We Lost 5 of 12 Developer Hires Inside Probation Last Year — the 7-Step 90-Day Plan I Now Run Under UAE Labour Law for Every Engineer in Dubai

I have placed and onboarded developers in Dubai since 2018, and last year was the worst probation record I have ever had. Twelve engineers hired, five gone before the six months were up. When I laid the five out on a whiteboard in December, the pattern was humiliating: not one of them was a surprise. Two had told their managers in week three that the work was not what the interview described. One had been visibly struggling since week six and was let go in month five, with a notice period that very nearly ran past the end of probation. Two left for other Dubai employers, and in neither case had anyone kept the receipts we were legally entitled to recover. Every one of those failures had a fix somewhere in Article 9 of the UAE Labour Law or in a calendar. This is the seven-step plan I built from that whiteboard and have run on nine developers since January. Eight are confirmed.

The 6 Rules of Article 9 That Every Dubai Employer Gets Partly Wrong

The probation rules for onshore UAE employers sit in Article 9 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, in force since February 2022. Companies licensed in the DIFC or ADGM free zones sit under those zones’ own employment laws, which have similar but not identical provisions; if you are one of them, read this article for the process and check the clause with your counsel. Onshore, the six rules are these.

1. Six months, maximum. The probation period cannot exceed six months from the start date. You may set it shorter. You may not set it longer.
2. No extension, no repeat. It cannot be extended, and you cannot put the same worker on probation twice. “Let’s extend your probation by three months” is not a thing you can say in Dubai, even if the developer agrees.
3. Employer exit: 14 days’ written notice. If you want to end the contract during probation, the law requires at least 14 days’ notice in writing. The notice has to run its course inside the probation period.
4. Developer exit to another UAE employer: 1 month’s notice, and you get your costs back. A worker who leaves during probation to join another employer in the UAE must give you at least one month’s written notice, and the new employer must compensate you for the costs of recruiting or contracting the worker, unless agreed otherwise.
5. Developer exit from the country: 14 days’ notice, with a 3-month return rule. A worker leaving the UAE gives 14 days’ notice. If they come back and take a new work permit within three months, the new employer owes you the same compensation.
6. Probation counts. If the developer continues after probation, the period is part of their continuous service, which matters for annual leave and for end-of-service gratuity.

Of our five losses in 2025, rule 3 nearly caught us once, rule 4 cost us twice because nobody had itemised the recruitment spend, and rule 2 was the reason a manager kept a struggling engineer for three months longer than he should have: he thought he could extend. Everything below is built to make those rules work for you instead of against you.

Step 1 — Write the Probation Clause the Law Actually Allows

The MoHRE standard contract template requires the probation period to be stated, and most Dubai employers copy a clause from an older template that was written before the 2021 law. Yours should contain, in this order: the length (I use six months for senior hires and three for mid-level, and I say why below); the explicit statement that it will not be extended; the 14-day employer notice; the one-month notice if the worker joins another UAE employer, with a sentence that the parties agree the new employer will compensate recruitment costs as provided in Article 9; and a schedule listing what those costs include.

That schedule is the part nobody writes. Ours lists: entry permit and residence visa fees, Emirates ID, medical, the agency or platform fee, relocation allowance, hardware issued, and a fixed onboarding figure for the manager’s and team’s time. When one of our developers left for another Dubai company in March 2025 we had spent about AED 38,000 on those items and recovered none of it, because nobody could produce a number in the week it mattered. The developer who left in July 2026 under the new clause cost us AED 41,500 and the new employer paid it, because the figure was in the contract schedule and the invoices were in a folder.

On length: six months is the maximum, not the default. For a senior engineer joining a team with a long onboarding curve, use the full six. For a mid-level developer joining a known stack, three months is enough and signals confidence. Whatever you choose, the 90-day plan below runs the same; the extra three months on a six-month probation are the buffer for the decision in step 5, not extra time to make it.

