Hiring two senior engineers for an AI lending platform
An AI-powered lending platform needed two genuinely senior engineers in a market where AI-written applications had erased the signal from paper and the business had no internal technical interviewer.
Engagement:
Ongoing retainer
The hiring challenge
The usual hiring filters no longer provided useful signal. Every CV appeared polished and closely matched the role, while confidence and fluent system-design language could not reliably distinguish genuine senior experience from a rehearsed answer. Without someone technical inside the interview loop, the business risked judging candidates on rapport rather than engineering competence.
The process and outcome
The round took longer than hiring used to take. That was the point. Both seats were filled with engineers who cleared a genuinely senior bar, and the mis-hires that never happened are the real outcome: a wrong senior hire costs a business far more than an empty seat ever does.
