I find that unlikely. What if you were instead handing it to an employee?
(Also, different NDAs are... different, it's pretty tough to talk about them all in general and expect a statement to be true.)
> So no, the law doesn't automatically allow engineering contractors to do whatever they want with the work.
Yes, it does. Just because you might have terms in a contract prohibiting it doesn't mean the law prohibits it.
> (Also, different NDAs are... different, it's pretty tough to talk about them all in general and expect a statement to be true.)
If you sign a contract that says you're not going to share the company's code and then you share the company's code, you've violated the NDA. It's as simple as that.
Being a contractor doesn't grant someone magical immunity to the contracts they've signed. At most, the employee could argue that the contract made them a full-time employee and sue for benefits and such. They can't, however, simply ignore contractual obligations that they've agreed to.
Practically speaking, there is no way a software contractor can sub out work without violating a litany of contractual obligations in the contracting agreement. Even minimalistic contracting boilerplate agreements will have clauses that cover these situations.
For example, if you sign an NDA with a company covering the work and then turn around and send the codebase to a contractor in Romania to work on it, you've very clearly violated the terms of the NDA.
So no, the law doesn't automatically allow engineering contractors to do whatever they want with the work.