Hiring & contracts
Hiring & contracts
This guide covers the employer-side flow for creating an IC contract: populating form data, creating the contract, attaching documents, signing, and dispatching the worker invitation.
After you complete these steps, the contractor signs the contract and completes onboarding through the worker-side flow. See Worker onboarding for that walkthrough. For an overview of IC contract types and the Embedded model, see IC embedded overview. For ongoing management of active contracts, see Manage contracts.
Prerequisites
- Admin-scoped API token. See Getting started for authentication setup.
Employer phase
Populate form data
Before rendering the contract creation form, fetch the lookup data needed for dropdowns and selectors.
Create the contract
Submit the contract creation request with the worker details, group assignment, and payment terms.
The contract_type field determines the billing model: fixed, pay_as_you_go, milestones, or tasks. Required fields: worker details (first_name, last_name, email, country), client.team (group ID), job_title, start_date, currency, and payment terms appropriate to the contract type.
The response includes the contract id and initial status. Store the id; it is required for all subsequent operations.
Attach documents (optional)
Attach a Statement of Work, NDA, or other exhibit to the contract before signing.
POST /contracts/{contract_id}/documents
Send as multipart/form-data. Multiple documents can be attached to a single contract.
Set custom fields (optional)
Attach platform-specific metadata to the contract: internal project codes, cost centre IDs, or other identifiers.
Sign the contract
Sign the contract on behalf of the end customer. The contract advances to the worker signing stage.
POST /contracts/{contract_id}/signatures
Required fields: signature, signer_title.
Send the worker invitation
Dispatch the worker signing invitation.
POST /contracts/{contract_id}/invitations
This sends the contractor a Deel-branded email with a hosted signing URL. To handle the signing experience in your own platform, generate a worker token or magic link instead. See Worker onboarding for the worker-side walkthrough.
Webhook events
See the Webhooks guide for event payload structure and signature verification.
Next steps
Worker-side flow: signing, identity verification, and payout setup.
Amendments, invoices, timesheets, off-cycle payments, and termination for active contracts.
Authentication, environments, token generation, and webhook setup.
Configure webhooks to receive real-time updates on contract events.