How to Hire a Software Development Partner (Without Getting Burned)

Red flags, green flags, and the questions every founder should ask before signing a contract with an agency.

Green flags: You meet the actual engineers who will work on your project. The proposal references outcomes and risks, not only features. References are recent and similar in complexity.

Red flags: Opaque team assignment (“we’ll allocate resources”), fixed-price promises without discovery, or pressure to sign before you’ve seen a technical approach.

Ask how they handle scope changes, who owns the code and accounts, and what happens if the engagement ends early. Good partners document this without drama.

Finally: optimize for communication fit. You will spend months in Slack and standups together, chemistry matters as much as the stack.