Senior engineers in Dhaka, at a rate we publish and with a record you can audit.
For a US engineering lead who wants one senior engineer or a small team on their own stack, their own tools and their own stand-up. Every claim on a profile carries the evidence behind it, identity is matched to a document and re-checked twice a year, and the rate ladder is further down this page rather than at the end of a sales call.
A written answer inside one business day, from the person who runs the vetting: the
band, the rate, and how much of your working day the window really covers. Nobody telephones you before you ask,
and there is no figure on this page we cannot show you the source for.
THE BENCH IS NEW · THE COMPANY IS NOT
Nobody is published on the bench today, so there is nothing to browse here and no
placement count on this page. Kensink Labs has been delivering under this name since 2011 with
047 engagements behind it, none of them staffed from this bench.
16 are written up at kensink.com, and they are
worth opening in another tab before you decide anything about us.
The number on the left starts at a round placeholder so this panel is not
blank, and it is not a benchmark: we do not publish a salary survey we cannot source, so put your own fully loaded
figure in and the arithmetic follows it. The number on the right is our published rate for that band across
2,080 hours with nothing added, from the same ladder further down this
page. Invoices are in US dollars.
2–3
Hours of a working day in US East, committed
7
Stages before anybody is published, every one worked by a person
6
Months, then identity is checked again or the profile hides itself
01 · WHO YOU ARE BUYING FROM
The bench is new, and the company behind it is not
The thing an empty bench makes you wonder is whether anybody here has delivered anything. Kensink
Labs has been shipping under this name since 2011, and the record for that is on kensink.com rather than in this
paragraph: 047 engagements, 16 of them written up with the stack named
and the dates on them. None of that work was staffed from this bench, which did not exist for any
of it. What it
tells you is who is doing the sourcing, the screening and the arguing with a former employer about a start date.
ENGAGEMENTS SHIPPED
047
Kensink Labs' own count, on its home page.
WRITTEN UP IN FULL
16
Case studies on kensink.com, with the stack named and dated.
Three of the 16, picked because they are client engagements rather
than our own products. The full index is at https://kensink.com/cases, and it is worth
reading before you write to us rather than after.
02 · WHY DHAKA, AND WHY NOT A MARKETPLACE
Two objections, before the part about our method
On the geography: this is where the people running it are from and where they know who is good, and
it is a market that has not been picked over the way the better-known offshore ones have. That is an argument
rather than a statistic, deliberately. The graduate counts and salary multiples that circulate about Bangladesh
are not figures we can point at a source for, so you will not find them here, and an argument you can weigh beats
a number you cannot check. What you can check is the clock below and the rate further down, both of which are
arithmetic you can redo.
On the alternatives: three routes get compared with this one in every conversation, and the
difference in each case is structural rather than a price we would be guessing at.
AGAINST A MARKETPLACE
Nobody there is standing behind the profile
The profile is written by the person it describes and the rating is built from their own past clients. Here a claim carries the evidence rows behind it, anything self-reported is stored at weight zero so it cannot lift somebody up a result, and there is a company on the invoice when it goes wrong. What a marketplace has that we do not is somebody available this afternoon.
AGAINST AN AGENCY
The markup is on the page, not in the quote
An agency sells you its own vetting and prices it into a rate you never see the inside of. The ladder here is published further down this page and the engineer reads the same one on their side of this site. The honest difference in the other direction is the one this page keeps making: an agency can show you placements and we cannot yet.
AGAINST AN EOR OR YOUR OWN ENTITY
Paperwork is the easy half of the problem
An employer of record will handle the contract and the payroll and will not find you anybody, and an entity of your own is months of setup before the first interview. Sourcing somebody and being able to show what stands behind each claim on their record is the part that takes the work, and it is the part this is.
03 · WHAT YOU CAN ASK FOR
Eight lines you can open, and what each one costs before you talk to anybody
There is nobody published on the bench, so there is no grid of people to filter and this page is not
going to draw one. This is the other half of what a listing would tell you and the half that does not need a
person in it: the disciplines we source against, the band a line is usually filled at, and the rate that band is
published at. Every discipline and every skill named below is a row in the canonical taxonomy a claim resolves
against, not a phrase written for this page.
YOUR WORKING DAY, IN US EAST
2 to 3 hours
BANDS ON THE LADDER
4
CANONICAL SKILLS A CLAIM CAN RESOLVE TO
389
Backend engineering
A service taken over from whoever wrote it, or a new one built to a spec you already have.
GoRustJavaPythonTypeScriptPostgreSQLKafkagRPCDistributed systems
BANDS
B1 TO B4
PER HOUR
$38–$76/hr
PER YEAR
$79,040 to $158,080
Platform and reliability
Somebody who owns the pipeline, the clusters and the pager, rather than a person who also does the deploys.
