How Toba Partners Works

You have a product to build and you need engineers. You do not have a legal entity in Indonesia, and setting one up takes months you do not have.

So here is what we do instead.

How the contract works

Your company signs one agreement with Toba Partners. That is it. We then employ the engineer locally, under Indonesian labor law, and take care of everything on the employment side: payroll, tax, benefits, compliance, and the stuff nobody wants to think about until something goes wrong.

You manage the engineer's work. We manage the employment.

Our engineers work in UTC+7, which gives European teams a 6–7 hour overlap and Australian teams a 3 hour overlap. Enough for daily standups, sprint planning, and real-time collaboration.

The engineer can be on two types of contract, depending on what makes sense for your company:

• PKWT is a fixed-term contract. Use it for project work or when you know the engagement has a clear end date. It has specific rules around termination and severance under Indonesian law, and we handle those rules so you do not have to learn them.
• PKWTT is an indefinite contract. Use it when you expect the engineer to stick around long-term. Different termination procedures, different protections. We manage those too.

We will walk you through which one fits before you sign anything. The choice affects cost, flexibility, and what happens if things do not work out. Better to think about it now than scramble later.

What you pay

Your company pays a monthly management fee per engineer to Toba Partners. That fee is a percentage on top of the engineer's gross salary. For example, if the engineer's gross salary is IDR 20,000,000 and the management fee is 20 percent, your monthly cost is IDR 24,000,000.

The management fee covers local employment and payroll administration, tax and compliance management, people support, and our vetting process. No recruitment fees. No percentage of salary beyond the agreed management fee. The number is fixed before we start, and it does not change.

How payments work

There are three payments, and they happen at different times.

The first is the management fee, paid when your company signs the service agreement. This is your commitment to the process, and it lets us start recruiting and vetting immediately.

The second is the first month's salary, paid upfront when the engineer signs their employment contract. The management fee for this first month has already been covered by the payment you made when signing the agreement, so this payment is the salary portion only.

From the second month onward, every invoice includes both the salary and the management fee, and it is paid upfront, before the month begins. This is how we ensure the engineer is always paid on time, regardless of invoicing cycles or transfer delays between countries.

Your company sends payment via international bank transfer to Toba Partners' bank account in Indonesia. We invoice in USD or EUR. Our bank details are on every invoice.

Once we receive your payment, we handle everything locally. Salaries go to engineers. Taxes go to the government. Benefits get paid. Your company sees one invoice and one payment. One source of truth.

Step 1: Tell us what you actually need

Do not send us a job description. Tell us what you are building, how your team works, and what a good first month looks like for the person you hire.

"We need a backend engineer" is not enough. "We need someone who can own our payment integration and work directly with our Berlin-based product lead" is what we need to hear.

The more specific you are, the better the shortlist.

Step 2: We find and vet

We recruit from Indonesia's engineering talent pool. People who have built products at startups, fintechs, and tech companies here. Then we test them with real work, not puzzles.

Each engineer gets a scoped problem drawn from your domain. Something they would actually face in their first month with you. We watch how they approach it, how they handle feedback during the exercise, and where they are strong and where they fall short.

The output is not a CV. It is evidence of how someone thinks and works.

Step 3: You meet the shortlist

We send you three to five engineers. For each one, you get a written assessment of how they tackled the problem, a recorded walkthrough of their reasoning so you can hear them think, and notes on what they did well and where they need support.

You review, you ask questions, you pick who to talk to. We do not push. We show you what we found and let you decide.

Step 4: We employ, you manage

Once you choose, we handle everything on the employment side. Contracts, payroll, tax, benefits, compliance, contract renewals, amendments, terminations. All managed by us under Indonesian labor law.

You manage the work. We manage the employment. One contract between your company and Toba Partners. One monthly invoice. Clean separation.

Step 5: We do not disappear

Most talent partners introduce you to someone and vanish. We do not do that.

We check in with you and with the engineer. If something is off, we catch it early. If you want to add another engineer later, we already know how your team works and can move faster.

If a hire does not work out in the first three months, we replace them at no extra cost. That is not a tagline. It is how we keep clients.

What we are not

We are not a staffing agency. A staffing agency introduces you to someone and moves on. We stay as the employer of record, the compliance layer, and the support structure behind the engineer.

We are not a marketplace. You do not scroll through profiles and hope for the best. We do the work of finding, vetting, and presenting only the people who fit your role and your team.

We are not a body shop. We do not have engineers sitting on a bench waiting for assignments. Every shortlist is built from scratch for your specific need.

How long it takes

Two to four weeks from first conversation to engineer starting work. The vetting is the slow part, and we do not rush it. A bad hire costs more than a delayed one.

Who this is for

Companies that need one to five engineers and care more about getting the right people than getting people fast. If you need twenty engineers by next week, we are not the right fit. If you need two good engineers who will still be on your team in two years, let's talk.