How a Seed-Stage Startup Hired Their Founding Engineer and Built a Scalable Hiring Engine

Case Study: Building Recruitment Foundations for a PropTech Startup

How a solid recruitment infrastructure enabled a seed-stage startup to land their first founding engineer

The Challenge: From Zero to Scalable Hiring in 60 Days

A Berlin-based PropTech startup with validated product-market fit and €1.3M in committed funding faced a critical bottleneck: they needed to hire their first Founding Engineer to scale their AI-powered real estate platform, but lacked any structured recruitment foundation.

The Starting Point:

• Basic LinkedIn job posting with generic requirements

• CEO manually screening CVs without technical evaluation framework

• No understanding of market positioning, salary benchmarks, or candidate expectations

• Ambitious growth targets (€6M revenue by 2026) with zero hiring infrastructure

• Two-month deadline to secure their first technical hire

The Core Challenge: 

• The founding team had real estate expertise but no experience, no tools and no systematic approach to hiring top engineering talent in Berlin's competitive tech market.

Building a Scalable Recruitment Engine

Rather than just filling a single role, we designed a recruitment foundation that would serve their long-term scaling needs.

Phase 1: AI-Powered Market Intelligence & Positioning Strategy 

Leveraging 10+ years of Berlin tech market experience alone, and a 17K professional network, we conducted comprehensive market analysis using advanced research methodologies:

1. Role Definition and Success Criteria

Before starting market research, we worked with the founder to define the role in terms of business impact rather than arbitrary credentials.

• Clarified company goals, product roadmap, and operational constraints.

• Translated broad ambitions into clear capabilities and deliverables.

• Separated essential from “nice-to-have” skills to avoid over-narrowing the talent pool.

• Defined success for the first 6–12 months to guide selection and evaluation.

2. Market Intelligence & Positioning Strategy

With the role profile agreed, we conducted market analysis using a combination of industry experience and AI-assisted research.

• Downloaded and analysed comparable job postings, extracting insights via Google Gemini.

• Conducted salary benchmarking across Berlin tech communities to shape the compensation strategy.

• Reviewed positioning strategies of similar-stage startups to inform branding.

• Identified key value propositions to stand out against larger competitors.

• Mapped the available talent pool and assessed their motivations to refine outreach.

Phase 2: Role Architecture & Candidate Experience Design 

Instead of a standard job advert, we developed a comprehensive "Candidate Information Pack" - that framed the opportunity as a strategic career move rather than just another engineering role. This included:

• Company traction metrics and growth trajectory

• Technical challenges and impact potential

• Clear career progression from Founding Engineer to potential CTO

• Transparent compensation and equity structure

Phase 3: Technical Evaluation Architecture 

Drawing from 600+ successful hires, we designed a system that addressed the founders’ core constraint - the lack of technical evaluation capabilities:

• Leveraging network, sourced and vetted an external and experienced technical interviewer, providing detailed capability analysis

• Co-created custom technical interview framework emphasising system design over algorithmic challenges

• Built comprehensive frameworks reflecting core MVP objectives.

• Conducted capability assessments of 4 coding platforms, focusing on system design evaluation (critical for their architecture needs).

This work not only delivered strategic input for immediate decision-making but also equipped me with up-to-date market insight that can support other organisations navigating HR tech sourcing and vendor selection.

