Toptal

The folks at Toptal are awesome. We move super fast on our open source software projects and sometimes need to quickly pull in top caliber developers to get things done really fast. Toptal has delivered. They’ve helped us with a number of projects, including software development kits, Docker packages and Red Hat OpenShift cartridges. Their service is great and developers are sharp. Check out their blog too, very relevant to developers wanting to get practical info on new technologies. Highly recommended!

My company has been utilizing Toptal for the the past 2 years, in which time we have been able to find exceptional on demand engineering talent. We often recommend Toptal when there is a need for an engineer that is to the standards you would expect to find in Silicon Valley engineering teams.

I have had the pleasure of being involved with Toptal since August of 2013. Toptal is an amazing company because it solves one of the biggest challenges of our time, helping innovators create technology that improves our lives. Toptal provides world class software engineers, designers as well as other professionals, to companies and perfectly matches their needs to help them execute rapidly. I believe one of the biggest barriers to innovation is talent and finding the right people to help teams execute.
Toptal was built from the ground up to solve this challenge and to do so by accessing the best people from anywhere on the planet. The founders and the team at Toptal really understand the challenges of this talent search and also how to leverage their global expertise and proprietary resources to find the best people for any team.
The Company prides itself on helping companies find the right people and build teams from the ground up. The beauty of using Toptal is that they are totally flexible; you can hire one engineer, hourly, part time or full time or hire as many as you need and build up a full team.
The company in its DNA cares deeply about the success of any client engagement and provides a fully risk free trial so that anyone hiring an engineer can work with an engineer first and then decide if they are fully happy before moving on.
I highly recommend anyone who is interested in hiring to connect with Toptal because finding the best people is hard, and Toptal makes this process seamless. Please feel free to reach out to me if you would like more info on my experiences with Toptal. I am happy to provide further information and give you more advice on this. I know you will be happy with your decision to work with Toptal.

I recently hired a team of Toptal engineers to rescue an application refactor that had fallen dangerously behind the release schedule. Our in-​house resources were spread too thinly, but I was skeptical that bringing on outside developers mid-​project would be a viable solution. However, if we missed our release, we’d jeopardize our relationship with the distribution partner, so a friend (who built his entire startup with Toptal engineers) suggested I reach out to them, which turned out to be a key turning point for our business.
In over 6 years of building technology products, I can say with certainty that these are some of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with. They were efficient, thorough, professional, and brought a great attitude and sense of humor to our tech team. They exceeded our expectations for even senior developers given the structure and project management experience they brought to our team.
Two key aspects of working with Toptal were their satisfaction guarantee (we had two weeks of risk-​free dev time before committing to a contract) and the high level of flexibility around resources (e.g. half-​time Python engineer).
I would highly recommend Toptal for any the following situations:
— Startups looking to bring on senior engineers for a well-​defined build or flexible talent that can scale with their needs
— Growing companies looking to quickly expand their engineering teams
— Major corporate technology projects that need to supplement in-​house resources

I was looking for a Node. js developer to rebuild our site, which was originally built on PHP, and since I had very bad experiences with sites such as Freelancer before, I decided to test Toptal. After I signed up, they asked me to explain what I needed to do with my site and within 2 days I received the first candidate. At that point I realized that I needed someone with full-​stack capabilities, not just a Node. js developer, since my site needed a complete refactoring. Alvaro and I worked together again, rewriting the specifications of the job, and the next day, they found me another candidate. He was perfect for my needs. I’m extremely satisified with the results so far. The whole experience has been very professional. I would have lost a lot of money and time if I hadn’t used Toptal to find the best developer for this job. I recommend Toptal for everyone that needs a serious developer in a short period of time.

I needed help fast. I didn’t want to hire a random programmer since I was worried about security and other issues. Within days, Toptal connected me with the perfect engineer that I needed. I’ve been pleased with the experience so far: they understood my needs, they solved my problem, and the entire process had been extremely professional.