Step 2 — Set the 3 Gates Before Day One, and Share Them at Offer Stage

The developer should know what passing looks like before they accept the offer. Not a vague “we’ll assess your fit”: three dated gates with observable criteria, attached to the offer letter as an annex. Ours look like this for a senior backend engineer.

Two of our 2025 losses told their managers in week three that the role was not what they had been sold. Neither manager had a gate to point to, so the conversation became a negotiation about feelings. With the annex, the same conversation in 2026 was: “Here is the day-30 gate you agreed to. Which of these four things is not the job you expected?” One answered honestly and we reshaped the scope in week four; he passed at day 90. Our job description guide for Dubai is where the gates should first appear, in the role description, so that the offer annex repeats rather than surprises.

Step 3 — Give a Real First Deliverable, Sized to Six Weeks

A probation with no deliverable is a probation you cannot evaluate. The pattern I see across Dubai teams is a first month of “getting to know the codebase”, a second month of small tickets, and then a day-90 review that has nothing to score except impressions. Instead, pick one production change before the developer starts: a real feature or migration, sized so that a competent engineer at that level ships it in about six weeks with a named reviewer, and important enough that the team would notice if it did not happen.

Three rules for choosing it. It must touch at least two parts of the system, so that you learn whether they can navigate rather than just code. It must have a customer or internal user who will give feedback, so that you learn whether they communicate. And it must not be on the critical path of a client deadline, because a probation deliverable that slips should cost you a review conversation, not a contract penalty. Our onboarding guide for remote developers in Dubai describes the mechanics of the first two weeks; this deliverable is what those two weeks are preparing for.

Step 4 — Run Written Check-Ins at Week 2 and Week 6 With a Calibrated Rubric

The day-30, 60 and 90 gates are the formal reviews. The check-ins at week 2 and week 6 are where the surprises are caught, and they must be written, because a verbal “how’s it going?” produces the same answer from a developer who is thriving and one who is drowning. We score four dimensions from 1 to 4, each with one line of evidence.

• Technical output. PRs merged, review comments per PR, whether the reviewer had to rewrite anything. Evidence is a link, not an adjective.
• Code review given. Are they reviewing others’ work, and is the feedback substantive? A developer who has reviewed nothing by week six is not yet part of the team.
• Communication. Did they raise blockers before the stand-up rather than at it? Did their written updates let a manager in another time zone act without a call? For remote hires this dimension carries the most weight, for the reasons in our time-zone overlap guide.
• Reliability. Commitments made in stand-up versus commitments met. Not hours logged.

The manager and one peer score independently, then compare. A gap of two points on any dimension is a conversation with the developer, not a mark against them; it usually means the peer saw something the manager did not. The developer receives the score sheet the same day. In 2025 the engineer we let go in month five had, according to his manager’s memory, been “a bit slow” since week six. There was nothing on paper until month four. Under the rubric, a 1 on technical output at week six triggers step 5 automatically.

Step 5 — Decide by Day 75, Not Day 179

This is the step that fixes the legal near-miss. The 14-day employer notice has to expire inside the probation period. On a six-month probation, that means the notice must be served by roughly day 165; on a three-month probation, by day 76. Managers who wait for “one more sprint” of evidence in month five are not being fair to the developer; they are running the clock down to a point where the only remaining option is a post-probation termination with a full notice period and, potentially, a dispute.

The rule I run: the day-60 gate is the decision point. If the developer has passed the day-30 gate and is on track at day 60, they are confirmed at day 90 unless something breaks. If they have failed a gate or scored a 1 on the rubric, the decision to release is taken at day 60 and the notice is served by day 75, which leaves a fortnight of margin on a three-month probation and months of margin on a six-month one. The reasons go in the letter, in the language of the gates the developer agreed to at offer stage.

The objection is always cost. The visa is paid, the Emirates ID is issued, the relocation allowance is spent. That money is gone whether the developer stays or goes; what is not yet spent is the next four months of salary and the team’s time carrying a hire that is not working. A release at day 75 on a senior engineer in Dubai saves, on our numbers, between AED 120,000 and AED 180,000 compared with the same release at month five, before counting the second recruitment that starts four months earlier. Our guide to notice periods and buyouts in the UAE covers what the notice looks like after probation, when the numbers are worse.

