Hiring a developer in Romania can look simple.

You find the person. Agree on a monthly rate. Sign a contract. Start working.

Then the questions begin.

Should you hire them through a Romanian employment contract (CIM)?

Should they work as a PFA?

Should they operate through an SRL and invoice your company under a B2B agreement?

And if your company is based outside Romania, there is another question that matters just as much:

Can you do this without creating unnecessary tax or compliance problems for your business?

Romania has a large and established technology sector, competitive engineering costs and a strong pool of experienced technical professionals. Current 2026 salary benchmarks put senior software engineering compensation well above junior and mid-level roles, with the upper end of the market reaching significantly higher for specialised and international positions.

That makes Romania attractive to foreign founders.

But hiring successfully means understanding more than the salary.

You need to understand the structure behind it.

Romania Tech Hiring in 2026: What Does Talent Actually Cost?

Before deciding how to contract someone, you need a realistic compensation benchmark.

Current salary data varies considerably depending on role, seniority, location, company type and whether the professional works for a Romanian employer or an international company.

For senior software engineers, Levels.fyi currently reports a median total compensation of around RON 241,552 per year, with the 90th percentile around RON 474,000.

Other 2026 market guides place senior engineering compensation broadly around €3,400–€5,200 net per month, while specialist and international roles can move considerably higher.

BrainSource’s own 2026 benchmark places senior engineers at approximately €5,000–€6,800 gross per month, with lead and staff engineers at approximately €7,000–€9,000.

The takeaway isn’t that there is one magic Romanian tech salary.

There isn’t.

The useful benchmark depends on the role, seniority, employment structure and the type of company making the offer.

For a foreign founder, that last part matters because €5,000 paid as salary is not the same calculation as €5,000 paid under a B2B arrangement.

That brings us to CIM, PFA and SRL.

CIM vs PFA vs SRL: What’s the Difference?

These three structures can produce very different outcomes for the company and the professional.

CIM: The Romanian Employment Contract

CIM stands for Contract Individual de Munca, essentially a standard Romanian employment contract.

The company employs the person directly, with the associated employment rights, payroll obligations and employer contributions.

For an employee, CIM offers the structure most people associate with conventional employment: salary, paid leave, employment protections and other statutory benefits.

For the employer, it provides a clear employment relationship but also brings payroll administration and employment-related obligations.

CIM is usually the most straightforward option when the person is genuinely functioning as an employee.

The important word is genuinely.

A company should not take an employment relationship, put a B2B label on it and assume the label solves the problem.

PFA: Working as an Independent Professional

A PFA: Persoana Fizica Autorizata , is an independent business structure used by individuals carrying out authorised activities.

This can make sense when the professional genuinely operates independently and takes responsibility for how the work is performed.

Romanian tax rules define independent activity using a set of criteria. An activity is considered independent when it meets at least four of the criteria established under Article 7 of the Fiscal Code. These include freedom over where and how the work is performed, the ability to work with multiple clients, assuming business risks and using the person’s own resources, among others.

That matters enormously for foreign companies hiring Romanian contractors.

A PFA contract should reflect a genuine independent relationship.

If the contractor works exactly like an employee, fixed schedule, direct subordination, little control over how the work is performed and effectively only one client the structure deserves closer scrutiny.

The contract alone does not determine the economic reality of the relationship. Romanian implementation rules specifically state that the contractual relationship should reflect the real economic substance of the activity and should not create a relationship of subordination.

SRL: The B2B Company Structure

An SRL is a Romanian limited liability company.

Instead of contracting with the individual as a PFA, a foreign company can enter into a commercial relationship with the Romanian contractor’s company.

The Romanian SRL invoices the client according to the agreed commercial terms.

This is one reason SRL structures are common in Romania’s B2B technology market.

But again, B2B does not automatically mean compliant.

The underlying relationship still matters.

If the arrangement is effectively employment, changing the name on the invoice does not magically transform the relationship into genuine independent contracting.

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Why Senior Tech Talent Often Looks at B2B

The assumption that “the top 10% of Romanian tech talent refuses CIM” is too broad.

There is no single reliable market statistic that proves that exact claim.

What we can say is that experienced Romanian technology professionals have a strong incentive to compare different engagement structures, particularly when working with international companies.

Warum?

Because a senior engineer isn’t necessarily comparing:

€5,000 salary vs €5,000 salary.

They may be comparing:

€5,000 gross employment compensation vs €5,000 monthly B2B revenue.

Those numbers can produce very different outcomes after taxes, employer costs, benefits and business expenses.

That is why compensation discussions with senior contractors often become discussions about structure, not just salary.

A €5,000 Monthly Scenario

Let’s make this practical.