A review your auditor will accept, and the person who then does the work the review asks for.
Application securityOAuth 2.0HashiCorp VaultIdentity and access management
BANDS
B3 TO B4
PER HOUR
$63–$76/hr
PER YEAR
$131,040 to $158,080
Payments and ledgers
Somebody who has reconciled a ledger in anger, on a system that was taking real money before they arrived.
PaymentsLedgers and double-entry accountingBilling and subscriptionsFraud detectionStripe
BANDS
B2 TO B4
PER HOUR
$50–$76/hr
PER YEAR
$104,000 to $158,080
Rates are the published ladder further down this page, in US dollars, with nothing added
at the first invoice. A line that is not on this list is worth asking about anyway: the eight are where we source
first, not a boundary on what a brief may say.
04 · THE CLOCK
2 to 3 hours of your working day, and the engineer works their evening for it
Dhaka is UTC+6 and does not move its clocks, so this is arithmetic rather than a claim. The committed
day is 13:00–22:00 in Dhaka, measured against a
09:00–17:00 working day in yours. Start earlier or finish later than that and
you get more than this page says, never less.
This is the honest version of the American offshore pitch. Dhaka is ten hours ahead of New York in winter, so a committed 13:00 to 22:00 in Dhaka buys a real morning window on the East Coast and almost nothing on the Pacific. The engineer works their evening to get you that window, and it is the part of the arrangement worth checking they actually want.
Hours are whole hours of your working day the engineer is at their desk, computed from
each zone's offset rather than typed in. Winter is standard time and summer is daylight saving, and the two
differ because Dhaka never moves and you do.
05 · WHAT IS ACTUALLY CHECKED
7 stages, and a person at every one of them
This is the whole pipeline, in the order it runs, with the target each stage is judged against. It is
not a description of an intention: these are the stages the machine will move somebody through, the targets the
console goes red against, and the gate that no automated step is allowed to open.
01
Invited3 DAY TARGET
Somebody already on the bench sends a code, or a person here reads a request and answers it. There is no open signup on the engineer's side either, which is what makes the rest of this list mean anything.
02
Intake3 DAY TARGET
Their own account of what they have shipped, and the accounts they are willing to connect. This is the only stage where anything is self-reported, and what is said here is labelled as self-reported for the rest of the record's life.
03
Identity3 DAY TARGET
A government document and a liveness capture, with the name on the document compared against the connected git account and against the employment record. The comparison is computed from the names. An operator does not get to assert that it matched.
04
Employment5 DAY TARGET
Dates confirmed against a work address, a payroll document or a former manager who answers the phone. A public profile is not a confirmation, and we ask for three referees because the thing that actually slips is waiting on one.
05
Technical screen5 DAY TARGET
Ninety minutes, live, with a senior engineer. The result and the name of whoever ran it stay attached to the record, so you can see who formed the opinion you are being asked to trust.
06
Band and window2 DAY TARGET
The band is set against the published ladder further down this page, and the overlap window is agreed with the engineer rather than assigned to them. A window somebody did not agree to is a window they will not keep.
07
PublishedTHE OUTCOME
The last gate is a person pressing publish, and it is the only route onto the bench. Nothing in the pipeline can put somebody there automatically, which is the property that makes the rest of it worth running.
The targets add up to 21 days for somebody starting from nothing. Where it
actually slips is waiting on a former employer to answer, which is why three are asked for and all three are
chased.
WHAT COMES OUT OF IT, AND HOW IT IS STORED
CLAIM · EVIDENCE · CONFIDENCE
A skill is never a self-rated star
Every claim on a profile carries the evidence rows behind it and a confidence derived from them. The number answers how much of what we would want to see we actually hold, which is a statement about our evidence rather than about the person.
WEIGHT ZERO
Self-reported evidence never ranks
A self-reported row is stored with a weight of zero, so it contributes nothing to any score and cannot lift anybody up a search result. It is a property of the data rather than a promise in a style guide: zero times anything is zero.
APPEND-ONLY
Any score can be replayed from its rows
The evidence ledger is append-only and de-duplicated on the observation rather than on the row, so a correction appends beside the old measurement instead of overwriting it. Ask how a number was arrived at and the answer is a list of rows, not an assurance.
EVERY 6 MONTHS
A lapsed identity check hides the profile
Identity falls due again 6 months after it was taken, and a deadline that passes takes the profile off the public bench on its own and drops every claim back to its unverified ceiling. Nobody has to remember to do it.
THE CONFIDENCE METER
Eight bars, one per unit of evidence held, with the ones past an expiring identity check
drawn in amber because the evidence exists and something upstream caps what it is worth. This is the component
with numbers put into it so you can see what it does. There is no person behind it, and there will not be a
drawing of one on this page before there is a real one.
