BetterEngineer vs Toptal: The Best Way to Hire LATAM Developers

If you’re leading engineering at a startup or growth‑stage company, you don’t wake up thinking, “Which marketplace should I use today?”

You’re usually thinking something closer to:

“I need two or three senior engineers who can join the team, work our hours, and stay long enough to actually ship things.”

That’s where Toptal and BetterEngineer show up in the same search. On the surface, they overlap: high‑quality talent, strong vetting, global reach.

Underneath, they’re built for different jobs.

• Toptal is a big, well‑run marketplace.
• BetterEngineer is a long‑term, nearshore partner that lives and breathes senior LATAM engineers for US teams.

If your goal is to hire senior LATAM developers, keep them around, and not think about local payroll, compliance, or constant replacement, you’re better off with BetterEngineer than with a general marketplace like Toptal.

Marketplace vs. partner: two very different experiences

Here’s the practical difference you’ll feel as a CTO or founder.

Toptal gives you a marketplace:

• You submit a request.
• You get a set of vetted profiles.
• You pick who you like for the project or role.

BetterEngineer gives you a partner:

• We sit with you to understand your product, roadmap, and team culture.
• We curate a small, sharp shortlist of senior LATAM engineers who can actually grow with your team.
• We stay involved to make sure the relationship is working, not just the first week, but months in.
• We handle payroll and local compliance in LATAM, so you don’t have to spin up your own infrastructure.

We don’t treat people like checkboxes on a skills list. We’re trying to match engineers with companies where they’ll genuinely thrive, ensuring a positive experience on both sides.

If you want embedded teammates you can trust for the long haul, that partner model is a completely different feeling from “log in to a platform and browse profiles.”

Senior LATAM focus vs. broad global network

One of Toptal’s big strengths is breadth: lots of skills, lots of roles, lots of regions. If you want maximum optionality across the whole world, that’s what they’re built for.

BetterEngineer made a different choice. We go deep instead of wide. Our whole model is built around:

• senior engineers in Latin America
• strong communication and collaboration with US teams
• real‑time overlap with US time zones
• experience shipping inside US startups and product companies

That focus cuts down the noise. You’re not scrolling through endless profiles from everywhere. You’re looking at a short list of people who already know how you work and can plug into that quickly.

If your goal is to hire LATAM developers who feel local in practice, not just on paper, that trade‑off – focus over breadth – ends up mattering a lot.

Why LATAM is a better nearshore bet

This focus on Latin America isn’t just a preference. It gives you a few very practical advantages you feel day one:

• Time zones that actually work: Your engineers are working the same day you are, not six to nine hours offset. 
• Context and experience: LATAM has a fast‑growing tech ecosystem and millions of engineers who’ve already worked with US and global teams. Many of the people we place have shipped in product companies, startups, and scale‑ups, not just in outsourcing shops.
• Signal over noise: Because we’re not pulling from everywhere, you’re not buried in profiles. The bar is high and consistent. 
• Real business upside: Nearshoring to Latin America lets you tap into a world‑class talent hub at competitive rates, without cutting corners on seniority or quality. You can often save a meaningful amount on total compensation while still paying engineers more than they’d earn in their local markets.

That’s a win‑win: your runway goes further, and your team is full of people who are excited about the opportunity.

If you want to go deeper on why we’ve bet so heavily on the region, we break it down here: Latin America: The Tech Talent Hub You Need.

Continuity vs. constant replacement

You’ve probably already felt this pain:

• A contractor leaves mid‑project.
• A “great” hire turns out not to fit your culture.
• You’re explaining the same domain and codebase again and again.

Every reset costs you roadmap time, team morale, and trust. This happens because marketplaces tend to normalize that churn. “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll send you more options.” BetterEngineer is built around the opposite idea. For us, rotation is a failure mode, not business as usual.

We optimize for:

• long average tenure,
• strong mutual fit,
• engineers who stay and own outcomes with you.

That’s why we treat every hire as the start of a relationship, not a transaction to close.

BetterEngineer vs. Toptal at a glance

To make the differences clearer, here’s a quick side‑by‑side summary of how BetterEngineer and Toptal compare.

Why BetterEngineer is the better choice if you’re serious about your team

If this sounds like you, BetterEngineer was designed for you:

• You’re a US‑based CTO, VP of Engineering, or founder.
• You want nearshore software engineers in LATAM who work your hours and feel like part of your core team.
• You’re done treating team building like shopping.
• You want senior only, low rotation, and strong culture fit.

Toptal is a respected marketplace.
BetterEngineer is the better choice when you care more about who stays on your team than how many profiles you can see.

Want to see the difference in practice?

Let’s make it concrete.

Share three things:

1. The role you’re trying to fill.
2. Your stack and key responsibilities.
3. What your best engineers have in common beyond skills.

We’ll come back with a small, carefully chosen set of senior LATAM engineers who we believe can slot into your team and stay there.

No browsing. No noise. Just real people you can imagine on your standup on Monday.