We run the hire, you run the business.

Client

A technology company with around 80 people, building its own digital products for international markets. To launch a new business line, the team needed two leaders with relevant industry expertise.

The brief

Hire two key people for the new business line:

• Commercial Partnerships Lead — build the partner ecosystem, from identifying partners and leading negotiations to agreeing commercial terms.
• Program Lead — shape the business concept, work through the unit economics and product requirements, and coordinate engineering, design, and compliance.

The challenge

The company needed leaders with deep experience in the new business area. That meant looking beyond candidates from its core industry.

We refined the brief with the client three times as we discussed individual candidates. Those conversations helped pinpoint what mattered most: the level of responsibility candidates had held, measurable commercial results, relevant industry experience, and a willingness to move into a new environment.

We also adapted our outreach for candidates from other industries. Rather than leading with the company’s core specialism, we focused on the scope of the role, the product, and the opportunity to build a new business line.

Experience was only part of the assessment. We also needed to understand whether candidates could work independently in an environment where some processes were still taking shape.

The process

We reviewed over 400 profiles and held more than 9 initial interviews for each role. Each finalist went through 3 client interviews, with the CPO and CEO involved.

• Commercial Partnerships Lead — filled in 3 weeks.
• Program Lead — filled in 4 weeks.

The outcome

Both offers were accepted. The company brought in the industry expertise it needed to develop its partner ecosystem and coordinate the launch of the new business line.

What we learned

Relevant skills and industry experience matter, but they are not the whole picture. How someone handles uncertainty — and whether the team’s way of working suits them — deserves its own assessment in conversations with the hiring manager.

Client

A fintech company building a payments platform for international markets.

The brief

Find a Senior Backend Engineer — Payments & Ledger to develop payment processing and the platform’s internal ledger.

The business needed someone who could make sure payments went through and transactions and balances were recorded correctly — even when a payment was delayed, a request was repeated, or an external service returned an error.

The challenge

The challenge was to distinguish engineers who had integrated payment providers from those who had taken responsibility for how payments were processed and recorded.

We looked for hands-on experience preventing duplicate transactions, handling refunds, and reconciling internal records with payment providers. We also needed to understand which decisions candidates had made themselves and how they had resolved issues affecting financial records.

A fintech background alone was not enough. We needed clear examples of ownership.

The process

We worked with the technical team to separate must-have experience from skills the new hire could develop on the job.

Our screening calls focused on specific examples: which components candidates owned, what went wrong, and what they personally did to resolve it.

For each candidate we introduced, we summarised their relevant experience, what they had been responsible for, and how they had handled incidents. This gave the client a clear starting point for the in-depth technical assessment, which their team conducted.

The outcome

3 weeks from the start of the search to an accepted offer.

• 460 profiles reviewed.
• 9 screening calls.
• 2 finalists.
• 1 accepted offer.

The takeaway

This search was about more than fintech experience. The business needed someone who could take responsibility for processing payments correctly and keeping financial records accurate. That need shaped both our search criteria and how we assessed candidates.

Client

A fintech company building an international payments product powered by stablecoins.

The brief

Find a Blockchain Infrastructure Engineer — Stablecoin Payments to build and maintain integrations between the payments platform and blockchain networks.

The business needed to track payments from submission through to confirmation on the blockchain, with the correct status reflected in its own platform. The engineer would be responsible for keeping those connections working, including when external services were unavailable or network data arrived late.

The challenge

The role called for strong backend engineering skills combined with hands-on experience building blockchain integrations in a live product.

General Web3 experience or smart contract development was not enough. We needed someone who had worked across the transaction lifecycle, from submission and confirmation to recovery after failures.

We also looked closely at individual ownership: what candidates had built themselves, which decisions they had made, and which components they had been responsible for.

The process

We worked with the technical team to define the role’s scope and agree on the selection criteria.

We focused the search on engineers with blockchain integration experience in payments or related financial products. Screening calls explored specific services and projects: how candidates handled transactions, identified problems, and restored integrations after failures.

Each candidate submission highlighted relevant hands-on experience and the ability to work independently. The client’s team conducted the in-depth technical assessment.

The outcome

4 weeks from the start of the search to an accepted offer.

• 340 profiles reviewed.
• 12 screening calls.
• 3 finalists.
• 1 accepted offer.

The takeaway

We built the search around what the payments product needed, rather than a broad Web3 label. That kept the search focused on engineers who had built and supported blockchain integrations in a live payments product.