We needed two Kamailio engineers. That's it. Two people who could build a production SIP proxy layer for our platform. I figured it would take a month to fill both roles.
It took seven months. And we only filled one.
Here's what nobody told us going in: Kamailio is not Asterisk. The talent pool is tiny. Most VoIP engineers you'll find on job boards have Asterisk or FreeSWITCH backgrounds. Kamailio-specific skills like dispatcher module configuration, dialog management, TLS setup, and custom routing scripts are a different category entirely. The overlap between "has worked with VoIP" and "can build a production Kamailio SIP proxy" is smaller than you'd expect.
We posted on LinkedIn, Stack Overflow Jobs, and three VoIP-specific forums. Plenty of applicants listed "Kamailio" on their resume. But when we asked about production scenarios, like how they'd handle active-active failover with shared registration state, or debug a 407 loop between two SIP proxies, most couldn't get past surface-level answers.
The engineers who could were already employed at telecom companies or VoIP consultancies and weren't looking. The few who were open to conversations wanted $180K+ and had zero interest in contract work.
After four months of searching, we changed approach entirely. Instead of trying to hire Kamailio developers from scratch, we started evaluating whether a Kamailio development company could handle the initial build while we continued the internal search at a slower pace.
The logic was straightforward. We needed the SIP proxy layer built and running in production. We did not need two full-time Kamailio engineers on payroll for the next three years. The heavy engineering was in the build phase. After that, maintenance would be lighter. Maybe 10 to 15 hours a month.
We ended up working with a specialist firm. They built the routing layer, configured dispatcher for load balancing across our application servers, set up TLS between internal services, and deployed the stack on Kubernetes. Three months from kickoff to production traffic.
What surprised me was the handover. Their team spent a month training our one internal engineer (the hire we did manage to make) on the codebase and operational playbook. By the end, he could handle routine config changes, dialplan updates, and basic troubleshooting solo. For anything bigger, we kept the firm on retainer at a fraction of what a second full-time hire would have cost.
Looking back, I'd skip the seven-month hiring cycle entirely next time. If your team doesn't already have Kamailio expertise, trying to hire Kamailio developers from zero while simultaneously scoping the project is a recipe for lost time and a delayed launch.
If the SIP proxy supports your platform rather than being the product itself, a Kamailio development company like Hire VoIP Developer can get you to production faster than building an internal team from scratch. That's not a knock on in-house teams. It's just the reality when the talent pool is this small.
Curious how others have handled this. Did you build your Kamailio layer in-house or outsource the initial build? What was the timeline like?
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