How to hire a freelance .NET developer

Hire a freelance .NET developer by deciding what the job is, testing the person on that job, and keeping ownership of your code and accounts. The hourly rate matters less than any of those.

Decide what the job is

Three jobs look alike in a listing and need different people: building something new, finishing or fixing code someone else wrote, and keeping a working system running. The second is the hardest. The developer must read unfamiliar code, find why it breaks, and say what to keep and what to replace. Many good builders are poor at it.

Say which job it is in your first message. Also say which version of .NET you run. Older .NET Framework apps and current .NET are related but not the same, and a developer who knows only one will be slow on the other.

What it costs

Published rates disagree. ZipRecruiter puts the average for freelance .NET developers in the United States at $53.73 an hour, with most between $46.39 and $61.30.^[1] Second Talent, a hiring firm, quotes $85 to $135 an hour for a mid-level freelance back-end developer in the United States, and $110 to $171 for a senior one.^[2] The sources measure different things, so expect quotes anywhere across that range.

The hourly rate is not the cost of the project. A developer at $60 who takes twice as long as one at $120 costs you more. Second Talent says the spread in quotes for the same brief comes mostly from assumptions about existing systems and data, and that naming those systems in the brief closes most of the gap.^[2] List yours before you ask for a price.

Where to look

Referrals from other founders come first, because someone has already seen the work. Marketplaces give you the most names and the least vetting. Upwork, for example, charges buyers 3% to 10% plus a fee per contract.^[2] An agency costs more, at $165 to $275 an hour for mid-level back-end work, but that rate pays for a project manager and cover if someone leaves.^[2]

How to test a developer

• Pay for a short task on your own code, a day or two long. Watching someone read your code tells you more than an interview.
• Ask how they would structure the application and what it will cost to host each month. Answers differ, but no figure and no reasoning means they haven't thought about it.
• Ask about the last time something they built broke in production, and what they changed afterward.
• Ask for two references from clients with software like yours, and call them.

Keep ownership

Put the code repository in your own account. Open the cloud and domain accounts in your name and add the developer as a user. Put in writing that you own the work. Ask for a working demo every week instead of a status report. With these in place, a developer who leaves costs you a few weeks. Without them, it can cost you the product.

When one freelancer is not enough

If your software is already late and over budget, one more developer often inherits the problem that stalled the last one. If the cause is the structure underneath, more hours of work on top will not fix it. The first step is to find out whether the foundation can carry the product.

Moosara is Robert Lara III's software rescue practice. If your project is stuck, talk to him directly. He can review where it stands, tell you what fixing it will cost and how long it will take, and bring in developers he has interviewed and hired.