Watch the full webinar about visa sponsorship in 2025

The Problem: A Competitive and Expensive Market for Top Talent

Everyone is chasing the same top candidates, and highly skilled engineering talent is extremely hard to come by, even after you’ve decided to open up your search internationally. Startups and smaller organizations are struggling to compete on compensation - buzzy companies like OpenAI can afford to wow candidates with extremely compelling salaries, bonuses, and stock option packages, making it difficult for small HR and recruiting teams to attract and close their top candidates. Large, established employers like FAANG organizations also rely on foreign talent and have strong brand recognition abroad. So it's important to really consider what practical options your team has to be able to successfully compete with these big players.

U.S. immigration law is and will continue to be complex, and your HR/recruiting function will likely struggle if they don’t have the bandwidth, experience, or internal infrastructure to support recruiting foreign talent. Once you decide to sponsor visas, there are several critical and strategic decisions to make (and timing matters). The right immigration strategy can help you recruit, close, and retain top engineering talent. The wrong approach can lead to delays, increased costs, disruptions, and frustration. A proactive plan—and experienced legal guidance—can reduce risk and make the whole process much easier on all parties involved.

The Typical Solutions: Hiring International Talent Through H-1B, PERM, and L-1

For most companies, the first three visa pathways that come to mind are H-1B, PERM-based green cards, and L-1 intracompany transfer visas. These are common routes, but each has practical limitations and strategic tradeoffs that matter a lot when your goal is to recruit and close top engineering talent quickly.

If you’re recruiting from abroad, you’ll typically face longer lead times and more unpredictability. If you’re recruiting someone already in the United States, your strategy may shift to focus on status transfers, cap-exempt pathways, or leveraging existing work authorization.

H-1B is the best-known work visa for specialty occupations, but it is lottery-based for most employers and has strict annual timing constraints. That means you may not be able to hire your candidate when you need them, and your candidate may not be able to start when you want them to start.

Even when you can pursue H-1B, you still need to evaluate: whether the role qualifies as a specialty occupation, whether the wage requirements can be met, and whether the job description aligns with the candidate’s education and experience.

PERM (labor certification) is the classic employer-sponsored green card process. It can be a strong retention tool and a meaningful recruiting advantage, but it is slow, requires a structured recruitment process, and is vulnerable to delays, audits, and policy changes.

When you’re competing against the compensation and brand power of large, established employers, early green card sponsorship can be a differentiator—especially for senior and highly technical candidates who prioritize long-term stability for themselves and their families.

L-1 intracompany transfers can work well when you have (or can establish) a qualifying foreign affiliate, and when the candidate fits an L-1 category. This can be a powerful route, but it is only available if the corporate structure and employment history support it.

These common “default” approaches are viable, but they are not always the best fit for engineering recruiting timelines, especially for startups and smaller companies. That’s why it’s important to expand beyond the typical options and build a proactive visa strategy that supports your talent goals.

In practice, many companies end up needing a portfolio approach: combining short-term work authorization strategies with long-term green card planning, and tailoring the plan by role seniority, technical specialization, candidate country, and business footprint.

The next section outlines more actionable short-term approaches that can help you recruit and onboard international engineers more effectively—especially when H-1B timing or lottery risk is a problem.

If you want to move fast, you need a plan that is designed for speed and reliability—not just the most common option people have heard of. The “default” paths can still be part of the solution, but they should rarely be the only plan.

This is especially true when recruiting top engineering talent, where timing, candidate experience, and closing dynamics often matter more than in other hiring contexts.

Companies that win these candidates typically treat immigration as part of their recruiting system: something that is planned, communicated, and executed proactively—rather than reactively after the candidate has already been selected.

In the next section, we cover practical alternatives and variations on H-1B that can provide faster routes to onboarding international engineers, and can reduce lottery risk and timing constraints.

Actionable Short-Term Strategies: Alternatives to/Variations on H-1B

When H-1B timing or lottery uncertainty is a blocker, employers can often use alternative strategies to hire international engineers faster. These options vary based on candidate background, country of citizenship, current immigration status, and employer profile (e.g., whether the employer is cap-exempt).

For example, if your candidate is already working in the U.S. on OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, or another status, you may be able to hire them immediately and build a longer-term strategy in parallel.

If your organization can qualify as a cap-exempt employer (or partner with a cap-exempt entity), you may be able to pursue cap-exempt H-1B petitions outside the annual lottery and filing window.

Certain treaty-based visas can be strong options for specific nationalities, such as TN (Canada/Mexico), E-3 (Australia), and H-1B1 (Chile/Singapore), depending on role fit and eligibility constraints.

Other visa types can work in targeted situations, including O-1 for individuals with extraordinary ability, J-1 exchange visas (with careful attention to program rules and any 212(e) home residency requirements), and E-2 strategies where the business structure and candidate’s nationality make it viable.

The highest-leverage short-term strategies often come from understanding the candidate’s existing options and designing your process to avoid unnecessary downtime or status gaps.

That’s why it’s critical to gather immigration information early in the recruiting process (in a compliant way) and to coordinate with legal counsel before you’ve reached an offer stage that is dependent on a single visa path.

When executed correctly, these strategies can allow you to onboard talent sooner, reduce risk, and create a smoother candidate experience—while still keeping longer-term sponsorship plans on track.

Highly Technical AI/ML Engineer Hires: How to Compete with Big Tech

Highly technical AI/ML engineers are among the most competitive hires in the market, and startups are often competing against extremely high compensation packages and brand strength from major tech employers.

In this environment, immigration strategy can become a recruiting differentiator—not just a compliance requirement. For the right candidates, a fast, credible path to stable work authorization and a long-term green card plan can materially influence their decision-making.

Even if your organization can offer to shorten this lifecycle - for example, 2 years of tenure instead of 4 - that is a significant golden carrot that can be utilized to attract talent away from some of these larger organizations that provide significant compensation packages that you would probably have no chance of competing with from a pure dollars standpoint.

Long Term Strategies for Developing Consistent Candidate Pipeline

Long-term strategies can create a more predictable pipeline of international engineering talent, reduce reliance on lottery-based processes, and improve your ability to recruit at scale over time.

Recruit from universities and establish internship/trainee programs for graduate students

Recruiting graduate students can be an effective strategy because students can often work under CPT/OPT frameworks, giving employers a window to evaluate performance and then transition into longer-term work authorization strategies.

Establish a non-profit organization dedicated to research associated with your company

A cap-exempt nonprofit strategy can help certain organizations access cap-exempt H-1B options and reduce the constraints of the annual cap and lottery process—when structured and operated properly.

Establish a foreign affiliated company (subsidiary, parent, affiliate, branch)

If you can build or leverage a foreign affiliate, you can potentially create L-1 pathways for key hires by moving talent through a foreign entity and transferring them to the U.S. under the right conditions.

These are not “quick fixes,” but they can make your recruiting strategy far more resilient and scalable over time—especially for organizations with sustained hiring needs.

Take the First Step:

If you’re hiring internationally (or planning to), the most important first step is building a strategic immigration plan that matches your hiring timelines, candidate profiles, and business footprint.

That plan should identify: which visa pathways are realistic for your common roles, how you will handle candidates already in the U.S. vs abroad, when you will initiate green card sponsorship, and how you will communicate immigration support during recruiting.

A proactive plan helps you recruit more effectively, close candidates faster, reduce operational disruption, and avoid surprises that can derail offers late in the process.