Global hiring for manufacturing and industrial companies

Quick answers

The five questions manufacturing operations and HR leaders ask first.

Why manufacturers employ across borders

The drivers are physical. Plants and suppliers sit where they sit, and the people serving them have to be nearby.

The installed base is global. Once you have sold equipment into a region, customers expect a service engineer on site within a day, not on a plane within a week.

Sales engineering has to be local. Industrial buying cycles are long and technical. The engineer who scopes the line needs the language and the ability to walk the floor.

Supply chains moved and the people have to follow. Nearshoring to Mexico and Poland, and dual sourcing across Vietnam, India and Malaysia, put suppliers where you have no office. Supplier quality and procurement roles next to those suppliers catch problems at the source.

Engineering and shared services consolidate. Design and PLC teams in Poland, India and Mexico extend an engineering department. Finance and planning teams in India and the Philippines run the back office for a region. Lower cost operational teams in strategic talent markets, without a new entity in each.

The roles and where they sit

Not every role belongs in every market. Each links to its country guide.

Hiring routes compared

The routes differ on what manufacturers care about: site liability, sector rules and tax presence.

What a global industrial hire actually costs

These are illustrative planning figures, not quoted rates and not statutory percentages for any country. Real numbers depend on the market, the salary and the sector agreement.

Worked example, illustrative only. A field service engineer in a Western European market on €55,000 gross, with a 24% contribution load and 4% in sector benefits, costs roughly €70,400. Add the EOR fee, a vehicle allowance and tooling and you are planning around €80,000 fully loaded.

The five traps that catch manufacturers

These are the failures we get called in to fix. Each looks small at hire and expensive a year later.

1. Field and sales engineers create a taxable presence

Permanent establishment decides whether your company becomes taxable in a country where it has no entity. For manufacturers the trigger is what your people do, not the office you do not have. A sales engineer who scopes a line, quotes it, negotiates terms and gets the order signed is the classic dependent agent case, and modern treaty language catches anyone playing the principal role in concluding contracts even when the signature happens at head office. Installation adds a second route: a long running installation or assembly project can itself count as a fixed place of business once it passes the treaty duration. An EOR reduces the risk for service roles. It does not neutralise someone closing deals or running a year long site.

2. Sector agreements and works councils apply whether you know it or not

Industrial employment in much of Europe and Latin America is governed by collective agreements negotiated for a sector: metalworking, chemicals, electrical engineering, automotive. In several countries those agreements are extended to every employer in the sector, or apply by default once a contract is classified into it. They fix pay grades, working time, overtime premiums, allowances, notice periods and sometimes redundancy terms above the statutory floor. A US template contract silently breaches them. Works councils are the second layer: above certain headcounts, employee bodies hold consultation rights on hiring, working time and restructuring. Under an EOR the agreement that applies is the one the EOR is classified into. We tell you which before the offer.

3. Health and safety liability on customer sites

A commissioning engineer on a customer’s plant floor is exposed to that plant’s hazards, and the duty of care sits with several parties at once. The site operator owes duties to everyone on site. The legal employer owes duties around training, equipment and insurance. The company directing the work day to day, which is you, owes a duty too, and in many countries the accident insurance fund looks at who controlled the task, not who signed the contract. Under an EOR the employer duties sit with the EOR and the operational duties with you, so the contract, the site access agreement and the insurance certificates must say exactly that.

4. Export-controlled technical data and who may see it

Drawings, specifications, process parameters and software for controlled equipment are themselves controlled in many regimes. Sharing them with a foreign national, even one you employ, can count as an export to that person’s country. That reaches a design engineer in India reviewing a drawing package, a supplier quality engineer in Vietnam holding a specification, or a service engineer in China with control software on a laptop. The employment route does not change the analysis: an EOR employee is a foreign national abroad the same way an entity employee is. What changes is how you control it. The local contract carries your access and confidentiality terms, your export classification decides what the role may see, and any licence is in hand before day one.

5. Supply chain staff near suppliers, and the rules that follow them

The procurement manager you place in Mexico, the supplier development engineer in Malaysia or the logistics lead in Indonesia is there precisely because they will spend the working week inside other companies’ premises. That creates three things a home office rarely plans for. Working time: travel between sites, cross border trips and night audits fall under local rules on hours, rest and travel pay. Site access: a supplier asks who employs and insures the person before opening the floor, and a locally registered employer answers cleanly. Exit: supply chain roles follow sourcing decisions, and when a supplier is dropped the role may go with it. In countries with heavy severance, that exit cost belongs in the sourcing business case.

Where to hire, country by country

Every market below has a full country guide covering costs, payroll, leave and termination.

How Dryft works with manufacturers

1. Classify the role first. Field, site or office. Selling, servicing or supporting. That decides the sector agreement, accident insurance class and permanent establishment posture.
2. Model the loaded cost across markets. Give us the role, grade and sites. You get a fully loaded comparison across three or four countries.
3. Pick the route per country. EOR for field, supply chain and engineering roles. Your own entity once there is a plant, a warehouse or a durable team.
4. Write the contract for the sites they will work on. Working time, travel, allowances, safety, export control and confidentiality terms fitted to the role.
5. Onboard in days. Offer, local contract, registrations, accident insurance, payroll setup and equipment run in parallel.
6. Run payroll monthly. Global payroll, contributions, allowances, expenses and filings, one invoice across every country.
7. Handle project ends and transfers. When a project closes we run the exit under local rules. When a country outgrows the EOR, employment transfers to your entity. Recruiting and managed teams sit on the same platform.

FAQ

This guide is general information, not legal, tax, export control or immigration advice. Every cost figure here is an illustrative planning range, not a quoted rate for any country. Sector agreements, safety rules and treaty positions differ by jurisdiction and change regularly. Confirm the position for your countries with a qualified adviser before acting. Last reviewed September 2026.