When, Where and How SaaS Startup Can Hire Developers?

SaaS developers specialize in programming and building Software as a service applications and products. These are software applications that are hosted on the cloud for delivery to end-users over the web. The development of SaaS applications has been integral to the rise of enterprise cloud computing within the last decade, especially since it is more scalable than previous models.

Hence, there has been a greater demand for SaaS app developers for hire. However, these programmers are not readily available. Therefore, this article is a highly useful guide for SaaS startups looking to hire web developers to build their products. We explain precisely when, where, and how you can find the programmers you seek.

Skills, Roles and Responsibilities to Note When Hiring SaaS Coders

Programming

Cloud-based products can be mobile and web applications; therefore, a SaaS developer must be skilled in handling web-based programming technologies, languages, and frameworks such as HTML, Javascript, CSS, C#, Python, PHP, Ruby, and so on, both front end and back end. Typically, such a programmer would have a full stack focus, skilled in building both the server-side and the client-side of applications.

Database Design and Management

SaaS applications live in data centers, and they collect a lot of data from subscribers. To optimize the application workload and performance, SaaS software developers for hire are required to be skilled in database design and management. They should be able to work with several database technologies such as MySQL, Oracle, Firebase, MongoDB, and the likes.

Cloud Architecture

A SaaS application is a cloud application. Therefore, a SaaS developer must know how various cloud architectures work. Particularly, they must be familiar with the major cloud services providers such as Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. They should also be skilled in cloud-specific functions such as data migration.

Agile Development

One of the selling points of the SaaS approach is its scalability. SaaS applications live at the heart of rapid innovation and cannot be tied down by previous inefficient application development models. Hire a SaaS engineer who is skilled in modern development processes such as the agile approach, as well as architectures such as DevOps and MVC (model-view-controller).

Security and Compliance

The rise of SaaS applications has seen a massive increase in the amount of data being transmitted every day. This contributes to the challenge of securing SaaS systems. A SaaS developer must be familiar with security best practices for developing applications protected from the malicious hands of hackers. Encryption, tests execution, and risk management are part of the range of skills and expertise that they must employ, to some extent, in developing SaaS applications.

Benefits for Your Startup When You Hire a SaaS Programmer?

• Cloud computing is an affordable enterprise solution requiring a minimal budget.
• SaaS applications experience fewer downtimes and better stability overall.
• The over-the-air update model ensures that the features can be extended and bugs can be fixed seamlessly.
• Cloud software solutions are easily scalable. You can optimize the system for maximum productivity and extend the capabilities later than required.
• SaaS applications ensure better cybersecurity and data protection. For one, backups are always available and stored on the cloud to protect the integrity of the data.
• Cloud computing and particularly the SaaS model, has seen rapid adoption in recent years. Hiring a SaaS programmer is a great way to future-proof your business and match your competitors.

6 Tips on How to Hire SaaS Developers Successfully

Hire Committed Professionals

Startups thrive on innovation, productivity, proactiveness, and a growth mindset. Look out for this combination of features in the developers you hire. Someone might be a skilled, thorough-going professional, but if they are not committed to your company’s vision, they may not perform up to their best.

Hire Candidates with Industry Expertise

Find SaaS developers with industry experience. That is, they should have worked in companies similar to yours or built SaaS solutions similar to the product you are trying to build. This ensures that they have a proper understanding of the business outlook of your company or product. If the candidates lack such years of experience, then look out for those with transferable skills that can be applied to build a SaaS product for your company.

Check for Culture Fit

The company culture fit of candidates is an underrated factor in the hiring process. This does not mean that you should use biased hiring methods or that you ignore skills and experience. Rather, culture fit hiring means employing people who share the same values as your company.

Actively Seek Potential Hires

In a growing industry that is known for its scarcity of talents, you need every resource that you can get to get your company ahead and attract top SaaS talents. That includes networking remotely and looking out for potential hires even when the current workload does not require immediate hiring. When you build a good relationship with the top personalities in the SaaS space, especially through online communities, you are likely to find useful hires when you require them.

Have a Clear Job Description

Optimize the job description to better capture the specifics of what you want from a SaaS developer. Every position is unique in its own right. So, a job description is not something you pull off the internet. Talk to the other members of your team and determine what skills are lacking and what responsibilities a candidate would be assigned. Use this to create a picture of your ideal candidate.

Use Scenario Planning

If you are hiring a SaaS development team, you need scenario planning to help you determine who the team would be composed of. Should you hire more generalists than specialists or vice versa? More senior developers than junior and mid-level developers or otherwise? Scenario planning helps you to determine the right approach and optimize your hunt.

Where Can You Find SaaS Developers?

You can hire SaaS dev through job boards, social media, networking events, and the likes. However, as mentioned already, it is not so straightforward to find software engineers for your SaaS startup. Therefore, companies employ various methods to super-charge their hiring process and seek out candidates directly. Such methods include outstaffing, freelance hiring, and hiring agencies. Each approach has been explained in this section, along with the pros and cons.

SaaS App Developers for Hire by an Outstaffing Company

Outstaffing is a outsourcing model where one company hires a third party’s employees to provide specific services. Most app development companies have this model in place. At ProCoders, we specialize in building teams to handle IT projects for clients.

Pros

• Faster time-to-market
• Optimized development costs
• Efficient recruitment process
• Access infrastructure for project execution
• Greater client control over the project

Cons

• Close supervision required
• Possible communication issues, especially in offshoring. With ProCoders though, our developers are proficient in English and can communicate well across countries.
• Poor orientation may result in disloyal behavior. However, at ProCoders, we form a meaningful partnership with our clients and even provide ongoing support.

