High-Tech Nomads

By Cathy Booth Thomas/Dallas

Paul Finster Fleming has wandered the world for the past seven years. His British passport boasts stamps from 45 countries. He has lived in chilly Brussels and sunny Rio de Janeiro. He met his wife in India. Their growing brood--now numbering five--accompanied them to Washington for a year. Yet in all that time, the engineer, 43, hasn't had a permanent job.

Fleming is a global temp worker, a modern-day nomad who jets off every year or so to a new locale, where he contracts out to companies desperate for engineers savvy in mobile communications. He is earning three to four times the salary he once made as a full-time employee of companies like Ericsson--which is why he was sounding merry on a recent morning, heading out of Seattle on a three-month contract to train engineers for his latest temp boss: Ericsson. "Now I go anywhere anybody pays me to go," he says. "It's a good way to see the world. I'm meeting new people and learning new systems. Traveling the world, you become unique and invaluable."

It was inevitable that temp work would go international, especially in the telecommunications field, where cell-phone standards vary wildly--and seem to change overnight. Vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola and network suppliers such as AT&T and Cingular must be flexible enough to work in developing countries, including China, as well as advanced markets such as Europe, where third-generation (3G) systems will soon combine high-speed voice and data. With telecom engineers in short supply and companies leery of adding full-time staff for short-term projects, contract workers have filled the gap.

Neil Franklin, 37, a former door-to-door salesman, knew nothing about the wireless world a decade ago, but he did foresee the changing dynamics of the workplace. In 1994 he founded Dataworkforce in his suburban London flat to supply skilled temps for the global cell-phone market. Today Dataworkforce has more than 300 telecom contractors employed in 54 countries by clients such as Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, AT&T, British Telecom and China Unicom. Assignments can last from two days to four years. "I always thought the industry would become dependent upon a virtual bank of knowledge, rather than the permanent employee," says Franklin. Last year Dataworkforce, which takes a 15% to 30% cut on contracts, earned $64 million, making it Britain's fastest growing company, according to a London Sunday Times survey.

The majority of the company's "virtual work force," as Franklin calls it, is from 29 to 45 years old and single, with three or more years of free-lancing experience. Many staff members are ex-military, ready to jump on a plane at a moment's notice. One U.S. team left the West Coast recently for China, while a Mexican team was heading to Southern California. Europe's lead in wireless technology makes its technicians desirable Stateside as trainers, while Americans rule overseas for their IT expertise. Workweeks can run to 60 hours or more, but the pay is hefty too, at $45 to $55 an hour.

James Brayshaw, 49, an engineer from Liverpool, has worked in Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Denmark for Dataworkforce. Now he is on contract to Nortel, testing circuits across Europe. "I would not go back to anything else. It's a lot more freedom and a lot more money," he says. "You can pick and choose what you want to do." The company offers training when necessary to make sure its contractors fit the temp jobs, which can involve everything from designing new cellular transmission stations and selecting sites for transceiver towers to supervising construction and troubleshooting reception problems.

Although 75% of the workers are on 12- to 18-month contracts, many bring families with them. Fleming's wife and kids joined him on one-year assignments in Rio and Washington but are staying behind in London while he is in Seattle. As a former Royal Navy communications expert, he is used to the travel and knows it helps his resume, but he sees the downside too. "If you have a young family, it's hard to leave them behind, but moving can be an unstable life for them," says Fleming. The company often helps by giving housing and moving allowances or by putting workers into company accommodations. British consultant Elvis Gibbs, an expert in network switching, knows mobility is key in the current market. He moved his wife and three kids from Dallas to San Francisco this month for a new job with Dataworkforce, after three years in Texas.

The biggest hassle of the business is getting work visas. In the U.S. it can take three months or more to clear a tech worker for an H-1B visa--almost the same time it takes to get an American worker into a European Union country. When Ericsson recently tried to bring a dozen Dataworkforce contractors from Britain to Dallas, the three-month wait stretched into five months and nearly killed the deal.

Culture shock is a constant factor in matching contractors to jobs. Martin Kelman, 35, a Briton who until recently headed Dataworkforce's U.S. office in the Dallas suburb of Plano, says he found U.S. business culture "a real buzz," because "in the United States, it doesn't matter if you have the right school tie or who your father was." But one contractor he brought in from Indonesia found the change unsettling. "One day he's riding his bike to work in Jakarta; the next he's in Manhattan," chuckles Kelman. The company nurtures its contractors on the road. Brayshaw says Dataworkforce phoned him weekly in Saudi Arabia to see how he was bearing up in the desert heat.

Dataworkforce has taken a hit with the economic downturn, going from 500 to 300 contractors worldwide since 1999, largely by dropping less-skilled workers. Franklin now concentrates not on building new cellular networks but on optimizing them--making them work better--a strategy that has brought in $18 million since his U.S. office opened 21 months ago. And Franklin sunnily predicts that 24,000 telecom engineers will be needed worldwide if companies are to make use of the commercial 3G licenses being issued in the next few years.

--With reporting by Thomas K. Grose/Bromley

TIME.com For more about global temporary workers, please visit our website at time.com/global

With reporting by Thomas K. Grose/Bromley