sourceBOLD doesn't hire developers for you. We engage independent contractors — and engagement is a specific contractual structure, distinct from full-time employment and from traditional staff augmentation. Here's what it actually is.
What "engagement" means
An engagement is a month-to-month contractor relationship governed by three documents:
- The Master Services Agreement (MSA) between you and sourceBOLD — covers billing, IP, confidentiality, term, governing law.
- A Statement of Work (SOW) per developer — names the developer, the start date, the monthly Service Fee, and the scope of work.
- An Independent Contractor Agreement between sourceBOLD and the developer — the contract that makes the developer an independent contractor rather than an employee of either party.
You sign the MSA + SOW. sourceBOLD signs the Independent Contractor Agreement separately with the developer — acting as the contractor of record (CoR) on every engagement. The legal relationships are kept clean — the developer is not your employee, not sourceBOLD's employee, and there's no joint-employer relationship.
Why "engagement" instead of "hire"
The word matters because the legal structure matters. Engaging a contractor and hiring an employee are not interchangeable:
- No W-2. The developer files a 1099 (or the international equivalent). You don't withhold taxes, file payroll, or carry employment-tax exposure.
- No benefits obligation. No health insurance, no PTO accrual, no 401(k) match on your side. The developer's economics are handled through the sourceBOLD payout, not through your HR system.
- No equity vesting. A contractor isn't eligible for the employee equity pool. (Some clients do issue contractor warrants — that's an option that lives outside the engagement.)
- No at-will-employment relationship. Termination follows the notice period in the MSA, not US at-will employment law.
If what you actually need is a full-time employee with benefits and equity, an engagement isn't the right fit. We'll say so.
Why "engagement" instead of "staff augmentation"
Traditional staff augmentation firms typically bill an hourly rate × hours worked, reconciled weekly via timesheet; retain 40–50% margin between client bill rate and developer pay; operate on a "bench" model where the firm pre-employs developers and rents them out; and offer team-based engagements (Scrum team of five, with a PM bundled in).
sourceBOLD differs on every dimension:
- Monthly Service Fee, not hourly. One US-dollar invoice per developer per month. No timesheets, no weekly billing reconciliation.
- Developer-favored revenue split. The split is structurally weighted toward the developer, from the first month.
- No bench. We don't pre-employ developers and rent them out. Every placement is sourced for a specific client SOW.
- Single-developer engagement. No PM bundled in, no team-as-a-unit pricing. You direct the work; we placed the developer.
Staff augmentation vs outsourcing compares the models side by side, and PEO vs EOR vs contractor of record covers the employer models.
What that means in practice
You add a contractor to your team. They show up to your standups, write code in your repos, take direction from your tech lead, and integrate the way an in-house contractor would integrate. Your team treats them as a member of the team. The contract structure is invisible day-to-day — it surfaces when an invoice arrives on the 15th, when you sign a new SOW for the next developer, or when the engagement ends and the notice period runs out.
That's the engagement model: contractually clean, operationally invisible.
For the contract math underneath the model, What it costs covers the per-developer numbers. For the engagement playbook, How it works walks through scoping to first standup. To see the engagement model set against specific staff-augmentation and marketplace providers, browse the head-to-head comparisons.