UK Immigration Adviser (OISC Level 2/3 or SRA-Regulated Solicitor) - Sponsor Licence Strategy

We're a fast-growing company with a distributed international team, setting up a UK entity. We need clear, regulated advice on two things. 1. One individual case. A senior team member, non-EU national, currently resident in Europe on a temporary permit, holding a Master's degree from a European business school. We want a full assessment of which UK routes are realistically open to them — sponsored and non-sponsored — with reasoning, costs, timelines and sequencing. We've done desk research and have a working shortlist; we want it pressure-tested, not rubber-stamped. 2. The company picture. Sponsor licence feasibility for a newly-established UK entity: what the genuine bar is, what evidence we need to assemble and in what order, who can hold the key personnel roles, what it costs all-in, what our ongoing compliance duties would be, and what we can and can't do without a licence. Most of our team currently works on contractor arrangements rather than as employees, so we also need to understand what changes for someone to be sponsorable. We're not looking for someone to fill in forms. We need someone who can tell us what's possible, in what order, and where the risk sits — in writing, readable by non-lawyers. Deliverables 60-minute scoping call. Individual case — recommended route. One primary recommendation with reasoning, one named fallback, and the trigger that tells us to switch. Include what would cause a refusal on the primary route and what you'd change on a second attempt. If our working shortlist is wrong, say so directly. Company memo — critical path to a sponsor licence. A dated sequence rather than a checklist: which items have the longest lead times, what blocks what, and the earliest realistic date we could hold a licence, assuming we start this month. Plus: key personnel options given our team's locations, all-in cost model split by who legally bears each cost, ongoing compliance duties in practical terms, and what we can hire into without a licence. Contractor conversion note. What has to change for someone on a contractor arrangement to be sponsorable, and what employment-status risk that creates. One round of written follow-up questions. Where you're most likely to be wrong or where the guidance is genuinely unsettled, flag it as such rather than smoothing it over — we'd rather know the uncertainty than get false confidence. Please cite the relevant rules and guidance so we can verify, but keep it in plain English. Timeline Scoping call within 1 day of hire. Written deliverables within 10–14] days.