Quick Answer

Engineering roles take about 62 days to fill on average. That is two months where a seat on your team sits empty. During that time, features slip, the engineers you still have get stretched thin, and your competitors ship first. You can shorten the wait by cutting interview rounds, setting decision deadlines, and bringing in vetted freelancers for work that cannot wait.

Picture this.

Your roadmap says the new payments flow ships in Q3. Your lead backend engineer quit in June. You posted the job the same week. It is now day 41. You have done nine interviews. Two good candidates took other offers. Your product manager keeps asking when the work will start, and you have no honest answer.

Sound familiar? You are not alone. This is how hiring goes for most tech teams right now. And the damage from it shows up in your roadmap long before it shows up in any hiring report.

60 days is normal. That is the problem.

Many founders think a 60-day hire means something went wrong. It usually means everything went to plan.

Engineering roles are the slowest to fill. One roundup of hiring benchmarks puts the average at 62 days for engineering, against 44 days for all roles combined.

The trend is also going the wrong way. Gem's 2025 Recruiting Benchmarks Report looked at more than 140 million applications and 1.3 million hires. It found average time to hire grew from 33 days in 2021 to 41 days in 2024. Teams now run 20 interviews per hire, up from 14.

More interviews. More days. Not much sign that the hires got better.

And here is a catch. Those averages stop the clock when someone accepts the offer. They do not count notice periods. One hiring firm estimates that notice periods alone add 10 to 30 days. So a "60-day hire" can turn into a 90-day wait before anyone writes a line of code.

What actually happens to your roadmap during those 60 days

Work does not pause because a seat is empty. It just gets worse in quiet ways.

Scope shrinks without anyone deciding it should. Nobody holds a meeting to say "let's cut the feature in half." It happens in sprint planning. The team has fewer hands, so the ticket gets smaller. Then smaller again. By the time your new hire starts, the feature you promised customers is a thin version of itself.

Your best engineers stop building and start interviewing. A survey of engineering leaders by Karat, cited in this hiring data roundup, found companies interview around 21 candidates for each software engineering hire. Each of those talks takes an engineer off the roadmap. Usually your strongest one.

Dependencies stall. Design waits on the API. QA waits on the build. The mobile team waits on both. One missing person can freeze three other people.

Burnout creeps in. The people left behind carry extra work for two months. Some of them start taking recruiter calls of their own. Now you have two open roles instead of one.

The plan goes stale. Sixty days is long in a startup. Priorities change. The person you hire in week nine may be hired for a problem you no longer have.

Competitors ship. This one needs no explaining.

A simple way to see the cost

Here is a made-up example. The numbers are for illustration only.

Say a feature needs two engineers for eight weeks. You have one. The second seat is open.

Your one engineer works alone for roughly nine weeks while you hire. In that time they finish about half the job, and that is on a good day, because they are also sitting in interviews. Then the new person arrives and needs a few weeks to learn the codebase.

A feature planned for week eight lands around week fourteen or later. That is six extra weeks of lost revenue, delayed feedback, and a sales team telling customers "soon."

Now multiply that by every open role on your roadmap.

Where do the 60 days go?

Most of the time is not interviewing. It is waiting.

One hiring firm's breakdown of the process, which is a vendor estimate and not an academic study, lists these stages:

• Agreeing on the job description inside the company: 5 to 7 days
• Applications piling up on job boards before anyone reviews them: 10 to 14 days
• Technical screening rounds: 14 to 21 days
• Offer and negotiation: 7 to 14 days
• Notice period at the candidate's current job: 10 to 30 days

Look at that list again. Almost none of it is "judging whether the person can do the job." It is scheduling, handoffs, and silence between steps.

Remote hiring makes slow hiring worse

Hiring remote tech talent has real upsides. You can pick from people in many countries, not just the ones near your office.

But a bigger pool can also mean a bigger pile. More applications to read. More time zones to line up for interviews. More questions about whether someone's skills are real, because you cannot just walk over to their desk.

If you run a remote search with the same slow process you used for local hires, you get the worst of both. A huge funnel and a long wait.

How to cut the wait

You do not have to hire badly to hire faster. Most of the gain comes from removing dead time.

1. Write the role in one sitting. Get the hiring manager and the CTO in a room for an hour. Agree on the three things the person must do in their first 90 days. Skip the wish list.
2. Cap the interview rounds. Three or four is plenty for most roles. Every extra round costs days and loses candidates.
3. Set a decision deadline. Decide within 24 to 48 hours after the last interview. Good candidates do not sit and wait. Many of them are talking to other companies at the same time.
4. Block interview slots in advance. Put them on the calendar before the job goes live. Scheduling back and forth eats more days than anyone admits.
5. Start before the seat opens. If you know someone is leaving, begin the search early. If you keep a warm list of strong past candidates, use it.
6. Split the work by urgency. Hire full time for the core roles you need for years. For work with a clear start and end, like a migration, a new integration, or a security review, bring in a vetted freelancer and keep the roadmap moving.

When a vetted freelancer is the faster answer

Not every gap needs a permanent hire. Some gaps need a skilled person next week.

That is where a vetted talent marketplace can help. The word that matters is "vetted." A big pool of unchecked profiles just moves your screening problem from your calendar to someone else's. A pool where people are already checked for skills and work history lets you skip the longest stretch of the funnel.

Begig is a vetted freelance talent marketplace. If your roadmap has a hole in it today, you can describe the role you need on Begig and see matched talent without running a full search from scratch. [Placeholder: add confirmed Begig detail here, such as typical match time, vetting steps, or engagement models. Confirm with client before publishing.]

Then, in parallel, you can take your time on the permanent hire and make that one count.

FAQ

How long does it take to hire a software engineer?

Engineering roles average about 62 days to fill, according to a benchmark roundup. Gem's data shows average time to hire at 41 days in 2024. The two numbers measure different things, so check which one you are comparing.

What is the difference between time to fill and time to hire?

Time to fill starts when you open the job. Time to hire starts when a candidate enters your pipeline. Time to fill shows the full business impact. Time to hire shows how fast your hiring process moves.

Why do engineering roles take longer than other roles?

The skill pool is narrower, the interviews are more technical, and strong candidates often have several offers. Teams are also running more interview rounds than they used to, as the Gem benchmark data shows.

Is hiring remote tech talent slower than hiring locally?

It can be. Remote roles often draw more applicants and need more time zone planning. Without a tight process, the wider pool slows you down instead of helping you.

Can freelancers replace full-time hires?

Not for every role. Freelancers fit work with a clear scope and end date, or short-term gaps while you search. Core product ownership usually belongs with a full-time team member.

How can I hire tech talent faster without lowering the bar?

Cut dead time between steps, limit interview rounds, decide quickly after interviews, and use pre-vetted talent for urgent work.