I Hired 9 Part-Time Developers in Dubai Last Year and Got 3 of the Permits Wrong — the 7-Step MoHRE Part-Time Contract Method I Use Now

I build and run delivery teams for Dubai companies, and the request I hear most often from founders who cannot justify a full-time hire is some version of “can we just get someone two days a week?” The honest answer in the UAE is yes, and the paperwork is simpler than most people fear, but the mistakes are specific and expensive. Last year we placed nine developers part-time. Six were fine. Three taught me the seven steps below, and I would rather you learned them from this page than from a rejected permit.

What the UAE Labour Law Actually Says About Part-Time Work

Three sources, and only three, matter here. The first is Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, the Labour Law, whose Article 7 lists the work models an onshore employer may use, part-time among them, and whose Article 6 makes it illegal to work or to employ anyone without a valid MoHRE work permit. The second is Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022, the executive regulations, which define the part-time model, allow establishments registered with MoHRE to employ workers on part-time contracts, and set the pro-rating rules for leave (Article 18) and end-of-service benefits (Article 30). The third is the official UAE government portal’s page on work permits, updated in August 2026, which lists the part-time work permit among MoHRE’s thirteen permit types and describes it in one sentence worth quoting in full:

“Part-time work permit – It enables establishments to hire and employ a worker — whether from inside or outside the UAE — under a part-time contract, where the working hours or days are fewer than those of a full-time employee. A worker may work for more than one employer after obtaining approval from the Ministry.”

Two things follow from that sentence. A part-time developer is an employee of your establishment, with a contract, a permit, WPS wages and pro-rated benefits; they are not a contractor. And the approval the law names is the Ministry’s, which is what the permit is. Companies licensed in the DIFC or ADGM sit under their own employment laws and should read this article for the process, then check the clause with counsel.

Step 1 — Decide Which of the 3 Part-Time Routes You Actually Want

“Part-time” in a Dubai founder’s mouth covers three legally different arrangements, and our first 2025 failure came from applying for one while meaning another.

1. A part-time employee. MoHRE part-time work permit, a part-time employment contract, WPS wages, pro-rated leave and gratuity. The developer is on your books. Use this when you want control over their hours and their work, when the role is ongoing, and when you want the relationship inside the Labour Law.
2. A freelance-permit holder. The developer holds their own freelance work permit, which the portal describes as issued to individuals who engage in freelance work independently, without being sponsored by an employer and without an employment contract, and who are not considered an employee of the entities they serve. They invoice you. Use this for project work with defined deliverables where you do not direct the hours. Our seven-step guide to engaging developers on a freelance permit covers that route; this article is about the first one.
3. A contractor through a company. The developer’s own licensed entity, or an agency, contracts with you. Commercial contract, no permit from you, no WPS. Use this for offshore developers who are not in the UAE at all, and read the employer-of-record guide if you want them onshore without your own licence.

The rejected permit in 2025 was a freelance-permit holder we tried to put on a part-time employment contract at the same time. The two are alternatives, not layers. Pick one.

Step 2 — Check the Developer’s Current Status Before You Promise Anything

The permit route depends entirely on where the developer stands today, and the second question I ask after “what do you want them to build” is “what visa are they on”. Four cases cover almost everyone.

• Full-time with another UAE employer. The most common part-time developer in Dubai: a senior engineer at a bank or a large firm who wants a second engagement. The Ministry’s approval comes with the part-time permit, but their full-time contract may contain an exclusivity clause, a non-compete, or a requirement to notify or obtain consent. This was our third 2025 failure: the developer said it was fine, it was not, and the first employer’s lawyer wrote to ours. Ask for the clause, in writing, before you apply.
• On family sponsorship. A developer sponsored by a spouse or parent can take a part-time permit; the sponsor’s no-objection is the document the application typically asks for. Faster than any other route in our experience.
• Already on a freelance permit. See Step 1: choose one arrangement.
• Outside the UAE. The portal says a part-time worker may be hired from outside the country, but then you are the sponsoring employer for entry, medical, Emirates ID and residency, and the economics of a part-time role rarely justify it. In practice we place developers from outside the UAE on the contractor route until they are resident for another reason.

Emiratisation is the other status check. If your establishment is in scope for the Nafis targets, a part-time Emirati hire may or may not count toward them depending on the current rules; our seven-check Emiratisation guide is the place to confirm before you assume.

Step 3 — Apply for the MoHRE Part-Time Work Permit Properly

The application is made by the establishment, not the developer, through your MoHRE account or the Work Bundle, which the portal says has cut the onboarding process to five steps and five documents. The permit conditions are the general ones for any MoHRE permit: the worker is at least 18, the occupation matches your licensed activity, your trade licence is valid and free of violations, and the person submitting is legally authorised to represent the company. Have ready the developer’s passport and Emirates ID, their existing visa or permit, the sponsor’s no-objection where family sponsorship applies, the attested qualification where MoHRE’s skill level for the occupation requires it, and the signed part-time contract using the Ministry’s model.

Budget the fee at your establishment’s classification. The portal is explicit that the cost of issuing and renewing a work permit ranges from AED 250 to AED 3,450 depending on whether you are category A, B or C, and that the classification reflects compliance with the Labour Law, the Wages Protection System and MoHRE resolutions. If you do not know your category, find out before you quote the developer a start date: a category C establishment pays more and, under Ministerial Resolution No. 543 of 2022, an establishment with certain violations can be refused new permits altogether. The permit is annual in our experience; diarise the renewal with the contract anniversary.

