TeamEx vs Staffing Platforms
Published
The main difference between a staffing platform and TeamEx is whose standards decide who you meet. A staffing platform such as BairesDev or Andela vets engineers against its own acceptance bar, judges who fits your role, and sends you a short list; the engineer usually stays on the platform’s books, billed to you at a monthly rate. On TeamEx, the facts about each AI/ML engineer are on the profile, you set your own bar, decide who fits and who to interview, and pay a one-time 25% fee only after the engineer starts.
TeamEx vs staffing platforms at a glance
Prices and features verified on October 2026.| Criteria | TeamEx | Staffing platforms |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Search engine for AI/ML engineers, built for founders | A company that vets engineers and places them on your team |
| Who sets the bar | You, using the facts on each profile | The platform, with its own acceptance criteria |
| Who judges fit | You | The platform’s matcher, from your requirements |
| Who decides who you interview | You | The platform, from its shortlist |
| How engineers are vetted | 3 profiling interviews to extract facts | Tests and interviews, pass or fail |
| Whose engineer | Yours, on your payroll or on contract | Usually the platform’s, billed to you monthly |
| Works best for | Early-stage AI/ML hires | Adding capacity to an existing team |
| Roles | AI/ML engineers, AI researchers, data scientists, MLOps | Most software roles and stacks |
| Price | Pay when you hire: 25% of first-year salary. Contract: 25% of your monthly bill | A monthly or hourly rate, usually not published |
| Platform fee | Published, the same for everyone | Built into the rate, usually not published |
| Hiring them yourself | Direct hire from day one | Usually a conversion fee |
| If it doesn’t work out | 90-day free replacement, or a full refund | Replacement or trial, set per platform |
| Who you negotiate with | The engineer. TeamEx helps for free, on request | The platform |
The real difference: whose standards, whose judgement
A staffing platform makes two calls before you meet anyone. First, it decides who gets in. BairesDev says it hires “fewer than 1%” of applicants, and Revelo says only the “top 2%” make it through. Those are pass or fail gates, set by the platform for all of its clients at once.
Second, it decides who fits you. You describe the role, a matcher reads it against the people on its roster, and you get a short list to interview. In BairesDev’s words, “once we shortlist candidates, you have the option to interview them directly and choose who joins your team.” You choose, but only from what the platform chose first.
TeamEx does not run either gate. Every engineer has three calls with real people, and each call becomes labels backed by evidence, scored on the same written rubrics for everyone. There is no pass or fail. The facts go on the profile, and you set the bar: what they have built, how they work, think and communicate, the salary range, the skills. You judge who fits and decide who to interview.
“Top 1%” is someone else’s bar
An acceptance rate measures how hard a test was to pass. It says nothing about whether an engineer takes ownership when nobody writes the spec, argues well, or is someone you would enjoy working with for the next two years. Those are the things that decide an early hire.
Staffing platforms set one bar for thousands of clients, so it leans on what can be tested the same way for all of them: coding, English, a technical interview. That is a sound bar for adding capacity. It is a blunt one for a first AI engineer, where founder–engineer fit matters more than a percentile, and where two founders reading the same profile would rightly want different people.
Staffing platforms are built for capacity, and they are good at it
If you already have a team and need more hands on it, a staffing platform does things TeamEx does not try to do.
- Scale and speed. BairesDev has 4,000+ engineers on staff across Latin America and says a team typically takes about two weeks to staff, up to four for larger ones.
- Payroll and compliance. The platform employs or contracts the engineer and handles pay, benefits and local rules.
- Managed delivery. BairesDev assigns delivery managers who track performance and backfill people who leave.
- Breadth. Frontend, QA, DevOps and most stacks from one account; Andela says it has 17,000+ “AI-native technologists”.
For a product team that needs five more engineers next month, that model fits perfectly.
Whose engineer it is
On most staffing platforms, the engineer works for the platform and works on your product. You pay one monthly rate, and that rate bundles the engineer’s pay with the platform’s cut. BairesDev and Andela do not publish their rates or their cut; BairesDev says pricing “depends on your stack, team size, and project scope.”
If you later want to hire that engineer yourself, most contracts charge a conversion fee. KORE1’s 2026 guide to staff augmentation costs puts conversion fees at 15% to 25% of first-year salary, usually declining the longer the contract has run.
On TeamEx, a direct hire joins your payroll from day one, and you agree the salary with the engineer. If the engineer or you prefer a contract, TeamEx acts as Contractor of Record for a published fee. If you later hire the contractor directly, the conversion fee declines the longer the contract has run; the terms are in the client service agreement. Either way, you picked the engineer and the engineer accepted your intro request, so you chose each other before anyone else could make that call for you.
The facts are there, you decide who fits
TeamEx’s search is built for founders who know the right person when they see them, even if they cannot write it down as a job description. You search the engineer profiles and set your own standards with filters:
- How they work, think and communicate.
- Products they have built, from 174 categories.
- Skills and specialties, from 3,000+ skills.
- Salary expectation, location and US work permit.
- Or up to five AI-based custom criteria, written in plain English.
Then send intro requests to the people you pick. Founders often go from first search to the person they want to interview in a few minutes. 96% of TeamEx hires are still in place at three months, and founders at Clipboard Health, Maple and TopHelpers have hired this way.
What staffing platforms cost, and what TeamEx costs
Staffing platforms charge a monthly or hourly rate per engineer, and the large ones, BairesDev and Andela included, do not publish it. Under the rate sits a markup over what the engineer is paid: KORE1 puts the normal band at 30% to 50% over the contractor’s pay for onshore IT work. Because the cut is inside the rate, you see one number and the engineer sees another.
TeamEx charges a 25% placement fee on first-year base salary, paid once, only when you hire. If the hire leaves in the first 90 days, TeamEx replaces them for free, and if it can’t, you get a full refund. After that, there is no ongoing fee on a direct hire.
On contract, TeamEx’s fee is 25% of your monthly bill, with monthly billing and a six-month minimum: on a $10,000 engineer rate you pay $13,333 a month, and TeamEx keeps $3,333. Which one costs less depends on the rate and the terms you agree. What differs is that TeamEx shows you both numbers.
When to pick a staffing platform, and when to pick TeamEx
Pick a staffing platform when:
- You have a team and need to add capacity quickly.
- You need several roles or stacks from one account.
- You want the platform to handle payroll, compliance and backfills.
- A tested, platform-wide bar is enough for the role.
Pick TeamEx when:
- You are making an early AI/ML hire, where founder–engineer fit matters most.
- You want to set your own bar and decide who to interview.
- You want the engineer to join your team directly, or work on contract.
- You want price transparency and direct negotiation with the expert.