Our new developers were able to hit the ground running, we've worked with them for over two years now, and they are truly part of our team.
Alison WhittleProduct Delivery Manager, BladeFSIn-house feel, nearshore
Next.js Developers
Senior Next.js engineers working British hours. UK teams reach for it where search visibility matters, because pages arrive as HTML rather than waiting on JavaScript, which matters to Google and to the person waiting for the page.
- Server rendering, routing and caching strategy
- Headless CMS integration done properly before
- Working your hours and embedded in your team
API RoutesUI EngineeringAuth & RoutingDeployment ReadyPerformance Tuning
Our service
Next.js engineers embedded in your UK team
Routing, caching and rendering strategy are where Next.js projects go wrong, and a strong React developer without that specific experience will usually get them wrong the first time. We scope how much of your app is server rendered before matching anyone.
- Caching treated as the performance work it is
- Comfortable on hosts other than the obvious one
- Full-time engineers, never freelancers
Full-time engineers, never freelancers
Experts at every layer
- Build SEO-optimized apps with server-side or static generation.
- API RoutesCreate scalable backend endpoints directly inside Next.js.
- UI EngineeringPixel-perfect UI components built with React and Tailwind.
- Auth & RoutingSecure pages and custom route logic with NextAuth and middleware.
- Deployment ReadySkilled in Vercel, Netlify, Docker and CI/CD setups.
- Performance TuningImprove load speed, lighthouse scores and bundle optimization.
The alternative
Get speed, fit and in-house feel without the hiring grind.
Cloud EmployeeIn-house hiringDev agenciesFreelancers
Speed to hire✓-✓✓
Flexibility to scale✓-✓✓
Developer fit (embedded)✓✓✓-
Full-time, only for you✓✓--
No overhead or upfront fees✓--✓
Solid lime = yes · outline lime = partial · grey dash = no
Vetting
You see two people - not 200 CVs.
Engineers vet engineers
A senior engineer runs a live technical conversation on the candidate's real stack, not a recruiter working from a keyword list.
Live coding, not take-homes
Real problems solved in front of an assessor, with anti-cheating checks. You see how they actually work, not what they submitted overnight.
A full profile, not a CV
Every candidate arrives with a CV, interview summary, coding-test breakdown and rate in pounds. You decide on evidence.
Every tab is a stage a candidate has to clear. Six of them, all run by our own internal engineers at Cloud Employee, before you see a name.
- Overview
- CV
- Tech interview
- Coding test
- Psychometric
- Soft skills
Scored by people. We use AI to cross-check our own consistency - never to decide who reaches your shortlist.
✓Luka M.
VettedSenior Software Engineer · TypeScript · Python · Cloud · 6 yrs · Zagreb, Croatia (GMT+1)
Assessment
Six years in production Python, the last three on LLM systems - retrieval pipelines, eval suites, and agent tooling for UK fintech. Owns delivery end to end.
Stack
Python · LangGraph
English
C1 fluent
Overlap
8 hrs UK
Notice
2 weeks
AI in practiceShips with Copilot and Claude Code daily, and rewrote 40% of the generated code in his observed task - the judgement is his, the tooling only makes him faster.
Career history
2023 - now
Senior AI Engineer
UK payments platform · 40-person product team
Built the retrieval assistant now resolving 30% of tier-1 tickets; owns its eval suite and guardrails.
2020 - 2023
Backend Engineer, Python
Travel booking SaaS · Zagreb
Moved fraud scoring onto a real-time feature pipeline; cut false declines by 18%.
2019 - 2020
Data Engineer
Agency · Python, Postgres, AWS
- Python
- FastAPI
- LangGraph
- pgvector
- Evals & tracing
- AWS
- Docker
Technical interview
Assessed by Marco R., Principal Engineer
12 Jun 2026
55 min · live call
"Walked me through an assistant that was quietly hallucinating refund policy, how he caught it in evals, and what he got wrong on the first fix. Hire-ready for a senior seat."
Live coding test
Repair a leaking retrieval pipeline
88
score
Tests passed
21 / 21
Time used
62 of 90 min
Anti-cheat flags
0
retrieval.py · submitted diff
- hits = index.query(q, k=50)+ hits = index.query(rewrite(q), k=50, filter=tenant)+ hits = rerank(hits, q)[:8] # recall 0.62 -> 0.91+ assert_context_budget(hits, max_tokens=6000)
Psychometric · technical thinking
How he reasons under a real deadline - not a personality quiz.
Top 9%of engineers
we test
A 45-minute reasoning test, scored against the 4,000+ engineers we have already placed. Our assessors do the marking - AI only flags where our own scoring looks inconsistent.
Soft skills · working with your team
Spoken English
C1 · assessed on call
References
2 of 2 verified
"He raised the payment edge case nobody else had spotted, in writing, two days before release."
This is what you receive - not a CV.
Ask our AI anythingWhy Cloud Employee
Engineers who own the rendering decisions
The choices that make a Next.js site fast are made early and are expensive to unpick later, so keeping the engineer who made them is worth more than it looks. 97% stay beyond two years, at 50 to 75% less than hiring the same seniority in Britain.
- Vetted on delivered sites rather than a CV
- Working your hours and onboarded to your stack
- Continuing support from our operations team
More than developers
From hiring to retention we support your team end to end, with a UK-based account manager as your point of contact.
