What cost categories does a US in-house hire carry?

Base salary, employer payroll taxes, health and retirement benefits, equipment and software, HR platform costs, recruiting, and management time. Each is real and each varies with your state, plan design, and seniority mix, so the total is specific to your company rather than a general multiplier.

What does the F5 all-inclusive weekly rate include?

The professional's full salary, all local employment taxes, equipment, internet stipend, performance monitoring, HR support, and ongoing management. No setup fee, no recruiting fee, no termination fee, and no long-term contract. Billing is weekly and replacement is included at zero cost.

How do recruiting fees affect total hiring cost?

They are a real cost and usually a recurring one, since turnover means paying again. In-house recruiting costs staff time plus tooling and advertising; contingency agencies charge a share of first-year salary. Price the route you will actually use rather than an average.

What is the closest published US benchmark for a technical role?

BLS OEWS reports a $135,980 annual median for Software Developers, SOC 15-1252, May 2025. Loaded at the 1.4265 ECEC multiplier that estimates to roughly $193,975. It is a proxy for whatever your role actually is and may overstate or understate it.

How fast is placement compared with in-house recruiting?

F5 Hiring Solutions delivers a shortlist in 7-14 business days and starts the hire within 30 days of selection. That is F5's own published commitment rather than an independently measured benchmark. Compare it against your own historical time-to-fill, which you already have.

When does in-house hiring still make more sense?

Roles needing physical presence at a US site, US-citizen security clearance, US professional licensure such as CPA, RN, or attorney, or executive leadership where US-based equity and board proximity are central to the job. For those, a managed remote workforce is the wrong tool.

Is managed remote staffing cheaper than hiring in-house?

It depends on the role, your market, and what your current hires actually cost once benefits and overhead are counted. This page publishes no savings percentage, because an honest one needs your loaded cost and only you hold that figure. The method is below.

Who should not use F5 Hiring Solutions?

Companies needing a W-2 US employee, an on-site presence, fractional or 1099 freelance arrangements, an engagement under six months, or a self-serve platform for browsing profiles. F5 Hiring Solutions places full-time, exclusively assigned professionals from India and the Philippines only, through a concierge process.

Managed Remote Staffing vs In-House Hiring Costs 2026

What Is the Total Cost of Managed Remote Staffing vs In-House Hiring in 2026?

In-house US hiring carries costs that rarely appear on one budget line: salary, employer taxes, benefits, equipment, HR software, recruiting, and management time. A managed remote workforce collapses them into one weekly rate. F5 Hiring Solutions places full-time professionals at $375-$1,200 per week, all-inclusive, in 7-14 business days.

This page previously ran a line-item total cost of ownership model with a dollar figure against every category, and closed on a savings percentage. Almost none of those figures were sourced. They have been removed rather than adjusted, because a model is only as good as its weakest input and every input here was an estimate presented as a finding.

What remains is the part that was doing the real work: which categories exist, which one published benchmark is worth anchoring to, how to run the comparison on your own numbers, and where in-house wins outright regardless of cost.

What an In-House Hire Actually Carries

Seven categories sit under the salary line.

Employer payroll taxes. FICA for Social Security and Medicare, FUTA for federal unemployment, SUTA at state level. Statutory rates, published by the IRS and your state agency, with the state component varying by your experience rating.

Health and retirement benefits. Medical, dental, vision, retirement matching, and accrued paid time off. Driven by your plan design and group size, which is why a general figure is close to useless.

Equipment and software. Hardware, peripherals, licences, and a refresh cycle. Your last purchase order is a better source than any benchmark.

HR platform. HRIS, payroll processing, applicant tracking, compliance tooling. Priced per employee per month, so it scales with headcount rather than salary.

Recruiting. In-house time and tooling, or a contingency fee as a share of first-year salary. Recurring rather than one-off, because turnover means paying it again.

Management time. Reviews, one-to-ones, HR escalations. Small weekly, material annually.

Exit costs. Severance where applicable, benefits continuation, and the recruiting spend to replace.

None of these is controversial. The reason they get missed is that they arrive from different budgets at different times, and no single line ever shows the total.

The One Benchmark Worth Anchoring To

For a technical role there is a published figure with a methodology behind it.

BLS OEWS reports an annual median wage of $135,980 for Software Developers, SOC 15-1252 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). Loaded at 1.4265 per BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC, December 2025), that estimates to roughly $193,975 in annual employer cost.

Three limits, stated rather than buried. It is a national median, so your market may sit well above or below. It is a proxy for whatever your role actually is. And the loaded figure is an estimate from an average benefits share, not a measured cost at your company.

That is what a usable benchmark looks like: sourced, dated, and carrying its own caveats. Everything this page previously asserted about US costs failed at least one of those tests.

What the All-Inclusive Rate Covers

F5 Hiring Solutions charges one weekly rate per role: $375-$1,200 per week, all-inclusive pricing covering salary, HR, equipment, and management.

Cost category	Managed remote workforce	US in-house hire
Base salary	Inside the weekly rate	Your market rate
Employer payroll taxes	Included	Statutory, varies by state
Health and retirement benefits	Included	Your plan design
Equipment and software	Included	Yours to buy and refresh
HR platform and tools	Included	Per employee, per month
Recruiting fee	None	In-house time or agency percentage
Setup or onboarding fee	None	Implicit in HR time
Termination cost	None	Severance, benefits continuation, re-recruiting
Replacement	Zero cost within 7-14 days	A new search
Who should NOT use F5 Hiring Solutions	Companies needing a W-2 US employee, an on-site presence, fractional or 1099 arrangements, an engagement under six months, or a self-serve portal

The right-hand column deliberately carries no dollar figures. Those are yours, and the next section is how to get them.

How to Run the Comparison on Your Own Numbers

Take your last comparable hire. Total what it actually cost in year one from payroll records and invoices, across all seven categories above.

Separate one-time from recurring. Recruiting and equipment behave differently from benefits and management time. Conflating them makes year one look like every year, which overstates the gap.

Add the ramp. Decide when that person became fully productive and count the shortfall. It is a real cost even though no invoice shows it.

Compare over a matched period. Annualise the weekly rate and set the two totals side by side for the same role over the same window.

If the answer surprises you in either direction, trust it. Your inputs are real and a published average is not yours.

When In-House Still Wins

Cost is not the deciding factor for some roles, and no rate changes that.

In-house is right for work requiring physical presence at a US site, US-citizen security clearance, US professional licensure such as CPA, RN, or attorney, and executive leadership where US-based equity, board interaction, and physical proximity are central to the job.

A managed remote workforce fits work that happens at a desk with reliable time-zone overlap: software and data engineering, DevOps, QA, AI/ML, design, customer support, executive assistance, billing, and operations coordination.

F5 Hiring Solutions is also the wrong tool for fractional or 1099 freelance arrangements. It places full-time, exclusively assigned professionals only.

What F5 Hiring Solutions Is Not

Not a freelance marketplace: professionals are full-time and exclusively assigned rather than listed by the hour. Not a recruiting firm: no placement fee and no exit at the point of hire. Not an employer of record: an EOR wraps legal employment around a person you sourced and manage, whereas F5 sources, employs, equips, and manages.

For the fee structures themselves, contingency, markup, conversion, and RPO, see staffing fees explained.

Bottom Line

In-house hiring carries seven cost categories that arrive from different budgets and never appear on one line. An all-inclusive weekly rate carries them in a single number. Which is cheaper for you depends on figures only you hold.

Run the four steps above on your own payroll records. Then decide.

Book a 30-minute call with Joel Deutsch to model the cost difference for your open role.