If you’re an HR recruiter, you’ll know first-hand that the gap between the supply and demand of developers is still a bottleneck. The C-levels ask for the best programmer out there to scale up your company's products, but finding the right fit is difficult. Some reasons for this include:
- A lack of applicants with the necessary skills and training: Your region could’ve already run out of skilled software engineers seeking employment.
- Global competition for talent: Better salaries will tilt a developer’s scale, and some companies from markets that weren’t on the radar 20 years ago are now offering better salaries to devs in your country, ruling you out of the contest. Companies worldwide go toe-to-toe for the best programmers, making it difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to find the developers they need.
- Hesitance to hire junior talent: Recruiters are often required to bring in the best developers in the market, and junior talent, which is more available as the competition hasn’t taken it, is too risky to hire. It could turn out to be a great match, but asking a recent bootcamp graduate to take on a project overseen by the CEO could also cut a recruiter’s career short.
- Hiring freezes—and lower offers to work with: Ever since the tech layoffs in the US began shaking the job market, recruiters have been forced to send job offers with lower salaries, making their companies seem less competitive. Hiring freezes being called up and called off without notice certainly doesn’t help.
We’ll present 10+ websites to help you attract the best programmers for your company.
First, a disclaimer: we won’t review the bigger and most well-known portals like LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, Glassdoor, or Wellfound for obvious reasons. Those are not specialised sites, and finding suitable candidates over there is very hard. That said, let's get started.
Tech-focused platforms
These are the best developer-focused job boards to hire software developers, search for programmers, or hire IT staff. Some of them are very selective and offer curated opportunities to candidates (and thus fewer but more qualified applicants to recruiters), while others are more broad and a bit harder to navigate.
Relocate.me
Works best for: Recruiters that want to access global talent and hire internationally. Businesses worldwide can use the platform to hire software developers and tech talent.
Relocate.me, an IT niche job board for techies looking to relocate, is the best option for hiring international talent. We work with techies from more than 150 countries, and our job posts have more than 2,000 views per month on the website alone. You’ll connect with talent that’s already motivated to start a relocation process. When you post an ad, you’ll reach our developer network of techies who’re looking for relocation jobs. So, by working with Relocate.me, you will:
- Attract international talent: That’s what jobseekers visit our platform for — to relocate with a job at your company. You’ll level up your employer brand if your company offers strong relocation support and exciting international opportunities. Posting remote jobs is also possible!
- Target your ads and your hiring efforts: Our Advanced plan includes candidate vetting and promotion in our email newsletters.
- Have a company page: Our plans include an enhanced company page with a custom URL.
- Get your company/jobs promoted on Telegram: Relocate.me has an active community on Telegram, which is already over 22k international job seekers strong (and growing by the day).
- Pay no additional or hidden fees for successful hires: Pay only for the job ads, never for the hire. Our pricing is transparent and scalable. You don’t have to pay for a hire. Check out what’s included in each plan and how much it’ll cost you per job slot by visiting our Employers page.
How To Relocate Developers With 10+ Years Of Experience →
One overlooked aspect about international talent who wants to relocate is that it’s a very attractive demographic. A professional who wishes to move is usually around 30 years old, which suggests they have 5–8 years of work with them. So, if you need senior developers to join your team, and you haven’t found those on the domestic market, then hiring internationally can help you overcome the talent gap.
We can help you hire the top global talent by posting your open positions on our site. You can register your company now — it’s free. If you want a quick start, email us at [email protected] to have your company mentioned on the Companies Hiring Internationally list. The best way to hire software developers is matching what you offer — relocation — with the top talent seeking that out.
Honeypot
Works best for: Companies based in Western Europe wanting to hire developers already living in Europe
Honeypot.io is also a recognised place to hire software developers. It’s a dev-focused job platform primarily serving the European market, including Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and Spain. It’s now part of New Work SE, a German group known for its stake in XING, dubbed “the German LinkedIn.”
They follow a “reverse-hiring” process in which they vet candidates and then recommend them to the hiring managers.
Let’s go straight to its key features:
- Focused on qualified developers: Honeypot’s platform is regularly updated with new profiles of developers actively seeking new roles. This helps recruiters get more qualified people to respond than by starting their outreach on LinkedIn, for example.
- Expert support: Recruiters on Honeypot have access to a Talent Success Advisor.