6 HELD · CAPPED AT 4
06 · WHAT IT COSTS
The rate is published before you talk to anybody
Four bands, one rate each, the same ladder the engineers read on their own side of this site. There
is no markup added at the first invoice and no annual uplift written into the schedule, and what Kensink takes is
the difference between this rate and what the engineer is paid, which is printed on the engineer's page too.
Band
Per hour
Per year
B1 · SeniorSix to eight years shipping production code
$38
$79,040
B2 · Senior plusEight to ten years, owns a service end to end
Per year is the hourly rate across 2,080 hours,
which is the convention a salary figure is quoted against. Holiday and sick days make the real figure smaller, so
this is the pessimistic side of our own arithmetic. Bands are reviewed every quarter against collected invoices,
last on 2026 Q3.
07 · IF THE PERSON IS WRONG
A fortnight to decide, and a price on hiring them yourself
This is the part most staffing pages leave to a clause nobody reads, and it is the part that
actually decides whether a first engagement is worth trying. What you are risking is one person for two weeks
against the hours they work, and what you are not risking is being locked out of hiring somebody good.
TWO WEEKS, EITHER SIDE
You get a fortnight to say it is not working
Notice runs two weeks from either side, with no minimum term and no exit fee. Tell us the person is wrong and we start sourcing a replacement the same day rather than asking you to make the case for it. You are invoiced for the hours already worked and for nothing else, because hours worked is the only thing this rate charges for.
PRICED, NOT FORBIDDEN
You can put the engineer on your own payroll
If the engagement works and you want them permanently, we quote a figure for the conversion and you decide whether to pay it. We would rather price that path than write a clause against it and lose the relationship. The figure is not published yet, so ask for it before you sign anything and it goes into the agreement in writing instead of onto this page as a guess.
HONESTLY: A PERSON DOES THIS
Both of these are a policy, not a workflow
There is no button in a console that opens a replacement and no automatic buyout quote, because there is no engagement running for either to act on. Neither has been exercised, and both are carried out by hand by the same person who answers your enquiry. That is worth less than a built process and it is worth more than a paragraph describing one we do not have.
08 · FROM YOUR FIRST MESSAGE TO SOMEBODY WORKING
What happens on your side, and how long each part takes
The section above is our pipeline, which is our problem. This is yours, in order, with the elapsed
time on every step we control and the name of what it waits on for the two we do not.
01
You send a briefABOUT FIVE MINUTES
The stack, the problem and roughly when. One short form, no account, and nothing to sign in to afterwards.
02
A person answers it in writingONE BUSINESS DAY
The reply says whether we can source it, which band the brief lands in, that band's rate from the ladder on this page, and how many hours of your own working day the committed window really covers. If the answer is that we cannot help, that is what it says instead of an invitation to a call.
03
We source against your briefWAITS ON THE PIPELINE
Nobody is published on the bench, so this is sourcing rather than shortlisting. Our own stage targets add up to 21 days for somebody starting from nothing, and where it slips is waiting on a former employer to confirm dates. That is a target we hold ourselves to internally and it is not a delivery date we have earned the right to promise you.
04
You interview, on your own processYOUR CALENDAR
The result of our ninety-minute screen and the name of the engineer who ran it arrive with the profile. It is a filter so the hour you spend is worth spending, and you should still run whatever you would normally run.
05
One agreement, one invoiceWAITS ON YOUR COUNSEL
You sign with Kensink and never with the individual. How long this takes is your own review rather than ours, and on these deals it is usually the longest step on the list, which is why the legal section below is written to be forwarded whole to whoever is holding it.
06
A first day, and a fortnight to change your mindTHEN THE POLICY ABOVE
Access is provisioned in your systems under your policy, and the two weeks either side start running. Nothing is charged for the introduction, the interview or an offer the engineer turns down.
The two amber steps are the ones that move, and neither moves because of us: a former
employer answering the phone, and your own counsel reading an agreement. Every other number on this list is one
you can hold us to.
09 · FOR YOUR LEGAL REVIEW
How the contracting works in the United States
Procurement stops more of these deals than engineering does, so this is here rather than buried in a
question at the bottom. It describes a structure and it is not legal advice: we answer factual questions about the
arrangement in writing, and your own advisers decide what those facts mean for you.
WHO CONTRACTS WHOM
You contract with Kensink. The engineer contracts with Kensink. There is no agreement between you and the individual, which is why there is no W-8BEN to collect from a person in Dhaka and no direct engagement for anyone to reclassify later.
CLASSIFICATION
The engineer is not your employee and not your contractor. Whether your own facts change that is a question for your counsel, and we will answer factual questions about the arrangement in writing rather than telling you what the answer is.
