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Process, contracts, payroll, hoursNo mystery, no black box. This page is the whole operation: what we ask you for, what we do with it, who signs what, who pays whom, and what happens on the 15th of every month afterwards.
A standard mid-to-senior engineering search runs four to six weeks from intake to first day in Mexico or Colombia, six to eight in Brazil because of the 30-day notice period. The stage that stretches is almost never sourcing — it is your interview loop.
Hiring manager and recruiter, screen sharing the job description. We go through it line by line and argue with the parts that will not survive the market. We agree the band in local currency, the country, the contract vehicle and the loop. You leave the call with a written brief; we do not start sourcing until you have replied to it.
Before we contact anyone, we map the population: how many people in the target market fit, where they work now, what they earn. If the map says your band buys the bottom 20% of that pool, you hear it on day three rather than in week six. Sometimes the honest output of this stage is "don't run this search in this country".
Outreach, screening, English calibration and the technical screen. You get four to six candidates with written notes, the English grade, salary expectation as a number, notice period and any employment complications already flagged. Not a stack of CVs — CVs in this region are unreliable and we do not forward them as evidence.
We schedule inside your calendar and your ATS: Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby, your stages, your scorecards. We chase your interviewers for feedback, prepare candidates for each stage, and tell you when the loop is losing people. If your loop has five stages we will ask you to cut one; in this market a two-week decision cycle costs you finalists.
We deliver the offer verbally first, then in writing in the local language with the gross-to-net breakdown attached. After acceptance: contract, social security registration, equipment, accounts, and a first-week check-in with the manager. We stay in the loop for 90 days, because that is when a bad match shows itself.
You have three structures available. The right one usually falls out of the country and the role within ten minutes of the intake call, but the choice belongs to you and your counsel.
The person is employed by our Mexican entity. We hold the employment contract, run payroll, handle IMSS, INFONAVIT, aguinaldo, PTU, vacation and NOM-035. You direct the work day to day and receive one monthly invoice.
Best for: Mexico, and for clients with no local entity and no appetite to build one.
The person contracts as an independent professional — monotributo in Argentina, PJ in Brazil — under a properly drafted service agreement. We handle invoicing discipline, category compliance, payment routing and the annual rate review.
Best for: Argentina, senior Brazilian ICs, and anyone with genuine autonomy over their working method.
You already have an entity, or a global payroll provider you like. We recruit, screen and close; the person signs directly with you. We hand over the full compliance checklist for the country so nothing is missed at signing.
Best for: companies already operating in the country, one-off senior hires, contract-to-hire conversions.
Plenty of clients start someone on Structure B and convert to employment at six months. That works, but it is not free: in Brazil, converting a PJ to CLT resets tenure and changes their net pay materially, and in Colombia moving a contractor onto an indefinite contract creates prima and cesantías obligations from the conversion date. We model both scenarios in the offer stage so nobody discovers it later.
Below is what our payroll team in Roma Norte actually runs each month and each year. You see one consolidated invoice; this is what is behind it.
Everyone in this industry advertises overlap. Few people count it properly. Below is the shared working window against a 9:00–18:00 local schedule on each side, in the northern winter when the gaps are widest.
| Country | vs US Eastern | vs US Central | vs US Mountain | vs US Pacific |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mexico (central zone) | 8 hours | 9 hours | 8 hours | 7 hours |
| Colombia | 9 hours | 8 hours | 7 hours | 6 hours |
| Brazil (south-east) | 7 hours | 6 hours | 5 hours | 4 hours |
| Argentina (10:00 local start) | 7 hours | 6 hours | 6 hours | 5 hours |
Four hours of overlap covers a standup and a status update. It does not cover the pairing session that fixes a stuck ticket, the incident that starts at 4:30, or the informal conversation where someone realises the requirement was misread. Those are the interactions that decide whether a distributed hire works. A shared working day is the entire argument for hiring in this hemisphere — if the plan only produces four hours, you may as well hire in Poland and save money.
The exact meetings, in their local time, before the first interview. If a role has a 7:00am Eastern ritual, the Mexico City candidate hears "06:00 your time, every Tuesday" on the screening call. People accept demanding schedules far more often than managers expect — what they do not accept is discovering the schedule after they resign from their last job.
Two models, both stated in the proposal before any work starts. No surprise line items, and the market read that precedes everything is free.