Try Before You Hire — Zero Recruitment Risk.
Start with a contract engagement to evaluate engineers on real project work. When you're confident in the fit, convert them to your full-time payroll — no placement fees, no surprises.
Hiring decisions based on evidence, not instinct.
Real-World Evaluation
Assess engineers on your actual codebase, in your workflows, with your team — not through theoretical interviews alone.
Zero Recruitment Risk
If an engineer isn't the right fit, simply don't convert. No obligations, no sunk costs — just swap or move on.
No Placement Fees
Unlike traditional recruiters who charge 15–25% of annual salary, our conversion terms are agreed upfront and significantly lower.
Cultural Fit Validated
Three to six months of working together reveals more about fit than any interview. Make hiring decisions with real data.
Individual or team.
Your call.
Whether you need one key hire or an entire pod, our C2H model gives you the flexibility to evaluate before committing.
From trial to permanent
in five clear steps.
A structured process that gives you full confidence before making a permanent hiring commitment.
Define Requirements
Share the role profile — skills, seniority, project scope, and team dynamics. We align on expectations and evaluation criteria.
We Match & Shortlist
Within 48 hours, receive 2–3 curated profiles from our 400+ pool. Each candidate is pre-vetted for your specific requirements.
Interview & Select
Conduct technical interviews on your terms. Choose the engineer who best fits your stack, culture, and working style.
Contract Trial Period
The engineer works on your real projects for 3–6 months. Evaluate code quality, communication, reliability, and cultural fit in action.
Convert or Continue
Confident in the fit? Convert to your payroll. Need more time? Extend the trial. Not the right fit? No obligation — we find a replacement.
Not a recruitment agency.
A talent engineering partner.
When you choose MDS for C2H, you get engineers backed by a product engineering organization — not a recruiter's bench.
Two Decades of Talent Matching
We've placed engineers across 200+ products. We understand what "great fit" means for different team cultures and tech stacks.
Pre-Vetted to Your Standards
Every candidate goes through technical assessments, coding challenges, and soft-skill evaluations before they're shortlisted for your review.
Transparent Conversion Terms
No surprises at conversion time. All terms — timeline, fees, transition process — are agreed upfront in the contract.
Replacement Guarantee
If an engineer isn't the right fit during the trial, we provide a replacement at no extra cost. Your project never stalls.
Performance Tracking
We provide regular performance reports during the trial — sprint velocity, code quality metrics, and team feedback summaries.
IP Protected from Day One
Comprehensive NDAs and IP assignment from the first day of the contract. All work product belongs to you, trial or not.
85% of trial engineers
get converted.
We used MDS's C2H model to evaluate three React engineers over 4 months. All three were converted to full-time — they understood our codebase, culture, and standards before they officially joined. It saved us from two bad hires we would have made through traditional recruitment.
Need a different
engagement shape?
C2H is ideal for risk-free hiring. But if you need something different, explore our other models.
C2H questions,
clear answers.
Everything you need to know about our Contract-to-Hire model. Can't find what you're looking for?
Talk to UsContract-to-Hire is a "try before you hire" engagement where engineers start on a contract basis working on your real projects. After a trial period of 3–6 months, you can convert top performers to your full-time payroll — with zero placement fees and minimal transition friction.
In staff augmentation, engineers remain on MDS payroll indefinitely. With C2H, the explicit goal is conversion to your payroll. The contract period serves as an extended evaluation, giving both sides confidence before making a permanent commitment.
The standard trial period is 3–6 months, though this is flexible. The trial duration should be long enough to evaluate technical skills, cultural fit, communication, and delivery quality on real project work.
Our C2H model is designed to be cost-effective. Conversion terms are agreed upfront in the contract, and our fees are significantly lower than traditional recruitment agencies. There are no surprise charges during the conversion process.
That's the beauty of C2H — you simply don't convert. If an engineer isn't meeting expectations, we can provide a replacement during the contract phase, or you can choose not to proceed with the conversion. No obligations, no risk.
Yes. If you're confident in an engineer's performance and cultural fit before the trial period ends, we can accelerate the conversion process. Early conversion is encouraged when the fit is clear.
Our 400+ engineer pool covers full-stack development (React, Next.js, Node.js, Python, .NET, Java), AI/ML engineering, VIBE coding, mobile development (Flutter, React Native), cloud & DevOps (AWS, Azure, GCP), and specialized platforms.
Yes. Comprehensive NDAs and IP assignment agreements are in place from day one of the contract. All work product created during the trial period belongs exclusively to you, regardless of whether you convert the engineer.
De-risk your next hire —
start a trial today.
Tell us the role you need to fill. We'll match you with pre-vetted engineers in 48 hours — and let you evaluate them on real work before committing.