Phase 4: Recruitment Infrastructure Design 

We created a complete "plug-and-play" recruitment infrastructure:

• 5-stage interview process with specific objectives and time allocations

• Structured communication sequences for candidate outreach and nurturing

• Interview preparation guides for founders and candidates

• Candidate experience optimisation including preparation materials and clear expectations

• Comprehensive talent database with sourcing strategies and market insights

The Execution: Strategic Sourcing Meets Systematic Evaluation

Advanced Sourcing & Automation Strategy:

• AI-Powered Candidate Identification: 

  • Built custom Boolean search strings from market analysis, deployed through PeopleGPT (Juicebox) for intelligent candidate matching

• Network Leverage: 

  • Activated 17K professional network and deep Berlin tech community connections (10+ years market experience)

• Automation Framework: 

  • Designed Make/Zapier + Google Sheets integration for future ATS-less automation (implemented manual process due to timeline constraints)

• Community-Based Sourcing: 

  • Strategic outreach through relevant tech communities with established relationships

    
    

Rigorous Evaluation Process:

• Led and shadowed all candidate interviews using structured interview frameworks

• Coordinated technical evaluations with external experts

• Managed candidate experience throughout the 5-stage process

• Facilitated final-round interviews for 4 candidates with comprehensive feedback loops

  
  

Candidate Management:

• Provided market insights and negotiation strategy for competitive offers

• Balanced candidate expectations with company constraints

• Managed offer processes including backup candidate strategies

The Results: Successful Founding Engineer Hire Plus Scalable Foundation

Immediate Outcomes:

• Timeline Success: complete end-to-end process from zero to signed offer in 8 weeks

• Quality Hire: successfully placed a Founding Engineer with both technical excellence, shared values and a startup mindset

• Process Efficiency: structured approach eliminated founder bottlenecks while maintaining quality control

Strategic Infrastructure Delivered:

• Reusable Hiring Playbook: complete documentation enabling seamless future hiring

• Technical Evaluation System: scalable framework for assessing engineering candidates at for various seniority levels

• Market Intelligence: comprehensive understanding of Berlin tech talent landscape

• Brand Positioning: enhanced employer brand positioning in competitive market

Long-term Impact: The recruitment foundation established is now powering their continued team growth, with clear processes for scaling from 1 to 15+ engineers by 2027.

Client Testimonial

"As a startup preparing to hire our first engineer, we lacked structure, reusable assets, and experience in running an e2e recruitment process. We needed someone who could bring operational clarity and set up a foundation that we could scale with.

Andreea built everything from scratch: job descriptions, scorecards, interview flows, outreach sequences; and made it all plug-and-play. She evaluated and made recommendations about technical tools, sourced and recommended a trusted external technical interviewer, and ran most of the screenings.

We got advice (made decisions easy by guiding us through trade-offs, biases, and best practices) and execution (full ownership of the process: scheduling, interview prep, candidate communication, and offer negotiation).

We successfully hired our Founding Engineer, someone we're confident in both technically and culturally. The entire process ran efficiently.

The hiring infrastructure she delivered is reusable and clear, and we now have a solid playbook for future hires. If you're a founder without a dedicated talent advisor, Andreea brings structure, speed, and strategic insight. You'll come away with a scalable system and a better understanding of how to build a team properly from day one."

Key Methodology Highlights

1. AI-First Research Approach: Combining traditional market intelligence with GenAI tools for rapid, comprehensive market analysis and candidate profile development.

2. Strategic Foundation Building: Rather than tactical recruitment, focusing on creation of sustainable systems that scale with company growth.

3. Network-Leveraged Execution: Utilising 17K professional connections and 10+ years Berlin market presence to access hidden talent pools and accelerate decision-making.

4. Technology-Enabled Scalability: Building automation-ready frameworks (Make/Zapier integrations) that scale beyond manual processes as companies grow.

5. Hybrid Expertise Model: Combining strategic recruitment consulting with hands-on execution, bridging the gap between advice and implementation.

6. Experience-Driven Process Design: Drawing from 600+ successful hires to create frameworks that address real-world startup constraints and technical evaluation challenges.

7. Founder-Centric Systems: All processes designed around founder time constraints while maintaining quality through sophisticated screening and evaluation methodologies.

8. Market-Driven Approach: Decisions based on comprehensive market intelligence rather than assumptions.

   
   

Ready to build your recruitment foundation? Let's discuss how strategic talent infrastructure can accelerate your company's growth.