Hiring decisions that held up when it mattered.
These aren’t growth stories or agency case studies. They’re outcomes from senior hiring decisions made under pressure.
When hiring carried real risk
A snapshot of situations where senior hiring decisions shaped delivery, credibility, or execution — and had to hold up long after the offer was signed.
Health Tech Start-up
Pre-acquisition team expansion
Ahead of an acquisition, a Finnish healthcare start-up needed to strengthen engineering, cloud, and data capabilities - fast, without destabilising the team.
Hiring had to reduce risk, not introduce it.
Oucomes:
- Delivered 10 senior hires in the first 5 months.
- Director of Engineering secure in the first 3 weeks.
- Strengthened technical foundations ahead of acquisition.
Health Tech & Wearables Start-Up | Post-Series C
Precision hiring when the margin for error disappeared
After a $100M Series C, a Finnish wearables company needed senior engineering and data leaders under aggressive SLAs.
Speed mattered, but accuracy mattered more. The approach prioritised signal over volume.
Outcomes:
- 62.5% first-send → hire ratio
- Two Director-level hires.
- Three critical hires made in a single month.
FinTech Start-up | Post Series-A
Building leadership before the roadmap broke
Following a Series A extension, a remote-first FinTech needed to scale engineering leadership across domains to support a growing investment-API roadmap.
The challenge was parallel hiring without fragmenting execution.
Outcomes:
- Six Head of Engineering and two Lead Engineers hired within 6 months.
- Established the leadership foundation for long-term org growth.
- Roadmap execution accelerated.
Health Tech & Wearables Start-Up | Pre-Series D
Fixing role drift before it became structural debt
A Staff Engineer had been acting as a de facto Engineering Manager for nearly a year. Delivery continued, but the role mismatch was unsustainable.
A technically credible Senior Engineering Manager was required.
Outcomes:
- First candidate presented was hired.
- A very happy Staff Engineer returned to hands-on technical work.
- Team capacity and execution unlocked.
Climate / Renewables Start-Up | Post Seed
When hiring started to compete with delivery
A CTO was personally running sourcing, interview ops, and delivery across five open roles - while the backlog kept growing.
Hiring was becoming a delivery risk.
Outcomes:
- All five, multi-disciplinary roles were secured.
- Hiring load removed from CTO.
- Immediate increase in delivery focus.
Greenfield AI Systems
From single point of failure to delivery team | AI Agents
A Greenfield AI product depended on a single Senior AI Engineer to carry all delivery.
The priority was to remove the bottleneck without slowing momentum.
Outcome:
- Hired the first three Senior AI Engineers.
- Transitioned from from dependency to delivery team.
- Enabled delivery of the product roadmap and customer acquisition.
B2B AI SaaS | Post Seed
When one bad pause could derail the roadmap | AI B2B SaaS
A venture-backed start-up needed a Founding Engineer to hit a fixed Q1 MVP deadline. A late-stage decline stalled momentum and left no room for a reset.
With no room for a January reset and limited founder bandwidth, the hiring process needed to restart immediately - without slowing product delivery.
Outcome
Two engineers hired within 14 days.
~20-25hrs/week of founder time reclaimed.
MVP delivery kept on track.
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