I’ve used Toptal for 3 years and I’m thrilled with their service. They saved my team on several high-​end projects that needed the top talent. Previously, I made the mistake of hiring developers who were not vetted and it ended in disaster.
When I reached out to Toptal they connected me with an iOS engineer, Magento developer, and Drupal developer within seven days, and they each nailed their projects. Our clients were ecstatic. To date, we’ve spent well over $ 100,000 and made all my money back and a bit more.

I think I lucked out with finding these guys. I do contract work, and I am not technical AT ALL, but I’ve needed developers for random projects. FACK, developers are hard to come by. I’ve had some ‘meh’ experiences with E-​Lance (I found the quality wasn’t so good… CHEAP but ended up costing me more with mistakes, slow finish times, etc). This made me reluctant to try Toptal out of fear of the same issue, but so far both times I’ve worked with them have been great. The initial cost has been higher, but by the end of both projects the final cost was less (esp in terms of not adding extra work and headaches). So far I’m a fan! If they could wine and dine clients virtually over Skype that would be awesome, LOL.

Hiring all my contractors through TopTal. They are awesome!!!

These guys are great, the backend and front end developer duo they hooked us up with were dynamic and dynamite. Professional, diligent, efficient, allowed us to get our our redesign done quickly and affordably.

I am an active developer working for TopTal, and I’m going to give my review talking about the good things for an Engineer to be working for Toptal; but first let me address something else:
I think many of the reviews here are from people who didn’t actually get to be a Client of TopTal, rather they applied and were not accepted.
See, Toptal has a very strict filtering process for their Engineers (around 4% of them actually pass the interviews), but they also do a good job filtering Companies; and this fact is one of the very best attributes for an Engineer like myself working for a company.
If they didn’t do any filtering for Clients a swell as they do it for developers, then me, as a developer would have to deal with crappy Clients, I would eventually start heating my job.
My experience as a developer was, and still is, just amazing.
For starting I’m surrounded by smart people who makes you improve at every project you take.
Another good thing is the projects we have available (related to my previous comment about the past reviews here), many of them are start-​ups companies, and this for the developer only means one thing: insane improvement of skills; and I’m not talking about any start-​up, most of the clients are start ups that are looking to apply the newest trends in technology on their company.
I’ve worked 8 years of my live in big companies like IBM, HP, and Verizon; and I can guarantee one thing: you are never going to improve yourself as a developer in one of those big companies as you are going to do it in a start-​up that’s looking to enhance their value through software.
Another great thing is the freedom you get from freelancing, but any other freelancer can say this, however Toptal offers more added value; If you are a developer then you are a priority, they know you are the most valuable asset of their business and you can notice it. They have an active team of people looking for matching you as a developer with a project, and the first person they’ll address it is going to be you; so If somebody in the matching team has a project that can be a good fit for your skills, then you are going to be consulted about the project and only if you like it they’ll proceed sending your profile to the client.
The rates are very good and you have the flexibility to change them accordingly to your criteria, and the payment is always on time.
Lastly I want to say that I’ve been working for two years now with Toptal and I can’t say enough good things about the company form the developer’s perspective.
I totally recommend it.