However, the board’s current focus might leave you empty-handed if your search needs to extend beyond Europe. Its developer bee-hive is primarily European, but even European candidates are left on the sidelines occasionally. For example, some candidates who are EU citizens but are not living in the region were invited to interviews only to be dropped out of the process for not being based in Europe.
WeAreDevelopers
Works best for: Companies with HQs in Western Europe wanting to hire developers in Europe
WAD for Businesses is another useful option for finding developers open to work. The platform connects companies and IT workers and offers various services to assist in tech recruiting, employer branding, product marketing and brand awareness. With its headquarters in Vienna, this platform focuses on certain Western European countries, specifically Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the UK.
Some of its practical features include:
- Events and conferences: WeAreDevelopers organises events and meet-ups that bring together developers, recruiters and tech enthusiasts face-to-face.
- Recruiting resources: These include white papers about online recruiting, podcasts, webinars, ebooks, guides, surveys and more.
- Employer branding: Besides helping with hires on a case-by-case basis, WeAreDevelopers helps companies build their “employer brand.”
- Job ads: Since they’re a developer job board, they post your company’s ads and take it from there.
WeAreDevelopers offers various paid plans with different features and pricing options.
How to Write Job Descriptions That Attract Tech Talent →
Lemon.io
Works best for: Eastern European startups that need to access vetted talent from their home countries
If you work for an early-stage startup that wants to save some costs, Lemon.io might be a good friend to hire a software programmer. The board connects recruiters with vetted offshore developers, especially from Eastern Europe.
Some of its distinctive features are:
- Transparent billing: Lemon.io operates on a transparent billing system. Programmers do not pay any commission. Recruiters pay the developers’ rate plus a commission for the board’s services.
- Flexible hiring: It offers flexible hiring options, including both full-time and part-time positions, so it could work if you need to get contractors rather than employees.
OfferZen
Works best for: South African or Dutch companies that want local, not international, developers
OfferZen is a dev-driven job board based in Cape Town.
The platform works with a “reverse hiring” method. First, it asks developers to create a profile for free so they can connect with a Talent Advisor. Afterward, instead of devs applying for jobs, companies on OfferZen send interview requests to developers, providing upfront information on the role, tech stack, and salary.
Other key features are:
- Transparent recruitment process: Devs can access information about companies, including their profiles and offers.
- Presence in South Africa and Europe: OfferZen has offices in Cape Town, South Africa, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. While the platform initially focused on the South African market, it has expanded to include opportunities in Europe, especially those in Dutch.
Japan Dev
Works best for: Companies in Japan that want English-speaking devs
Japan Dev is a job platform for roles in Japan that only require English and not Japanese. It’s a good tool for companies that want to start operations in Japan and want to hire international developers who can settle down there. It’s also convenient for companies that need to expand their English-speaking crew. Some key features are:
- Vetted company selection process: They pick the companies that can run ads, and 90% don’t make the cut, so the hiring process could turn out to be too long-winded.
- Specifically for Japan and in English: If you need to hire great software developers quickly and globally, you should consider other platforms that work internationally.
Otta
Works best for: Companies in the UK
Otta is a UK job platform for software developers, designers, or product managers. They work with UK companies that are not specifically developing tech but need up-to-date stacks to stay in business, like the online retailer ASOS. They offer help in hard-to-fill roles to these companies that can’t hire by themselves, maybe because they don’t have tech recruiters on their teams. Some key features are:
- They give relevance to a company’s mission: UK workers who are concerned about their future employer’s vision rely on Otta. If you want to make a strong case for your vision and are looking for UK workers, this platform could help.
- They help with hard-to-fill technical roles: Around half of the hires made on Otta are for expert, leadership or technical roles.
Dice
Works best for: Companies that want to hire US developers
Established in 1994, Dice is a well-known site, mainly present in the United States. Some of its pros are:
- Extensive talent pool: They’ve been around for 30 years and claim they have millions of registered members.
- Targeted search: Dice says they use AI to connect the right professionals to your job ad.
- Social media presence: Dice says they’ll share your postings on their socials.
Dice is heavily marketed in the United States, but recruiters and developers from all parts of the world use it. It’s not a narrowed-down, all-in-one solution by any means. Just like LinkedIn, to mention another giant network, it’s spread too thin.
