For European Companies Hiring in India

European companies can hire in India through three models: an Employer of Record (EOR) for fast, entity-free hiring with payroll and compliance handled locally; a registered India subsidiary or GCC for long-term control at scale; or retained executive search for sourcing and placing senior engineering and leadership roles. Talhive operates across all three, handling the search and assessment regardless of which entity structure you choose.

A senior backend or full-stack engineer in India typically costs 30 to 70 LPA (roughly EUR 33K to EUR 77K), compared to EUR 80K to EUR 150K in Western Europe for equivalent experience. AI and ML engineers sit at the higher end of the India range. These figures reflect candidates sourced through retained search, not job-board averages, and vary by city: Bengaluru commands the highest band, Hyderabad and Pune sit 15 to 25 percent lower.

Talhive offers three core services for European companies: retained executive search for senior engineering and leadership hires, India team build for setting up a GCC or founding team from scratch with city strategy, compensation calibration, and employer brand design, and embedded RPO for scaling teams with 8 or more concurrent India roles. All mandates include EU-aligned reporting, GDPR-compliant data handling, and cross-border coordination.

A retained search moves from brief to signed offer in six weeks. Week one covers mandate design and sourcing thesis. Weeks two to four are active sourcing and technical shortlisting. Weeks four to six handle interviews and close. For DACH and Benelux companies, the close phase often includes written decision support for board or leadership sign-off.

Yes. An Employer of Record (EOR) lets you hire engineers in India without registering a local entity. The EOR handles payroll, compliance, tax, and employment contracts under Indian labour law. You own the work and manage the team. This model is fastest to activate (2 to 4 weeks) and works well for 1 to 4 hires. Beyond that, a subsidiary or GCC typically becomes more cost-effective.