Fully supported
We handle the rest so your engineers can focus on building.
Performance reviews
Payroll & complianceEquipment
WorkspaceIn-house, without the friction
No upfront fees. No lock-in contracts.
- No placement or upfront fees
- Rolling 30-day contract, cancel anytime
- One monthly rate, everything included
Ready to find your engineer?
Tell us exactly who you need.
In 90 seconds
Two matched engineers in 7 days. No fees, no obligation.
What role are you hiring for?
Pick one to start - you'll see matching engineers at the end.
- Founded in 2014
- 97% stay 2+ years
- Replace if it isn't working
Got questions?
The questions CTOs and founders ask.
01How much does it cost to hire a Next.js developer in the UK?
Expect to pay 50 to 75% less than an equivalent British hire when salary, employer national insurance, pension, recruitment fees and overheads are added up. Hiring a UK-based Next.js developer through us is perfectly possible. It is simply that the quality-to-cost ratio usually points to Eastern Europe, the Philippines or Latin America, with Eastern Europe suiting a British working day well. The aim is the strongest quality-to-cost ratio we can find, excellent engineers at a price that keeps working.
02What is Next.js and why do teams choose it?
Next.js is the leading React framework, adding server rendering, routing, data fetching and build tooling to React so teams ship complete applications rather than assembling infrastructure themselves. Teams choose it because it collapses a dozen decisions into one dependable default, and because it spans a spectrum, from fully static marketing pages to heavily dynamic applications, within one codebase. Server components have pushed more work to the server, which done well means faster pages and less JavaScript shipped to users. The framework moves quickly, and its caching behaviour has a real learning curve.
03What skills should I look for in a Next.js developer now?
Rendering judgement is the skill that matters most now, knowing what should be static, what should stream, what belongs on the client, and what each choice costs. Syntax and component patterns are exactly what AI assistants generate well, so they no longer separate candidates. What separates them is understanding the server-client boundary deeply enough to keep data fetching efficient, reasoning about caching rather than fighting it, and treating Core Web Vitals as an engineering budget instead of a report card.
04How do I assess a Next.js developer, and what should I ask?
Ask them to reason aloud about rendering strategy for a page you actually have, then keep asking why until the trade-offs surface. A strong candidate will ask about your data freshness, your traffic shape and your SEO needs before choosing, which is itself the signal. Useful follow-ups include what they would render on the client and why, and how they would find a slow page's real bottleneck. Pair on a small feature with their AI tooling switched on, and watch how they explain the server-client boundary.
05Are Next.js developers in demand, and is it worth building on?
Next.js developers are in heavy demand, because the framework has become the default way React applications get built commercially. Worth building on deserves nuance. For products where performance, SEO and rich interactivity all matter at once, it is the strongest option in the React world. For a purely static site the machinery is overkill, and for teams without React experience the learning curve is real. Assistants trained on oceans of React produce Next.js code fluently, but misplaced code fails subtly, which makes human architectural judgement more valuable.
06Do your developers use AI tools, and how do you know the code is sound?
Yes, all our developers work with AI tools, and in Next.js we care most about whether they can audit where generated code actually runs. The framework's server-client split is where plausible output goes wrong, a component that fetches on the client what belonged on the server, or leaks an environment secret, looks fine in a demo and hurts in production. Vetting assesses AI usage directly, we watch candidates generate, then see whether they interrogate data flow and caching before accepting anything.
07How does Cloud Employee vet Next.js developers?
Through a CTO-led process tuned for the way Next.js work actually fails, not a recruiter keyword scan. Candidates complete a technical assessment, a live pair programming session with a senior engineer, a cultural fit screen and a psychometric assessment we built for software engineers. In the pairing we look for rendering and caching reasoning and clear thinking at the server-client boundary, and we test how well each candidate works with AI tools. Our own funnel uses AI for screening and matching, with the decision made by humans every time.
08How quickly can a developer start, and how does the engagement work?
You are typically interviewing matched candidates within 7 working days of a requirements call, and developers are often embedded and pushing code within about two weeks. From there it is a rolling monthly contract with 30 days' notice, one monthly fee, and no placement charges. You can scale up or down as the work changes, and you pay nothing to interview.
09What happens if the developer is not the right fit?
There is a two-week money-back guarantee, and if you want to continue we replace the developer free of charge. In practice this rarely comes up, because you interview a shortlist of two candidates who have already passed a CTO-led technical assessment and a live pair programming session, so the fit question is largely settled before anyone starts.
Proof, not promises
Hear from our customers
In their words
What the difference feels like
Alison WhittleProduct Delivery Manager, BladeFSWhat I love about Cloud Employee is that you have taken all of that hard work off my shoulders.
Marcus KilgourCTO, Salmon SoftwareWorking with Cloud Employee developers is great, because they're not afraid to push back. They're proactive, they're positive, and they feel like part of the team.
Doran EskinaziHead of Engineering, HealthpointeWe actually hired the whole team remotely, having never met them. And we made a bunch of really good hires.
Euan CameronCEO, WilloCloud Employee provides a level of professionalism, communication and support we haven't found elsewhere.
Trevor SathorManaging Director, Square EyeWorking in tandem with Cloud Employee we have successfully released a major version of our main software product during a critical period for us.
James StringerManaging Director, CleanLink