WORK PRODUCT
Assignment of work product runs through the agreement with Kensink, and the same assignment terms are signed by the engineer before a first day. Ask for the documents and read them before you decide anything on the strength of this paragraph.
ACCESS AND DATA
Access is provisioned in your systems under your policy. Kensink holds no client credentials and no client source code, and the identity documents we hold are for verification and are never shown to a client.
10 · BEING THE FIRST CLIENT
What being early is worth here, and the whole list of what it costs you
Every offshore landing page you have read carries a proof band. This one does not, because the
numbers that would go in it do not exist yet, and a figure invented to fill a layout is the one thing on a page
like this that is genuinely worth nothing. So here is both halves of the trade, starting with the half nobody
writes down.
WHAT BEING FIRST IS WORTH
FIRST PICK
Nothing has been picked over
The bench holds no published profiles, so nobody has taken the good ones ahead of you. The first people through the pipeline are published to whoever is waiting, and what they are sourced against is the briefs on the queue.
NO ACCOUNT MANAGER
You talk to the people doing the vetting
There is nobody between you and the engineer who ran the technical screen, because there is nobody to be. Ask why a claim scored what it scored and the person who scored it answers you, by name, with the rows in front of them.
YOU SET THE ORDER
Your brief decides which skills get sourced first
The pipeline goes looking for what the briefs in front of it ask for. That is plainly true while there are few of them and it stops being true once there is a bench to pick from, which is the whole of what being early is worth here.
WHAT IS NOT ON THIS PAGE, IN FULL
No count of engineers
The bench holds no published profiles today. The pipeline that fills it is running and it has not yet put anybody on the other end of it.
No placements and no client names
There are none to count and nobody to name. When there are, they will be named with permission and dated, and you will be able to tell which quarter they are from.
No testimonial
A quotation attributed to an unnamed VP of Engineering at an unnamed company is a sentence somebody wrote. We would rather have the empty space until there is a person who will put their name to it.
No market statistics
The graduate counts and tenure multiples that circulate about this market are not figures we can source, so they are not on this page. The argument for the geography is above and you can check every part of it yourself.
No record of kept overlap windows
A committed window is worth what its record says it is worth, so kept and missed windows are counted rather than asserted. That counter is built and there is nothing in it, which is why no percentage appears anywhere on this page.
11 · WHO IS ON THE OTHER END OF THIS
One person reads every brief, and here is his name
Every enquiry this page opens lands on a queue worked by hand, oldest first, and the
reply is written by the same person who runs the vetting. That is not a scaling plan and it is not pretending
to be one. It is what a bench with nobody on it can actually promise, and it is the promise most worth having
while the rest of this is being built.
MIMosthofa ImranENGINEERING, KENSINK LABS · DHAKA
There is no photograph here because there is not one to use. Initials are the
house style for a person on every internal screen of this product, and a stock portrait of somebody who does
not work here would be the only invented thing on the page.
WHAT THIS COMPANY PUBLISHES, WITH NAMES ON IT
Four essays from kensink.com. None of them is about hiring engineers offshore,
because we have not written that one and four cards implying otherwise would be the same trick as a proof
band. They are what the people behind this bench argue about in public, signed.
Yes, and you should. Ours is a filter so that the person you spend an hour on is worth the hour, and it is not a replacement for your process. You see the result and the name of the engineer who ran it either way.
Will the English hold up in a stand-up and in a design review?
The technical screen is ninety minutes, live, in English, with a senior engineer, and the person who ran it puts their name on the result. That is the answer we can evidence. The one you should trust more is your own interview, which is why the screen is a filter in front of it rather than a substitute for it.
Do you also just build the thing for us?
That is Kensink Labs rather than Kensink Talent, and it is a different arrangement: a team of ours delivers an outcome and hands it over. This is people who join yours and report to your lead. If you are not sure which one you want, say so in the brief and the reply will say which of the two fits, including when the answer is the other one. The work is at https://kensink.com/cases.
What if we are not in one of the four markets?
Write anyway. The four pages exist because the clock and the contracting differ enough per market to be worth their own page, not because we refuse the rest. The reply will tell you plainly how many hours of your working day the committed window covers where you are, including when the honest answer is almost none of it.
Send a brief, and read a written answer inside one business day
Three lines is enough: the stack, the problem and roughly when. It opens a row on a queue a person
works by hand, oldest first, and the reply is written by whoever runs the vetting rather than by somebody whose
job is to get you onto a call. It contains four things.
whether we think we can source it, and a plain no if we cannot
which band the brief lands in, and that band's rate from the ladder on this page
how many hours of your own working day the committed window would really cover
what we would need from you next, and which step is the one that moves
No account is created, there is nowhere to sign in afterwards, and nobody telephones
you before you ask them to. If the answer is that we cannot help, the reply says that.