Hire Full Stack Developers

Ideaware places senior full stack developers from Latin America on US product teams. You see vetted candidates within 48 hours, your pick starts 8–12 days after the first call, and they work US business hours. A senior full stack developer costs $5,000–8,000 a month, with payroll, benefits and equipment included.

A full stack hire takes a feature from the database migration to the button that ships it. That range is the value and the risk: plenty of candidates call themselves full stack after years on one side and a tutorial on the other. We test both halves separately before you see a profile.

What a full stack developer costs in the US

A US full stack developer earns an average base salary of $162,772 in 2026, with reported pay from $80,000 to $300,000, according to Built In. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median for all software developers at $135,980 (May 2025).

Benefits add 30% to employer compensation costs in US private industry (BLS, June 2026), before any recruiter fee.

Counting benefits and fees, most teams save 40–60% against a comparable US hire. The developer cost guide covers every role we place.

The full stack combinations our developers work in

Our full stack developers pair a TypeScript frontend with one backend they know in depth. The combinations we place most:

• TypeScript end to end: Next.js or React with Node.js (NestJS, Express, Fastify), tRPC, Prisma or Drizzle
• Python backend: Django or FastAPI with a React or Next.js frontend
• Rails: Ruby on Rails with Hotwire, or Rails as an API behind React
• Data: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Supabase
• APIs: REST, GraphQL, tRPC, WebSockets, background jobs
• Delivery: Docker, GitHub Actions, Vercel, AWS (ECS, Lambda, RDS, S3)
• Tests: Vitest or Jest, pytest or RSpec, Playwright

tRPC and type-safe TypeScript

For a product written in TypeScript from the database to the browser, tRPC removes the API contract you would otherwise maintain by hand. Change a procedure on the server and the compiler flags every client call that broke.

• Routers and procedures: input validation with Zod, middleware for auth and rate limits, error formatting the frontend can act on
• Client side: TanStack Query integration for caching and optimistic updates, the Next.js App Router with server components and server actions
• Data layer: Prisma or Drizzle, so the types run from the schema to the component
• Knowing its limits: a public API, a mobile app in another language, or a partner integration needs REST or GraphQL, and our developers will tell you when you’ve hit that point

How we vet full stack developers

We accept about 3% of applicants. Full stack candidates go through five steps: an async technical assessment, a 90-minute live coding session, an architecture review of a past project, an English and communication interview, and reference checks with former managers.

The rounds check both halves:

• Data modeling: a schema for a real feature, with migrations, indexes and a plan for backfilling existing rows
• API design: pagination, validation, error formats and auth on a new endpoint
• Frontend state: loading, error and empty states, and cache invalidation after a mutation
• Type safety across the boundary: shared types or generated clients so a backend change breaks the build, not production
• Background work: queues, retries and idempotency for emails, webhooks or imports
• Shipping: a deploy pipeline, environment config and a rollback plan

The live coding session builds one thin feature through every layer, so you see where the candidate is strong and where they slow down.

Full stack or specialists: which hire do you need?

Hire full stack developers when your team is small and each engineer needs to ship features end to end with little coordination. Specialists start to pay off once parts of the system need deep, dedicated attention:

• Complex UI, design systems or heavy client state: a React developer or other frontend specialist.
• High-traffic APIs, data pipelines or distributed systems: a backend developer, such as a Go developer.
• Infrastructure, CI/CD and cloud cost: a DevOps engineer.

Frequently asked questions

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