A dedicated developer joins a working system: people, priorities, tools and decisions. Evaluate that fit alongside technical capability before you make a commitment.
Start with the work the team will own
Describe the product, its current stage and the work you need help delivering. Maintaining a live application, building a new feature and replacing a legacy system create different needs. A list of programming languages alone will not explain the assignment.
Identify the decisions your internal team will keep and those you expect the remote team to make. Be specific about product direction, architecture, review and release approval. This gives both sides a useful basis for discussing the role.
Evaluate capability through relevant examples
Ask candidates to explain a piece of work similar to your needs: the constraints, their contribution and the choices they made. Look for an explanation you can follow, including what they would do differently. A long list of projects is less informative without clear responsibility.
Use your existing technical team in the conversation where possible. Agree what evidence would demonstrate readiness for the actual work, such as discussing an integration boundary or reviewing a representative workflow. Keep the assessment proportionate and relevant.
Make the working arrangement explicit
Discuss working hours, meeting overlap, communication channels and how priorities reach the developer. A remote arrangement works better when people know where to raise a blocker and how quickly a decision is expected. Availability should be agreed rather than inferred from a time zone.
Clarify who supports performance reviews, coordination and replacement if the match does not work. Ask which responsibilities sit with your manager and which sit with the delivery partner. Record those boundaries alongside the commercial scope.
Prepare onboarding before the start date
Plan access to the repository, development setup, issue tracker and product documentation. Choose a first task that exposes the normal review and release process without creating unnecessary risk. Give the developer a named person to contact for product and technical questions.
Agree how you will review the early engagement. Useful signals include understandable updates, well-scoped changes, early escalation of blockers and responsiveness to review. Assess the working relationship as well as the amount of code delivered.
Choose a team against a defined assignment, a clear working agreement and relevant evidence of capability.