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Hire freelance and contract heads of engineering worldwide
YunoJuno connects you with vetted freelance and contract heads of engineering who lead engineering teams, delivery and technical direction. Onboard, contract and pay them in 165+ countries, with compliance handled for you.
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150,000+
165+
<24 hrs
Why hire a freelance head of engineering?
Engineering teams need leadership that balances delivery, quality, people and strategy. A freelance head of engineering brings that experience, and can steady a team, set direction and raise standards without a long search for a permanent hire.
Freelancers also give you flexibility. Bring one in to cover a departure, lead a scale-up or a transformation, rebuild a struggling team, or advise a founder while you hire, then hand over when the role is filled. They bring an outside view shaped by other teams.
One directory for every head of engineering
Compliant and vetted
Keep up with payments
How does hiring a freelance head of engineering work on YunoJuno?
Create your brief
Browse and book heads of engineering
Contract, work and pay in one place
What does a freelance head of engineering do?
A freelance head of engineering leads an engineering function, on a project or contract basis. They manage engineering managers and developers, own delivery and technical quality, guide architecture and tooling, hire and develop the team, manage budgets, and work with product and executives. They lead people and delivery, while architects focus on technical design. Typical responsibilities include:
How much does it cost to hire a freelance head of engineering?
Day rates for freelance heads of engineering vary with seniority, company stage and sector, team size, whether the role is interim, and location. Each freelancer's day rate is shown on their YunoJuno profile, so you can compare options against your budget before you get in touch.
Every year, YunoJuno analyzes data from the projects booked through the platform and publishes it in the Contractor Rates Report. Download the latest rates report to benchmark day rates and project trends.
Manage your freelance heads of engineering beyond the hire
Onboarding
Worker classification
Contracts, including IP assignement
Timesheets & approvals
Payments
Reporting & spend visibility
Enterprise teams already seeing results
"YunoJuno is a seamless experience and takes a lot of the stress away. Itreally helps from an agility and productivity perspective, quickly answering the business needs and helping to create a much more diverse and output-focused team. The quick payment of freelancers is a game changer — we have managed to reduce time to hire from a week to a couple of hours."
"There were a few critical results for us. The obvious one was keeping everything housed in one place — payments and keeping track of monthly spending. Perhaps more importantly, we were able to build up a bulletproof directory of talent. This has been super helpful for us as a team and as a business, across our regions."
Frequently asked questions
Hire a freelance head of engineering when your engineering lead has left or is on leave, when a team needs structure or a turnaround, or when you're scaling or changing how you build. They're also useful for technical due diligence, for advising founders and for setting up processes before a permanent hire.
Heads of engineering vary by company stage and sector. Some lead scale-ups and start-ups, building teams and process from scratch, others large organizations with several teams. Some are more hands-on technically, others more focused on people and delivery. For technical design rather than leadership, consider a systems architect or solution architect, and a DevOps engineer covers delivery tooling. Match their experience to your stage, team size and stack.
Browse all freelance developers on YunoJuno.
Look for a mix of leadership and technical credibility:
- A track record leading engineering teams to ship reliably
- Experience managing engineering managers and senior engineers
- Technical depth in your stack and architecture
- Hiring, coaching and performance management skills
- Delivery process and quality practices
- Budget, vendor and stakeholder management
- Experience at your company stage and scale
- Clear, calm communication with executives and teams
Useful questions to ask before you book:
- Which engineering teams have you led, and how large were they?
- How do you set engineering strategy and priorities?
- How do you improve delivery speed and quality?
- How do you hire and develop engineers?
- How do you work with product and executives?
- How do you handle technical debt and risk?
- How do you manage underperformance and conflict?
- What would you focus on in your first 30 days?
The cost of a freelance head of engineering depends mainly on seniority, company stage and sector, team size, whether the role is interim, and location. Freelancers set their own day rates, which you can see on their YunoJuno profile before you make contact.
For benchmarks, see YunoJuno's Contractor Rates Report, built from rates data on projects booked through the platform. For what it costs to use YunoJuno itself, see the pricing page.
Post a brief or search the network, and book a freelance head of engineering based in or outside your own country. YunoJuno supports payments in 165+ countries and assesses worker classification for every engagement, so you can engage independent talent without managing the compliance work yourself. That includes US contractor compliance for 1099 and W-2 engagements and IR35 status determinations in the UK, as part of YunoJuno's wider global compliance coverage.
It is also fast. Onboarding takes under 5 minutes, worker classification around 15 minutes, and a contract can be in place in under 24 hours. YunoJuno also provides misclassification indemnification, adding protection if a classification is ever challenged.
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