picked.ai/hire/full-stack-engineer
Hire a full-stack engineer
How to hire a
full-stack engineer.
Salary bands, time-to-fill, what good actually looks like, and the assessment we put every candidate through. Built on nine years of validated psychometric data from Neuroworx.
Post this role
~30 seconds
Title, level, three must-haves. We syndicate, screen, score, and shortlist. First 50 candidates free.
Post this role for free →
£100,000
Median salary · United Kingdom
£82-£118k senior range
42d
Typical time-to-fill
down to 3.6d with Picked
254
Applicants per role
Series A · public posting
9 / 254
Make it to interview
industry · pre-AI screening
Salary bands
What it costs to hire one.
2026 H1 · base + variable
LevelUSUKEURemote
IC1 / Junior$67-$96k£42-£60k€45-€64k$55-$79k
IC2 / Engineer$96-$134k£60-£84k€64-€90k$79-$111k
IC3 / Senior$131-$189k£82-£118k€88-€126k$108-$156k
IC4 / Staff$179-$253k£112-£158k€120-€169k$148-$209k
IC5 / Principal$237-$328k£148-£205k€158-€219k$195-$271k
Source · 2,847 anonymised offers placed via Picked Q4 2025 to Q1 2026. Updated monthly.
What good looks like
Past credentials. Present signals.
01
Range of judgement
Knows when a problem belongs in the database, the API, or the client. Has made the wrong call once and can name it.
02
Shipping instinct
Has closed a feature end-to-end including the change-log, the metric, and the support handover.
03
System breadth
Comfortable in a migration, a React component, and a Stripe webhook in the same afternoon. Does not pretend to like all three.
04
Comms
Can write a one-paragraph explanation of a cross-stack bug. Can summarise a 200-comment thread in three lines.
05
Curiosity
Reads release notes for the framework, the database, and the language they use. Asks one good question per interview.
Nine years of Neuroworx outcome data on 14,000 full-stack engineer hires says: the candidates rated high on range of judgement + system breadth outperform high-prestige-CV candidates by a wide margin in the first twelve months.
Read the paper →
What Picked puts every candidate through
Four stages. Each one written down.
From the Neuroworx item bank · 1,247 items live
01
Triage
CV + cover screened against must-haves. Title, level, language, region, three skills you set. Hard filters first. The model spends no time on people you would not even read.
~12 seconds · $0.12
02
Conversational screen
A 12-minute voice or chat conversation against six structured probes: motivation, scope of last role, the thing they are proudest of, biggest production mistake, what they would build with a free month, why this role.
~12 min · $0.31
03
Role-fit assessment
A scoped task drawn from the bank. Submit a short writeup. Scored against a published rubric on judgement, craft, and pragmatism.
30-60 min · $0.28
04
AI first-round interview
A 20-minute voice interview against six items drawn from the IC3 item bank. Includes behavioural ("tell me about a time"), technical or scenario ("walk me through how you would approach"), and an ownership probe.
~20 min · $0.24
The 1,247 items for full-stack engineer are split across 42 sub-rubrics. Every item has been calibrated against twelve-month performance outcomes from 14,083 prior hires.
See sample items ↗
Sample interview questions
A few from the item bank.
01
Tell me about the last feature you took end-to-end. What broke first in production, and what did you do?
Listen for: A feature that touched UI, API, and storage. A real failure mode. A fix with a named trade-off.
02
Pick a part of your current codebase you think is wrong. Why has it not been fixed?
Listen for: A specific module, schema, or API contract. An honest reason for the not-yet (cost, priority, fear of touching it).
03
Walk me through the most recent thing you shipped from spec to production. Spec to deploy.
Listen for: The full arc, across layers. Who they convinced, what they cut, what they migrated. Specific dates.
04
What is the smallest decision you have fought hardest for?
Listen for: A real example. A retry policy, a column type, a copy choice. They say what they would do differently.
05
Pick a product you use every day and tell me how it probably works end-to-end.
Listen for: Reasonable guesses across the stack: client, API, datastore, async layer. They name what they do not know.
See all 30 questions →
Job description template
Copy. Paste. Replace the bracketed bits.
full-stack-engineer.md
283 words · 3 min read
# [Senior/Mid/Junior] full-stack engineer · [city] or remote

We are hiring our [Nth] full-stack engineer. You will own product features end-to-end (next on the roadmap: [feature X and feature Y]). The team is [N] engineers and [N] product designer(s). [Who else writes code]. [How you ship]. [How decisions get made across the stack].

## You will be good here if

- You have closed a feature end-to-end past v1, including the change-log, the metric, and the support handover.
- You can hold judgement about UI, API, and storage in the same conversation without flinching.
- [The third trait you actually care about, with a sentence on the behaviour you want].

## What we use

[Languages, frameworks, datastores]. We will not retrain you on a stack, but we do not care if you came from [adjacent stack] as long as you can talk us through the trade-offs.

## What you will not get

A handoff culture where each layer throws over a fence. A roadmap that ignores the database. A product manager who treats engineering as a vending machine.

## Compensation

[Currency][low] to [high] base. [low] to [high] percent equity. We post the band because we mean it and we will not negotiate against ourselves.

## How we hire

30-second post, screen plus assessment via Picked, 20-minute interview via Picked, one on-site half-day with the team and a product designer. We aim to give a yes or no in 7 days.

## What is the rubric

Range of judgement, shipping instinct, system breadth, comms, curiosity. Not credentials.

That is the JD. Apply via [link], or just send a paragraph about the last feature you closed end-to-end and what broke first.

[Your name], [your title]
Full JD template page →
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Hire full-stack engineers · Picked.ai