Step 4 — Write the Contract Around Hours, Not Days

Our second 2025 failure was a contract that said “two days per week”. It felt natural to the founder and to the developer. It was unworkable the moment anyone asked what the gratuity ratio was, what a day meant when one of the two days fell on a public holiday, and whether a six-hour Thursday and a ten-hour Sunday were the same “day”. The executive regulations reason in hours, so the contract should too.

The part-time contract must contain what any UAE employment contract contains: the parties, the job description, the working hours, the rest days, the wage and its components, and the other terms the model prescribes. For a part-time developer, we add a one-page schedule with: contracted hours per week (say 16), the equivalent annual hours (16 × 52 = 832), the full-time comparator (the establishment’s standard week, typically 48 hours under the Labour Law or 40 on a five-day week, so 2,496 or 2,080 a year), and the resulting ratio (832 ÷ 2,080 = 40 percent). That ratio is the number every later calculation uses. Write the pattern of the week (which days, which hours, which overlap block with the team) in the schedule as well, because the developer’s other employer will want to see it too.

Step 5 — Pro-Rate Leave and Gratuity on the Hours Ratio

Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022 does the maths for you if you have the ratio. Article 18 calculates annual leave for the non-full-time work models from total working hours converted into working days. Article 30 calculates end-of-service benefits proportionally: the working hours in the contract per year, divided by the working hours of a full-time contract per year, multiplied by 100, gives the percentage of the full-time gratuity due, and the benefit is payable once the worker has completed a continuous year. Gulf News’ legal column has walked through the same article for a reader, and Khaleej Times has answered the second-job version of the question; both are consistent with the reading above.

Worked example on our 40 percent developer: basic wage AED 12,000 a month for the part-time role, three years of service. A full-time employee on that basic wage would accrue 21 days’ basic pay for each of the first five years; the part-time developer accrues 40 percent of that figure for the same period. Put the worked example in the schedule at signing. It removes the conversation at exit, which is when a developer who was a good colleague for three years becomes a claimant. Our gratuity guide for engineers has the full-time calculation the ratio is applied to.

Step 6 — Run WPS Correctly as a Second Employer

The part-time wage is paid by your establishment, through the Wage Protection System, on the date the contract specifies. That sounds obvious; the mistakes come from the developer having two employers. Three rules we apply.

• Your WPS file shows your contracted wage, and only yours. Do not net it against anything the other employer pays, and do not pay in cash “because it is a small amount”. WPS compliance is one of the inputs to your establishment classification and therefore to your permit fees.
• Agree the allowance split in writing. Housing and transport allowances usually sit with the full-time employer. Say so in the schedule, so that the part-time basic wage is unambiguous for the gratuity calculation and nobody later argues that an allowance was implied.
• Align the payment date with the hours record. Part-time hours drift. A monthly hours statement signed by both sides, attached to the WPS run, is the document that resolves every dispute we have seen about a part-time developer’s pay.

If you are building the tooling for this rather than buying it, the payroll system guide for Dubai covers the WPS file structure; if you are buying, most Dubai payroll platforms handle a part-time employee natively as long as the hours ratio is entered at setup.

Step 7 — Design a Role That Fifteen Hours Can Actually Deliver

The legal steps get the developer onto your books. This step is what makes the arrangement worth having, and it is where the six clean placements of 2025 still under-delivered for the first two months. A part-time developer who is dropped into a full-time team’s stand-ups, Slack and review queue spends most of their fifteen hours catching up on context they were not there for. Four design rules fix that.

1. Bounded scope. One system, one module, one recurring responsibility: the integration layer, the reporting service, the mobile release process. Not “help the team with whatever is on fire”.
2. Asynchronous by default. Written briefs, written reviews, a decision log. The developer should be able to do a full session without a single meeting. Our time-zone overlap guide was written for remote developers, and every rule in it applies to a part-time one, for the same reason: the hours do not line up with the team’s.
3. One fixed overlap block. Two hours a week where the developer and their reviewer are both online, in the schedule, protected. That is where the questions get answered and the plan for the next session gets set.
4. Probation gates sized to the hours. The probation rules in Article 9 of the Labour Law apply to part-time employees exactly as to full-time ones: six months maximum, no extension, 14 days’ written notice. A part-time developer at 40 percent of full-time hours has done 40 percent of the work by day 60. Set the gates accordingly, using the structure in our 90-day probation plan, and decide by day 75 as you would for anyone.

The 4 Part-Time Mistakes I Still See Every Month in Dubai

• Calling a contractor “part-time” on the offer letter. If there is no MoHRE permit and no WPS, it is not part-time employment, whatever the letter says. Step 1.
• Trusting the developer’s reading of their own full-time contract. Ask for the clause. Step 2.
• Contracting in days. The regulations think in hours. Step 4.
• Paying the part-time wage in cash or through the other employer. WPS, under your establishment, on the contract date. Step 6.

One more that is not a mistake so much as a missed opportunity: part-time is the best trial structure Dubai employers are not using. A senior engineer who works sixteen hours a week for you for six months, on a proper permit, is a far better-informed full-time hire than anyone you interview for three hours. Two of our seven 2026 placements have already converted, and the salary benchmark conversation at conversion was the easiest either side had ever had, because both already knew what the work was worth.

If You Also Hire Part-Time Developers in Singapore

Singapore reasons about part-time work through the Employment Act and its part-time employment regulations rather than through a permit, and the pro-rating logic is similar in spirit but different in mechanics; there is no MoHRE-style second-employer approval, and CPF applies from the first hour for citizens and permanent residents. Our Singapore team’s guide to Employment Pass, CPF and employer-of-record hiring in Singapore is the counterpart to this article, and their offer-timeline guide is worth reading for the notice-period mechanics that differ most.

FAQ — Hiring a Part-Time Developer in Dubai