I could not be more pleased! I recently concluded my first engagement with a Toptal engineer. Being a developer myself, I was looking for some very specific technical know-​how in the developer that I was wanted to hire. I was looking to augment my team and Toptal seemed to be the best way to do that.
My primary contact (recruiter) with Toptal was Anna Chiara Bellini (
). She was very insightful and courteous. I tried to be as detailed as possible to ensure the best fit. Anna did a great job at listening to my description of my project and the type of developer that I wanted to hire. Anna was very confident that we would be a great fit and she said that she should have some developers for me to choose from in about two weeks.
At first, I was a little skeptical. It all seemed to good to be true. Sure enough, within two weeks, Anna had sent me a couple developers to consider for an interview. I figured with my detailed specifications utilizing bleeding edge technology that my options would be slim. So, the small number of developers initially sent to me did not discourage me at all. In fact, I was happy that I did not have to try to narrow down a large list.
I scheduled a Skype interview with one of the developers. I was very pleased with his knowledge, skills, past projects, and interest in my project. Based on that interview, I decided to hire Xiaolei Liu (
). Since this was my first time hiring a developer, my plan was to start with a full-​time two week sprint.
I wanted to be gracious to Xiaolei and allow him to work during his normal business hours. The time difference actually worked out quite well. We would communicate via Skype at least twice per day. I would try to catch him at the beginning of his day to ensure he knew what to do and answer any questions that he may have. I would also chat with him at the end of his day to get an update of progress and find out if he needed anything else to continue with the objectives. We used several online collaboration tools to stay in-​sync. It was very cool to wake in the morning and have a large list of items completed.
I will use Toptal again. In fact, I’ve already started planning my next sprint. It will likely go longer and possibly use more than one developer at a time. This is a great service and is exactly what I needed. I am very impressed with the quality, responsiveness, and technical know-​how that I experienced with Toptal.
If you are considering Toptal, I suggest that you do like I did, start with one or two weeks either full-​time or part-​time. Be sure to have a good idea of the exact type of developer that you are looking for. The more you define in your project the better results you will see. I would be happy to refer anyone looking to hire a developer to Toptal (
).

Pretty much the same experience as the previous reviews written. Really sad, the initial contact went great, and I was quite sold, hoping they could help take care of some of my needs.
Filled out my billing information and whatnot, my project was forwarded to a Sr. Engineer «Alvaro Oliveira» of some sort, but never herd anything back.
I would ask my contact «Scott Ritter», he said he would find out the issue, would not hear back from him. A week later, the same email, the same response.
While I was requesting a part time engineer for perhaps 40−60hrs over a couple weeks, this could have been turned into lengthy and fruitful project for them had I been happy with the work. Instead I felt strung along and ignored.
I figured the least they could do was discuss why the lack of interest, or help direct me to a more fitting company, but alas, just ignored.

I was not happy with Toptal’s customer service. They were simply unresponsive to my project needs. Also, they’re constantly going with the pushy sales speak and it really put me off. Overall, I would definitely not use Toptal again nor would I recommend them to anyone else.

I had the experience with Toptal for a web project. The initial contact was fast through their web chat and phone call. The point of contact is David. He responses email and phone call pretty quick. There’s a lot of sales talk during the first couple of calls even when I already decided to sign up and seemed it’s hard to stop the sales routine (indicator of listening style). Then I posted a job opening, to be followed by a tech call to go through the job listing. There was a half-​day delay setting up the tech call but David apologized. I had the tech call with Anna. She seemed nice in the appointment email but the phone call was bad, really bad.
First, my phone wasn’t ringing at the appointment time and so I called her. After about 20 seconds, she answered her phone with a «Hello», nothing else. After I introduced myself, she said she was *just* going to call me. She was unprepared and unfamiliar with my listing. She seemed not understanding the technical specs I was telling her but she jumped right to the conclusion that the hours wouldn’t be enough. Note: time is money right? So I asked about her background politely. She didn’t like it at all. Her initial response was «I’m not in an interview. You’re not interviewing me.» Then I asked for her opinion (again, politely, for an expert opinion) of comparison between the most popular CMS and in-​house development from ground up. She started rambling and sounded testy. The phone call was schedule for 45 minutes but ended after 15 minutes. Well, guess I saved some of her billable time to Toptal. I called David to let him know how it went. He said he knows Anna personally and they’re a team, but he would look into it. After an hour, I received Anna’s comments from the company’s contact email address. After that, David called me and just said «We have decided you’re not a good fit. Have a nice day.»
I still think Toptal is a good business model. But it would be nice for themselves to have professional and knowledgeable employees to start with. How ironic for a recruiting service company.