What is a Contract Engineer? A Hiring Managers Guide

Though they offer similar benefits to your company, not all temporary engineering positions are the same. Most temporary engineers are also contracted engineers, but this is not exclusively true. Self-employed freelance engineers, for example, operate as an incorporated business rather than a contracted employee.

Despite not being classified as contract engineers, they are indeed engineers and are (hopefully) working under some type of contract, just to make things confusing. Here are some Things to Consider Before Selecting an Engineer

Most temporary engineers are contract engineers.

There are temporary engineering hires that are brought in through a 3^rd party staffing agency like Expect, and contract engineers that are hired conventionally, but on a contract basis.

The contracts themselves can be “temporary-to-hire or ‘contract-to-hire or related to a specific project or timeframe.

The question remains – what is a contract engineer?

Put simply, a contract worker is an individual that is hired to fill a position via contract. Unlike full-time employees, they will have a specific end-date on their contract (though this can be negotiated and extended).

In most cases, these types of temporary engineering positions exist to save money. Rather than hiring a full-time engineer, you can instead hire one temporarily.

Sometimes this is done to complete a project on time, other times it is to evaluate an engineer before hiring on a full-time basis.

Hiring a temporary engineer? Here are a few different types of contracts you should know about.

• Temporary Contract – a temporary contract with a fixed start and end date. Typically, these types of contracts are under a year in length.
• Temporary to Hire – Temporary to hire means that, at the culmination of the contract, there is an option to hire one as a full-time or part-time employee.
• Contract to Hire – It is another term for temporary to hire. Both types are good for evaluating workers for competency and fit before committing long-term.

All three of these types are typically set up through a third parting staffing agency.