Pan-African talent · Lagos · Nairobi · Accra · Cape Town · Kigali

Elite offshore talent,
for a fraction of the cost.

We connect ambitious startups with experienced engineers, designers, product, and growth professionals across Africa — built to ship faster. Compliance, payroll, and contracts fully handled.

  • Pre-vetted senior talent
  • Matched in 4–7 days
  • Up to 70% cost savings
Software professional working at a desk
100% Match
Senior Engineer
5+ yrs · React, Node, AWS
~4 days
Avg time to first match
+2.4k
Pre-vetted professionals
Lagos
Nairobi
Accra
Cape Town
Trusted by ambitious teams worldwide

From brief to first match
in days, not months.

Skip the recruiting agencies, the immigration paperwork, and the contractor headaches. We've engineered hiring into four steps that actually work.

01

Tell us your needs

Share role, stack, seniority, and timeline. We'll set up a quick call to confirm the brief.

02

Get matched, fast

Within days, you'll meet 2–3 hand-picked candidates from our pre-vetted pool — already calibrated to your needs.

03

We handle the ops

Compliant contracts, global payroll, benefits, equipment — all managed by us in 150+ countries.

04

You build your product

Your new teammate ramps fast and integrates with your stack, your standups, and your team culture.

Hiring shouldn't be the
thing that slows you down.

Most outsourcing companies sell bodies. We deliver teammates — vetted for skill, communication, and the kind of ownership that helps startups ship.

/ 01

Pre-vetted, not just sourced.

Every candidate passes technical screens, communication checks, and culture interviews before they ever reach your inbox. ~6% acceptance rate.

/ 02

Hire in days, not quarters.

Our active talent pool means we ship shortlists fast. First match in ~4 days; signed contract in under two weeks on average.

/ 03

Up to 70% lower burn.

Senior African talent at SF junior rates, without the hidden recruiting fees. Save runway without sacrificing quality.

/ 04

Compliance, handled.

Local entity coverage in 150+ countries. Contracts, payroll, benefits, taxes, IP protection — never your problem again.

/ 05

Scale up or down in weeks.

Add a fullstack engineer this month, a designer next quarter, an entire pod for launch. Flexibility built into every contract.

/ 06

Time zones that actually work.

Africa overlaps with Europe and the Americas all day. Real-time collaboration, no 3am standups, no lost handoffs.

Same talent. Less burn.

Compare the true loaded cost of an in-house hire versus a Bench placement. Move the controls — the numbers update live.

RoleEngineer
SenioritySenior
Team size2 people
110
Compare toUS market
In-house · US
$514,800
Salary + 32% loaded overheadannual · 2 seats
Bench · ALL-IN
$164,736
Salary + benefits + compliance + supportannual · 2 seats
Annual savings
$350,06468%

Reinvest into product, runway, or another hire.

Get a quote

Figures are indicative estimates only. Actual costs vary with role, seniority, location, and project scope — and every placement is subject to negotiation. Get a tailored quote →

From senior ICs to full product squads.

Whether you need one specialist or an embedded team, we staff the depth and seniority modern startups actually need to ship.

Engineering

  • Senior Frontend Engineers
  • Senior Backend Engineers
  • Fullstack Engineers
  • Mobile (iOS · Android · React Native)
  • DevOps · Platform · SRE
  • QA & Test Engineers
  • AI / ML Engineers
  • Automation Engineers

Design & Product

  • Product Designers (UI/UX)
  • Visual / Brand Designers
  • UX Researchers
  • Product Managers
  • Project Managers
  • Scrum Masters
  • Business Analysts
  • Technical Program Managers

Data & Growth

  • Data Analysts
  • Data Scientists
  • Data Engineers
  • Analytics Engineers
  • Growth Marketers
  • Performance Marketers
  • SEO & Content Specialists
  • Lifecycle / CRM Marketers

Don't see the role you need? Tell us about it →

A continent-wide bench of shipping professionals.

From Lagos to Kigali, Cape Town to Cairo — our network spans the engineering, design, and product hubs of Africa. Built to ship faster, in your time zone, with full compliance handled.

Map of Africa with Bench hubsLagosAccraCairoKinshasaAddis AbabaNairobiKigaliKampalaLusakaCape TownJohannesburgDakar
12+
Countries actively staffed
2,400+
Pre-vetted professionals in our network
~70%
Average cost savings vs US/EU hires
Compliance, payroll, and contracts — all handled. We operate in every major African talent hub through local entities and EOR partners, so you hire globally without the legal overhead.

Founders & teams hire us from across the globe.

  • 🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
  • 🇨🇦 Canada
  • 🇩🇪 Germany
  • 🇳🇱 Netherlands
  • 🇦🇪 UAE
  • 🇸🇬 Singapore
  • 🇦🇺 Australia

Don't take our word for it.

We replaced a recruiting agency that took 14 weeks. Bench shipped two strong matches in 6 days.

Jamal Wright
Founder, Beacon Labs

We went from 0 to 4 engineers in two months. No payroll headaches, no contractor risk. Just talent.

Priya Shah
CEO, Helix

The vetting is real. The designer we hired through Bench is genuinely one of the best on our team.

Daniel Park
Head of Product, Quanta

Cost savings are real, but quality is the actual story here. These are senior people, not juniors with senior price tags.

Lena Okafor
VP Engineering, Outline

Honest answers
to real questions.

The five things founders ask us most.
Don't see yours? Drop us a line — we reply within 24 hours.

Most clients get 2–3 hand-picked profiles within 4 days of their brief. From acceptance to first commit is typically another 3–5 business days, so end-to-end you're looking at about a week or so.
Senior. The bar is 5+ years of experience, prior shipping at a real product company, and a multi-stage technical screen. Roughly 4% of applicants make it into the network. We don't repackage juniors at senior prices.
We do — fully. We act as Employer of Record across every country we operate in, run local payroll, handle taxes and statutory benefits, and provide IP-protected contracts. You get one clean monthly invoice and zero entity headaches.
You're never locked in. Scale up, scale down, or pause with 30 days' notice. If a match isn't working in the first 30 days, we replace them at no cost — or you walk away owing nothing further.
Africa sits between GMT and GMT+3 — that's 4–8 hours of overlap with US teams and a near-full overlap with Europe. Most of our talent works async-first and adjusts hours to match your team's rituals (standups, reviews, demos).

Ready to build faster?
Let's match you with talent this week.

Tell us what you're building. We'll send you 2–3 hand-picked profiles within 4 days — no fees, no commitment.