed scope, and ask what the rate includes: vetting, replacement, management, equipment. A firm that gives no number before a call makes you negotiate blind. Compare rates on the same measure: a contractor's pay and a vendor's billed rate are different numbers.

Clouditive publishes Junior at USD 30, Mid at 35–⁠40, Senior at 45–⁠50 and Lead or Architect at 55–⁠60 an hour, and nine fixed-price packages from USD 2,500. Billing is per hour worked, in USD, monthly in arrears, net 15.

• Our rates beside the market figures
• Every rate and package price

Ask to meet the person, not a profile or a sales engineer. Ask who selects the engineers and how, how fast candidates arrive, and what happens if one leaves or does not fit, including who pays for the handover.

At Clouditive you interview the engineer who will do the work. Selection is a technical interview with a real exercise, an English interview, and an interview by Mat Caniglia before any candidate reaches you. We present candidates within 1 week. If the engineer leaves or does not fit, we replace them and cover the handover at no cost.

• Hire Latin American developers
• The engineer profiles and how we select

Nearshore is worth paying for because of the overlap. Ask which time zones the engineers work in and how many hours overlap with yours, in writing, for your city and not for a map. Then ask who answers during the other hours.

Our engineers work between UTC−3 and UTC−5, 9 to 18 local time. That overlaps at least 4 hours with US Eastern and with US Central, 2 with US Pacific, 6 to 8 with Mexico City and most of the day with Brasília. We work in your business hours and offer no 24x7 on-call: we leave alerts and runbooks so your on-call can resolve incidents.

• Nearshore LATAM and the hours we share

Ask for the contract documents and the access model before the first call: who owns the code, which agreements it signs (NDA, MSA, SOW, DPA), whether engineers are background-checked, whose accounts they work in and how access ends. Then ask which certifications it holds, and read what it says it does not claim.

We sign an NDA before the call if you ask, and all code and intellectual property are yours from day 1. Engineers work in your own accounts with your SSO, MFA and least privilege, and we revoke access at exit. Every engineer passes a background check, and we complete your security questionnaire on request. We claim no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification and publish no third-party audit report. We do the engineering toward those controls, and we sign a HIPAA BAA when an engagement touches PHI.

• Security and procurement terms
• Compliance engineering

Ask for cases with dates, figures and what was not done, and for references you can call. A logo wall proves a relationship, not a result. Check whether each claim says when it was measured.

Our published cases carry their dates and figures, and each case page says what it does not show. We connect you with client references before you sign.

• See the published cases

Ask to see the tests and what blocks a push. Ask how many tests run, whether any of them hit a real database, how big a pull request gets, and who can merge without a check passing. If nobody checks the code, you find out about its quality in production.

Every push we make is checked for leaked secrets, type errors, dead code and architecture before it leaves the engineer's machine. On Autonomah, a product we built, 30,282 unit tests and 1,440 integration tests were passing at version 1.61.0, and every production deploy is verified by image digest. Ask every firm on your list for the same two things: the number of tests, and what stops a push.

• The AI marketing platform case

Ask for the minimum term, the notice period, the exit and replacement terms, how invoices work and what a fixed-price package guarantees. Ask whether you can start small before a long commitment.

Hourly teams (staff augmentation) have a 6-month minimum, then 30 days' notice. Fixed-price packages have no minimum term, and you can start with any 2-week package first. We work under an MSA with a SOW for each engagement. What a package delivers is written into its SOW, and we publish no completion guarantee. Invoices are in USD from DX Clouditive LLC, monthly in arrears, net 15, by bank transfer.

• How staff augmentation works
• Fixed-price packages

Ask how soon the firm can staff your roles, what size of team it works best with, and what it does not do. A firm that says yes to everything has not looked at your project.

We confirm availability for your roles on the first call and present candidates within 1 week. Today we have access to more than 100 different profiles, available in under two weeks. We are a small senior team: Mat leads every project, and our worked examples use two to six people. We work in English or Spanish. Portuguese is for the website, proposals, contracts and email, not for day-to-day work. We do not run round-the-clock on-call. If you need a large team, ask us first and we will say whether we can staff it.

• Contact us