Remote-focused boards
Let’s now see a few remote work-focused job boards. These boards also try to help recruiters find skilled developers, but the difference is that they market themselves to developers as a work-from-home platform.
X-Team
X-Team operates differently from traditional recruitment platforms. It acts as a facilitator of pre-vetted development teams rather than individual devs. This presents some advantages and considerations for dev recruiters:
- Fast if you need a team: It lets you hire pre-built teams that know how to work together.
- Third-party management: Besides helping you recruit, X-Team manages the team logistics, payroll and administrative tasks.
- Global pool: They claim to reach developers from over 75 countries.
Considerations:
- Limited control: You have less control over individual team member selection than traditional recruitment.
- Hard-to-estimate cost: X-Team’s services come at a premium compared to hiring individual developers. The developer rate for X-Team is between $40 and $50 per hour. That would cost you almost $90,000 a year to hire one of their developers full-time, and if you prefer an in-house dev, then you better put the money on one.
Arc.dev
Arc.dev, sometimes stylised as Arc(), offers recruiters a pool of vetted developers and also comes with an AI tool that allows you to get a shortlist of matched candidates.
Some of its features are:
- Flexible hiring options: Arc() enables you to hire developers freelance, contract-to-hire or full-time.
- Support: They also provide ongoing support during the hiring process. If it’s your first hire,
- AI-powered matching: They use an AI assistant — a chatbot called HireAI — to get you quicker to the right candidate.
Their features look very similar to X-Team, but Arc.dev emphasises AI more strongly because they claim the assistant will help you reach your match rapidly (it’s not clear how it compares to traditional hiring methods). Remember that the site is a relatively new player compared to established platforms, and its user base might be smaller in specific regions or skill sets. Also, Arc.dev is popular among designers, so it could be a great place to look for frontend developers, but not the best to find a Java senior developer.
The Art of Relocating Tech Talent Post-Pandemic →
Devremote
Devremote is a job board for remote workers looking for remote companies, but not necessarily remote-first companies. Among their clients are Match.com (Tinder), Amazon, and HubSpot, which are companies that certainly have offices and in-person meetings. If your company needs to get developers who are specifically looking for remote jobs, Devremote can help you. Some significant features are:
- “Competitive Salary” option: When checking the boards, jobseekers can toggle the “Competitive Salary” option on or off. Postings without a salary are removed when the option is toggled on, so you might be sifted out if you can’t list your salary yet.
- An emphasis on Web3 and blockchain: Many players in the blockchain sector post their jobs on Devremote. It’s not specifically marketed to them. But if you’re a recruiter in the Web3 space and need a great software developer, you should try this site.
Remotive
Remotive is a well-known platform that collects jobs in software development, customer support, marketing or sales. They’re a remote-first platform and emphasise work-from-anywhere (what they call “worldwide”) postings, so if you don’t have a specific location for your new hire, Remotive could help you. Some of their key aspects are:
- Job listing import from ATS: Recruiters can import job listings from their applicant tracking system with a few clicks, including Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, Recruitee, Smartrecruiters, or Recruiterbox.
- Requires no account: Recruiters can manage jobs via a link we’ll email you upon posting. So no need to sign up and recover yet another password.
If you prefer your talent to relocate or to offer a curated jobseeking experience, you should try a niche board. You’ll be competing against thousands of job ads in Remotive.
Other useful options for recruiters
Lastly, here we’ll present some sites that are not precisely job boards but can still be very useful in your search to hire a software developer.
Turing
Turing, founded by Stanford alumni, is a tech services company that connects businesses with vetted developers. Instead of posting jobs and sifting through applicants, you tell Turing your specific needs, and they match you with pre-vetted developers. In that way, it’s very similar to Honeypot, but the difference is that Turing is based in Silicon Valley, and they connect applicants with US companies.
So, Turing could only be the best fit if your company is based in the US. Also, they seem to capture senior talent only. And unlike traditional recruitment, you might have less control over individual candidate selection. In addition, be prepared for premium pricing.
ScienceSoft
ScienceSoft is a software consulting company that outsources software development and IT services. With offices worldwide, they can source talent from various countries. However, their primary focus is on Eastern Europe and the US.
Their recruitment services lean towards larger, custom projects rather than individual placements. This might not be ideal for filling everyday development roles. You could also combine their recruitment with their services if you’re just starting.
It’s not a way to hire developers, but it is a way to have developers on your team.
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