A Tokyo software house closes eight engineering roles in a single quarter
Our recruiters ran the search end to end while the client's leads only met finalists.
- Product
- B2B SaaS
- Technologies
- Java, Kotlin, AWS
- Timeframe
- 2025 – 2026
Full-cycle technical recruitment for a market where senior engineers rarely change jobs.
The challenge
The client's internal recruiter was handling twelve roles at once; senior candidates dropped out during long interview loops and the engineering leads were spending a day a week on screening calls.
Two previous agency attempts produced volume, not fit — most CVs failed the first technical round.
The roles were also unusually narrow: Kotlin engineers with payments experience, and an SRE who had run a regulated platform — a combination the client's own pipeline had never produced.
In a nutshell, when the company came to us it was grappling with:
- Twelve roles open at once.
- Senior candidates lost to long interview loops.
- Engineering leads spending a day a week screening.
- Agency CVs that failed the first technical round.
Key solutions
Full-cycle recruitment for a Tokyo software house
We rewrote the role profiles with the leads, mapped realistic salary bands, and ran sourcing plus a structured technical screen by working engineers. Only scored shortlists reached the client.
Interviews were coordinated on our side, with written evidence per candidate so the hiring committee could compare people instead of impressions.
Solutions we provided:
A rewritten role profile
We rebuilt each profile with the leads and priced it against real market data, so offers landed instead of stalling.
Technical screening by engineers
Working engineers ran the first technical round and delivered a scored report per candidate, not a CV forward.
Coordination on our side
Scheduling, feedback loops and candidate communication stayed with us, which gave the client's leads their week back.
Team on the project
From two open roles to a team of ten
- Back-end
- Mobile
- SRE
- QA
Over three quarters we closed ten engineering roles for the client, from Kotlin and Java engineers to an SRE and two QA specialists, all through the same structured process.
The client's engineering leads owned the final decision on every hire; our recruiters ran sourcing, screening and scheduling and reported weekly.
Interviews ran fully remote across two time zones, with a joint on-site week in Tokyo when the first cohort started.
The hires and our recruiters met in person at:
- The client's Tokyo office
- A joint onboarding weekfor the first cohort of four engineers
- Two regional tech conferences
- Quarterly planning sessionswith the client's engineering leads
- JapanJP
- Saudi ArabiaSA
- UAEAE
Ten engineers hired across three quarters now sit in the client's own squads, with our recruiters still on call for the next role.
The process was the product. Small shortlists, written evidence, and candidates who were still with us a year later.
Results
- 8
- roles closed in one quarter
- 3.2
- candidates interviewed per hire
- 100+
- leadership hours saved
- 0
- failed probations
The shortlist was short, and every name on it was worth the hour. That is the whole service.
Project completed:
Ten hires, none of them a gamble
The client went from twelve stalled searches and a recruiter stretched across all of them to ten closed roles in three quarters, each filled by a candidate their own leads chose.
Every hire cleared probation, and the client's engineering leads got their screening week back. The hiring process we built together is now their internal standard.
We rewrote the role profiles, priced them against real market data and ran technical screening with working engineers, so the client only ever saw candidates worth an hour of their time.
Recruitment is not volume, it is fit. Ten roles, ten people still in place — that is the number I care about.