For fleets that survive a dropout and their own update
Hire IoT Developers
A device that behaves perfectly on a bench can still lose data the moment connectivity drops or brick itself during a routine firmware push. These developers are tested on catching that exact fragility before it reaches the field. They are then placed to keep a whole fleet reliable as it keeps scaling.
- Profiles typically within two business days
- Replacement Assurance: If an engineer is not the right fit, a replacement from our own team starts within ten business days of your request, at no extra cost
- You interview before placement if you want to
- At least four hours a day inside your core working hours. Two hours plus a daily written handover for the US West Coast
- 14-Day Risk-Free Trial: For your first engineer on a time-and-materials engagement. Up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. End within the trial and pay nothing for trial hours. Continue beyond it and those hours are billed at the agreed rate. Unpaid trial work remains ours if you stop
How we evaluate an IoT developer
The tasks, the signals and the onboarding, walked through by the people who run them.
90 secSample frame · video pending01Published, not promised
The assessment behind every developer we send.
The IoT bar is published, not assumed: five competencies, the exact task behind each, and the shortcut that ends a candidacy. Most interviews ask about a specific board or chipset. This one asks whether a fleet survives its own firmware update.
What we listen forWhether they design for the dropout, not assume a stable link.
Devices in the field lose connectivity for hours at a time, and sensor readings taken during that gap are currently lost entirely. Propose a fix.
- What strong sounds like
- Proposes local buffering with store-and-forward sync, so readings taken during a dropout are queued and delivered once connectivity returns.
- What gives us pause
- Proposes increasing the transmission retry frequency without adding any local buffering for the data lost during the dropout.
MQTT · FreeRTOS · AWS IoT Core
CoAP · LwM2M · Zigbee
X.509 Certificates · Zero-Touch Provisioning · Device Shadow
OTA Updates · Delta Patching · Rollback Design
02Who you actually meet
The bench, priced by seniority.
Three seniority tiers, priced honestly, and the engineers who fill each one today. Real names and photos take their place as soon as we can share them, and the standard stays exactly the same.
Engineer
Features scoped tightly enough to ship inside your review bar, every time.
The right first hire when your seniors already set the standard.
$2,100–2,800per month
Senior
The hard module nobody else wants to own, taken end to end.
Ownership of a surface, without adding a manager to your headcount.
$3,000–3,800per month
Lead
The workstream's decisions, made daily, so nothing waits on a meeting.
One accountable voice for a pod or initiative that can't afford to drift.
$4,100–5,200per month
IoT developer
3 yrs · US East overlap
Rebuilt a device's reconnection logic after intermittent connectivity was silently dropping telemetry data
- MQTT
- FreeRTOS
- Edge Compute
Senior IoT developer
6 yrs · UK + EU hours
Designed a fleet provisioning system that safely rolled out an update to thousands of devices
- Fleet Management
- OTA Updates
- AWS IoT Core
Lead IoT architect
9 yrs · EU + US split
Owns the protocol-security standard applied across a fleet of resource-constrained field devices
- Architecture
- CoAP
- Power-Constrained Design
Indicative ranges, representative profiles. Exact figures and named engineers arrive with your shortlist.
Weighing this against a freelancer, a direct hire or a marketplace? See the honest comparison
03From stated problem to first change
Four steps, each closing on evidence.
This sequence tests judgement about real fleet constraints, not familiarity with one hardware platform. Stopping at any point along the way owes us nothing.
Define the fleet problem
We map where your devices are actually fragile, unmanaged or hard to update safely. The brief names that gap, not a list of chipsets to know.
A brief your hardware lead signsMatch against your fleet
Candidates are screened against your actual device constraints, connectivity pattern and fleet size. Three developers who understand your fleet beat thirty who list an SDK on a CV.
Three fits, not thirty CVsAssess on the real tasks
Your team can watch the connectivity-resilience and OTA-rollback exercises directly. What shows up is judgement about constrained devices, not a rehearsed demo board.
Evaluation you can watchOnboard inside your fleet
Access, standards and a first bounded fleet improvement shipped for real. Continuity cover keeps a departure from leaving devices stranded mid-rollout.
A provisioned device in week one
04Evidence and proof
Developers who kept a fleet running through a bad update.
IoT proof is a fleet that survived its own update, not a single demo device on a bench. Every record here waits for written client approval before production.
Explore case studies
The firmware update that stopped bricking devices in the field.
Aster North pushed a firmware update to its entire connected fleet at once, and a batch of devices had to be physically retrieved after the update bricked them. An embedded IoT developer rebuilt the rollout as a staged canary with automatic rollback on failed health checks.
- Devices bricked per update
- None, going forward
- Rollout method
- Staged, with automatic rollback
He built store-and-forward buffering so we stopped losing sensor readings every time a device dropped offline.
Sample · pending client approval
He automated device provisioning so onboarding a thousand units stopped meaning a thousand manual flashes.
Sample · pending client approval
05Three shapes, one standard
Add a developer, a device pod, or a practice.
Most teams start with one developer hardening connectivity and update safety first. Some need a pod that owns provisioning and fleet management end to end. Where the whole connected-device platform matters more than one seat, we point you to the practice instead.
- Team extension
One named developer
A single IoT specialist inside your direction and your review process. The smallest commitment, and the natural first step.
- Delivery pods
A device pod
A pod with its own lead that owns provisioning, OTA safety and fleet management end to end. You set priorities while the pod carries delivery.
- Data & Cloud
The practice, not the person
Connected-device platforms here sit inside the same practice as cloud ingestion, so when the whole fleet platform matters most, data and cloud engineering takes it on.
06Straight answers
Asked before an IoT hire is signed.
01What does an IoT developer actually do day to day?
Designs firmware that survives a connectivity dropout, builds provisioning that scales past a handful of devices, and rolls out updates safely with automatic rollback. Working within a real power and memory budget runs through nearly all of it.
02Do you hire for a specific IoT platform or protocol?
Matched to your actual constraints. Connectivity and provisioning judgement transfers across MQTT, CoAP and the major cloud IoT platforms, then the evaluation confirms fluency with whichever you run.
03Can we run our own interviews as well?
Yes, the published tasks are built to be reused directly. Several clients now run the OTA-rollback exercise themselves in later hiring rounds.
04How fast can an IoT developer start?
A shortlist arrives within days from a bench evaluated continuously. Actual start speed after that depends on how quickly your side can grant fleet and device access.
05Who manages the engineer day to day?
Your hardware lead sets fleet priorities and signs off on rollout plans. The employment side sits with us, covering payroll and continuity if plans change unexpectedly.
06What if the engineer is not the right fit?
A mismatch caught early is replaced free, no extra paperwork on your side. We carry the specific reason forward so the next IoT developer does not repeat it.
07Do your IoT developers use AI coding tools?
Yes, to draft first-pass firmware modules and provisioning scripts quickly. The developer still owns every power budget decision and rollback design that ships to the fleet.
08How does pricing work for a hired IoT developer?
Treat the range as a planning tool; the shortlist locks in the real number after scope is confirmed. Monthly billing, no placement fee, notice-period exit only.