Suppose you’re a foreign founder hiring a Romanian senior engineer and your agreed budget is:

€5,000 per month.

You now have several questions.

If €5,000 is the employee’s gross salary, what is the employee’s net?

What is the company’s actual monthly employment cost?

What happens if the person works through a PFA?

What happens if they operate through an SRL?

What expenses can legitimately be taken into account?

How much cash does the professional actually receive?

And what happens to the numbers over a full year?

This is where a simple salary calculator stops being enough.

You need a compensation model.

Run the €5,000 scenario through SalCal to compare the numbers across CIM, PFA and SRL/B2B.

The Article 7 Problem Foreign Companies Need to Understand

This is the part of Romanian B2B contracting that deserves particular attention.

Article 7 of the Fiscal Code provides the criteria used to assess whether an activity is genuinely independent.

The purpose is not to make every contractor prove that they are running a large business. Independence can exist in many forms.

The issue is whether the relationship actually has the characteristics of independent activity.

Consider a developer working for your company through an SRL.

They invoice you every month, but you determine their daily schedule, control how they perform the work, provide all their equipment, place them inside your organisational hierarchy and treat them exactly like your employees.

Simply putting “B2B services agreement” at the top of the contract does not change those facts.

A properly structured B2B relationship should reflect commercial independence. The contract should describe the services, responsibilities and commercial terms clearly, while the actual relationship should be consistent with those terms.

For foreign founders, this is one of the biggest reasons to get professional advice before choosing the structure rather than trying to retrofit compliance afterwards.

What About Permanent Establishment?

There is another concern that often comes up when a foreign company hires someone in Romania:

Could the Romanian worker create a permanent establishment for the foreign company?

The answer is not an automatic yes or no.

A contractor working from Romania does not, by that fact alone, necessarily create a permanent establishment.

The analysis depends on the circumstances.

Permanent establishment rules can consider factors such as whether the foreign company has a fixed place of business in Romania and whether someone in Romania habitually has authority to conclude contracts on behalf of the foreign company.

The person’s role matters too.

A software engineer who provides technical services is a very different situation from someone in Romania who regularly negotiates and concludes contracts on behalf of the foreign business.

Remote working creates further questions around the circumstances in which a home office or other location could constitute a place of business.

This is why foreign companies should resist the temptation to treat “contractor” as a complete answer to their Romanian tax exposure.

The correct approach is to look at what the person actually does, where they work, what authority they have and how the business relationship operates.

CIM vs PFA vs SRL: The Question Isn’t Which One Is Cheapest

This is where hiring decisions often go wrong.

Companies start by asking:

“Which structure gives us the lowest tax?”

That is not the best starting question.

The better question is:

“Which structure accurately reflects the relationship we are creating?”

If you need someone to work as an integrated member of your organisation, under your direction and within a conventional employment relationship, CIM may be the appropriate route.

If you are engaging a genuinely independent professional, PFA may be appropriate depending on the circumstances.

If you are buying services from a Romanian business, an SRL/B2B arrangement may make commercial sense.

The tax calculation comes after that.

Otherwise, you risk optimising a structure that was never appropriate for the relationship in the first place.

Hiring in Romania Means Looking Beyond the Contract

A successful Romanian tech hire is not simply about finding someone with the right skills and agreeing on a number.

The structure needs to make sense for both sides.

The company needs to know what it is actually spending. The candidate needs to understand what they will receive. The engagement needs to reflect the way the work will actually be performed, and the business needs to understand the tax and compliance implications before the relationship begins.

That is particularly important for foreign founders because the Romanian hiring environment may work differently from the one they are familiar with at home.

A contract drafted for a US employee cannot simply be copied, renamed and used for a Romanian contractor.

The same applies to compensation.

A €5,000 budget does not mean the same thing in every structure.

The Better Way to Hire Romanian Tech Talent

Start with the role, not the tax structure.

Determine what kind of professional you need, establish a realistic Romania tech salary benchmark and understand what the candidate expects. Then model the available engagement structures and compare the company’s cost with the candidate’s actual compensation.

Once you know the numbers, look at the relationship itself.

Does it look like employment? Does the professional genuinely operate independently? Does the B2B agreement reflect the work being performed? Could the person’s activities create additional tax considerations for the foreign company?

Those questions should be answered before the contract is signed.

Romania can be an excellent market for building an international technology team. But hiring well means understanding the difference between finding affordable talent and creating a sustainable, compliant engagement.

The companies that get this right don’t simply ask how much a Romanian developer costs.

They understand how the person should be hired, what the company will actually spend and what the professional will actually receive.

Start with the €5,000 scenario in SalCal and compare CIM, PFA and SRL/B2B before making your next Romanian tech hire.