Step 6 — Handle the 3 Exits Legally, With a Script for Each

Article 9 describes three ways a probation ends early. Each needs a different response, and the difference is worth money.

Exit 1: You release the developer

Written notice of at least 14 days, served so that it expires inside probation. State the gates not met, offer the developer the score sheets, and pay everything owed through the last day: salary, accrued leave, any allowances in the contract. Do not ask them to work the fortnight if it is not useful; pay it and part cleanly. The reputational cost in Dubai’s small engineering community of a badly handled release is higher than two weeks’ salary.

Exit 2: The developer leaves for another UAE employer

They owe you one month’s written notice. Their new employer owes you the recruitment costs in your contract schedule, unless you have agreed otherwise. Send the new employer a short letter with the schedule and the invoices within the notice month; in our July 2026 case the new employer paid within three weeks without argument, because the figure was documented and the law is clear. Two things not to do: do not withhold the developer’s final salary as leverage, which is unlawful, and do not treat the notice month as an opportunity to punish. Use it for a handover, and keep the door open.

Exit 3: The developer leaves the UAE

Fourteen days’ notice. Cancel the permit properly and issue the experience letter. Note the three-month rule: if they return and take a new work permit within three months of leaving, the new employer owes you the recruitment costs, so keep the schedule and invoices on file for at least that long. One of our 2025 losses left “to go home” in May and was working for a Dubai fintech by July; nobody checked, and the claim expired.

Step 7 — Convert Deliberately, and Start the Retention Clock

Most Dubai employers let probation end by silence. The developer notices that nobody said anything, assumes they passed, and carries a small doubt into month seven. Convert on purpose: a one-page confirmation letter on day 90 (or at the end of the six months), citing the gates passed, confirming that the probation period counts toward continuous service, restating the notice period that now applies, and naming the date of the first salary review. If the contract has an end-of-service gratuity clause, say in the letter that service is counted from day one; the developer will otherwise discover this by asking, which is a worse way to learn it. Our note on end-of-service gratuity for engineers in the UAE has the calculation.

Then start the next plan. The risk window for a confirmed developer in Dubai is months seven to fourteen: the point where the novelty has gone, the first salary review is approaching, and the recruiters who placed them last year are calling again. The gate structure converts naturally into quarterly objectives, and the score sheets become the evidence for the review. The seven-step method in our retention guide for senior developers in Dubai picks up where this one ends; the two are designed to be run back to back.

The 4 Probation Mistakes I Still See Every Month in Dubai

• “Extending” probation. Illegal onshore, and a sign that the gates were never defined. The remedy is step 2, not a lawyer.
• Serving notice in the last fortnight. If the 14 days run past the end of probation, you have a post-probation termination on your hands, with everything that entails. Decide at day 60.
• No recruitment-cost schedule in the contract. Article 9 gives you the right to recover; the contract schedule and the invoice folder are what make it collectable. Zero of our 2025 losses were recovered. One of one in 2026 was.
• Treating probation as a shadowing period. A developer who has shipped nothing by day 60 cannot be evaluated, only guessed at. Step 3 exists so that the day-90 review has something to review. Where the guessing has to happen earlier, at the screening stage, our background-check guide for UAE developer hires is the companion; the HR management platform explainer covers the tooling if you want the check-ins and gates in a system rather than a spreadsheet.

If You Also Hire Developers in Singapore

The three gates and the rubric travel unchanged; the legal frame does not. Singapore has no statutory probation period, so the notice and conversion rules are whatever the contract says, and the exit mechanics are different. Our Singapore team’s seven-step guide to running AI engineers’ probation in Singapore covers the same 90 days under Singapore contracts, and their note on notice-period buyouts when hiring in Singapore is the equivalent of exit 2 above, where there is no Article 9 to lean on and the cost recovery has to be negotiated.

FAQ — Developer Probation Period in the UAE