Great Company, Way below-market Salary - Software Engineer Sparq Employee Review

3.0
Jun 19, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

People are great, opportunities for learning are good, your team and managers will have your back on client projects. Good company culture. Good efforts on D&I. Leadership seems to really care about everything, with one big exception (see "Cons")

Cons

The business model is clearly based around cost-of-living arbitrage- they will pay you the going rate for your area, not for your industry, so you will make way less money than other software engineers with similar experience, guaranteed. They will bill the client up to 2-3x your salary, and good luck asking for a raise. Most of the talented devs I worked with would do 1-2 years at RSI and then go for another job to bring them up to market rates, so the people that stick around tend to be the people that couldn't make market rates elsewhere- but this really is typical of consulting.

Explore other reviews about Sparq

5.0
Sep 16, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice people and great environment

Cons

Not much to mention here

1
2.0
Jun 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Leadership was relatively hands off. Requirements regarding interacting with anyone at Sparq while on a client were nonexistent.

Cons

Leadership has literally no idea what they are doing. At no point in my years with Sparq did senior leadership give any indication that they knew what was going on with clients. They also refused to take any accountability for hard times. The new CEO would often blame any company shortcomings on the economy or even politics. The company threw out the old model of getting rural engineers into the work force and decided it was cheaper to force cheap foreign labor on our clients which inevitably killed the company forcing massive layoffs. They also pay very very little for the industry but lie about it.

3
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