Indeed and LinkedIn hiring data converge on the same number: 95 days average time-to-hire for senior software engineering roles. That is from job posting to accepted offer. Not to the engineer's first day. Not to their first productive contribution. Just to the accepted offer.
Add 2-4 weeks of notice period at the current employer. Add 2-4 weeks of onboarding. Add 4-8 weeks until the new hire is fully productive in your codebase. The real time from "we need an engineer" to "the engineer is contributing" is 5-7 months.
I run a staff augmentation business. We start engineers on client projects in 2-3 weeks. The time-to-hire data explains why our clients choose us.
The Numbers
Indeed (2025 hiring data):
- Average time-to-hire for senior engineers: 95 days
- Software engineer job postings: 28% above pre-pandemic levels
- Offer-acceptance rates: declined from 73% to 51% over 3 years
LinkedIn Talent Insights (2025):
- Senior software engineer: 90-110 days average
- DevOps/SRE: 85-100 days
- AI/ML engineer: 100-130 days (highest in tech)
Greenhouse Benchmark Report (2024):
- Interview-to-offer rate: 17% (6 candidates interviewed per hire)
- Application-to-interview rate: 5% (20 applications reviewed per interview)
- Net result: ~120 applications to make one hire
The Math
Take a senior backend engineer at $180,000/year salary. Their daily cost to the company (salary + benefits + overhead) is roughly $1,000-$1,200/day.
Now calculate the cost of the vacancy. The project they were supposed to work on is delayed. Other engineers cover some of their work, reducing their own output. Features slip. Deadlines move.
Conservative estimate: an unfilled engineering role costs $500-$1,500/day in delayed delivery. Over 95 days, that is $47,500-$142,500 in opportunity cost.
Then the offer gets rejected. 51% acceptance rate means roughly half the time, the 95-day clock resets. Two hiring cycles equals 190 days and $95,000-$285,000 in delays. And you still do not have an engineer.
Now add the direct costs: recruiter fees (15-25% of first-year salary for agency placements = $27,000-$45,000), interviewing time (40-60 hours of existing engineers' time per hire), and onboarding costs.
Total cost of filling one senior engineering position: $75,000-$175,000 in direct and opportunity costs.
Why Acceptance Rates Are Falling
The decline from 73% to 51% is not random. Three factors:
Counter-offers. The candidate's current employer, now facing their own talent shortage, counter-offers with a raise or promotion. 40% of candidates who receive counter-offers accept them.
Multiple offers. Senior engineers in 2026 receive 2-3 offers simultaneously. They compare total compensation, remote flexibility, tech stack, company stage, and team quality. Losing on any one dimension can cost the hire.
The process takes too long. 95 days of interviews, take-home assignments, panel reviews, and HR approvals. By the time the offer arrives, the candidate has already accepted elsewhere or lost enthusiasm. Speed kills in hiring. Or rather, lack of speed kills your offers.
The Retained Team Alternative
The 95-day cycle assumes everything goes well. What if you could skip it entirely?
Our model: you contact us with your project requirements. We assign senior engineers from our existing team. Introductions in 1 week. Team working on your project in 2-3 weeks. Full productivity in 4-6 weeks.
Not 5-7 months. 4-6 weeks. That is the difference between a retained engineering partner and the hiring market.
Snapwire needed to scale their 30-person engineering team by one-third. Hiring 10 senior engineers through the traditional process would have taken 12-18 months (10 hires × 95 days average, assuming no rejected offers). We started 10 engineers within weeks.
Greek House needed to replace a stalled engineering team. Traditional hiring: 6+ months to build a new team. We started shipping same-day releases within weeks of engagement start.
When to Hire vs When to Retain
Hire full-time when:
- The role is permanent and the skills are core to your business
- You have 6+ months of runway to absorb the hiring cycle
- Your employer brand is strong enough to attract senior talent
- You can offer competitive total compensation
Use a retained team when:
- You need engineers in weeks, not months
- The project has a defined timeline (6 months to 3 years)
- You want to scale up or down with business needs
- You cannot compete on compensation with Big Tech
Most of our clients use both. They hire core roles full-time and augment with our team for capacity, specialized skills, or speed. HeyTutor used our team for 9 years while gradually building internal engineering capacity. The retained team was not a substitute for hiring. It was a complement that eliminated the time-to-hire constraint.
Our rates are $50-99/hour for senior engineers. That is $8,000-$16,000/month per dedicated engineer. Compare to 95 days of vacancy at $500-$1,500/day ($47,500-$142,500 in opportunity cost) plus $27,000-$45,000 in recruiter fees. The retained team is not just faster. It is cheaper when you account for the full cost of hiring.
Last updated July 6, 2025
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