Judge the questions, not the answers
You cannot evaluate someone's code. You can evaluate what they ask you. A developer worth hiring will want to know who uses the software, what happens today without it, what it must integrate with, and what constraints exist. One who takes your feature list and quotes it back with a price has not engaged with the problem.
The strongest signal of all: a developer who tells you part of what you asked for is unnecessary, or that an off-the-shelf product would do it cheaper. That costs them revenue and is the clearest evidence they are optimising for your outcome.
Ask for work you can verify
For a developer, the verifiable artefacts are a public code repository, shipped products with live URLs, and references you can actually call. A GitHub profile with real commit history is worth more than any list of technologies, because it is independently checkable and cannot be asserted into existence.
Named technologies on their own tell you very little — anyone can list them. Named employers and certifications are worth confirming directly; the issuing bodies for the major cloud certifications all provide verification, and it takes a minute.
Contractor or employee
In Canada this distinction is determined by the actual working relationship, not by what the contract calls it. The CRA considers factors including control over how the work is done, who supplies the tools, whether the worker can subcontract, their chance of profit and risk of loss, and how integrated they are into your business.
Getting this wrong is expensive: a worker treated as a contractor but found to be an employee can leave the employer liable for unremitted CPP and EI contributions plus penalties. If somebody works only for you, on your schedule, on your equipment, indefinitely, take advice before treating them as a contractor.
Put IP assignment in writing
The default position under the Copyright Act is that the creator owns what they create, unless it was made in the course of employment or assigned in writing. Paying an invoice does not transfer copyright. Your agreement needs an explicit assignment, and it is normal for it to take effect on final payment.
Moral rights are separate again in Canada, cannot be assigned, and can only be waived — so a complete agreement addresses both.
Know where your data lives
If the software handles personal information about people in Canada, privacy legislation applies regardless of where the servers are. Some provinces and some sectors — public bodies and health information in particular — carry additional requirements about data residency and disclosure. Establish this before the hosting region is chosen, because moving it later is a migration project.
Rates
Independent developers in Canadian markets charge across a wide band, and the top of it is not automatically better. What actually drives cost is scope and ambiguity, not the hourly figure. A precise brief at a higher rate routinely costs less in total than a vague brief at a lower one.
Be wary of quotes far below the market. They usually mean the scope was not understood, and the gap reappears as change requests, or as software that has to be rebuilt.
Warning signs
- A fixed price quoted before any real discussion of scope
- Unwillingness to give you access to the repository during the project
- Accounts and infrastructure held in their name rather than yours
- No mention of testing, backups or how it gets deployed
- Employers or credentials that cannot be verified
- "I'll just rewrite it" as the answer to every problem with existing software
Start small
Rather than awarding a six-month project on the strength of an interview, commission one small, well-defined, genuinely useful piece of work first. You will learn more about how someone communicates, estimates and delivers from two weeks of real work than from any amount of evaluation.