SaaS Software Developers for Hire on Freelance

Perhaps the fastest and most typical method for accessing software developers is freelancing. Generalist freelance platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer.com, and Fiverr have served many clients well. Other specialist platforms are Toptal, Gun.io, and the likes.

Pros

• Quick recruitment process, especially for short-term roles
• Recruitment flexibility
• Payment by hours bears less financial risk

Cons

• Less accountability
• Greater risk of a cybersecurity attack
• Lack of cohesive supervision
• An unpredictable quality of work

Find SaaS Developers by the Hiring Agencies

Hiring agencies maintain a pool of talents across various positions, and they use a talent matching system to help companies find professionals to hire. However, unlike in outstaffing, these talents are not employed by the agencies. Hiring agencies only serve as a bridge for companies to meet and recruit candidates.

Pros

• Shorter recruitment period
• Extensive talent pool
• Useful insider knowledge

Cons

• Staffing issues, lack of cultural fit
• Shallow networks
• Higher recruitment money

4 Steps on How to Hire SaaS Developers

Determine who you want to hire

To be clear, you can’t know who you want to hire if you have not determined the requirements of the project. What matters to you when you hire a SaaS software programmer? What goals are you trying to achieve? What are your objectives? Answering these questions would help you to create an ideal candidate profile so you know who exactly you are looking for.

Per the needs of the project, you also have to determine if you want to hire a full-time developer (long-term projects) or a contractor (short-term contracts). When you hire developers through an outstaffing service such as ProСoders, these are the questions we go through to help you to assemble the perfect team for your project.

Talent Hunt

The inevitable first step is the search for adequate talent. Service SaaS professionals are scarce and in high demand. You can’t wait for the developers to come to you; you have to actively seek them out. Therefore, posting the vacancy details on a job board may not be enough.

Super-charge your talent hunt by expanding your network and reaching out to people you know in the industry for recommendations. You can also scout by participating in SaaS communities on social media. More so, even when posting on job boards, be clear about the position’s responsibilities and requirements so that qualified candidates can apply.

However, you can skip the hassle by hiring a development oustaffing agency such as ProCoders. We already have a pool of skilled, vetted developers for various projects, including SaaS. All you have to do is discuss your project details with us. Then we will build a team of skilled professionals from our existing pool and engage more developers with a special stack if needed.

Interview Process

Once you have completed the first stage, determining who you want to hire, then the technical interview process should scale smoothly. You only need to determine a method to evaluate candidates to ensure that they meet your ideal candidate profile. Depending on the importance of the role, there may be multiple interview steps and checkpoints.

The interview process can be challenging on its own, and you want to be sure that you don’t hire wrong. One solution is to appoint a hiring manager or to outsource recruitment to an agency. However, that only takes the decision-making away from you.

That’s why, at ProCoders, in relating with our clients and while assembling a team for their projects, we allow them to interact with and interview the prospective team members to be sure that the developers are fit for the project. Basically, even when outstaffing, we let clients take charge of the most important decisions of their project so that we can satisfy their needs.

Hiring and Onboarding

To hire a web developer for your SaaS startup, once you choose your candidate(s), then you have to complete the hiring process by finalizing agreements and moving on to onboarding. This can also be a hassle, but it is highly essential that new hires understand their roles and responsibilities from the first day so that they can deliver a product with the best quality.

This is another area that ProCoders has attained efficiency. Given that all our developers have worked on other projects together, once the team is assembled, they are ready to start right away, with minimal onboarding required. The SaaS space is one of rapid innovation, and you need all the time you can get to forge ahead of competitors. Therefore, when you hire with ProCoders, you can enjoy a faster time-to-market in addition to a great project result.

Hourly Rate and SaaS Developer Salary Comparison

The prices below (average hourly rates and average salaries) come from SalaryExpert.com. The rates are grouped according to locations to help you guide your choice.

Country	Average Mid-Level Hourly Rate	Average Annual Salary
United States	$54	$112,372
Ukraine	$11	$23,350
Mexico	$10	$22,481
Poland	$19	$40,051
Germany	$46	$96,353
China	$24	$50,402
India	$8	$17,997

Hire SaaS Developers with ProCoders

To help businesses find a SaaS developer for hire today, ProCoders stands out. ProCoders is a software development outsourcing company based in Ukraine. Our company is established on the principles of experience, trust, openness, diligence, and people-first. In order to overcome the challenges that other outstaffing firms face, our business model is aimed at achieving a true, fulfilling partnership with our tech clients.

Therefore, when you send us the details of your SaaS project, we assemble a dedicated team of highly skilled developers to prosecute the project. The developers have been personally vetted by us, but our clients also get to personally interview them before the onboarding process to ensure that the stack and skills match your requirements.

In addition, we are in s convenient time zone (UTC +2) and all the developers are English-speaking. Our SaaS developers join seamlessly your working hours and project communications. As a result of this, we have handled projects for companies based in other countries and continents beyond Europe.

In one of our SaaS projects, the client, Frontegg required a plug-and-play development solution for other SaaS companies. However, Frontegg faced hiring challenges, especially since it was a young startup. ProCoders assembled a team of experts to handle Frontegg’s software engineering challenges, and the project was executed in about a year, accelerating the time to build the core product features by 25%. The startup also saved 38% in human resources expenses, having chosen the more responsive way to build and release its product.

Conclusion

If you represent a SaaS startup, you’re one of the fastest-growing companies in the world today. There is still a high demand for developers in that industry. To find the best ones, you have different options: outstaffing, freelancing, or hiring an agency. However, all these methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

In terms of cost and efficiency, outstaffing is an excellent approach, especially if you partner is a veteran development company such as ProCoders. If you want to hire SaaS coders for your successful SaaS startup or just want to check our mobile app developer hourly rate, just make an appointment with Procoders professionals to discuss your project’s stack requirements.