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Industry: Healthcare Software
Company Size: 50-100 employees
Regions Covered: Germany
Engagement Period: October 2021 – Ongoing
Our customer, a German healthcare software company, is known for its uncompromising standards for both technical and cultural fit within their development teams. In 2021, they faced a critical challenge: how to scale their Symfony development capacity with only top-tier senior engineers – without compromising on quality, speed, or cost-efficiency.
The bar was especially high. Each candidate had to demonstrate deep experience with Symfony and the ability to seamlessly integrate with a highly collaborative, detail-oriented in-house team.
Hiring such talent locally in Germany proved difficult and costly. Our customer needed a partner who could deliver seasoned professionals, fast – and who would stick around for the long haul.
The cooperation kicked off in October 2021 with two senior Symfony developers starting back-to-back on Monday and Tuesday. From there, we scaled the team gradually and selectively – ensuring that every new hire met customer’s demanding expectations.
By mid-2022, the team grew to 3 developers – even as war broke out in Ukraine. One of the engineers had signed an offer just 10 days before the invasion, but we managed to onboard him successfully in March 2022, including equipment delivery and setup.
As the Symfony talent pool in Ukraine began to shrink, we evolved our sourcing strategy:
✅ Team Size: 8 senior Symfony developers (majority with 10+ years of experience)
✅ Service Model: Pure team augmentation – recruitment, HR, payroll, and admin fully covered
✅ Adaptability: Seamless onboarding during wartime disruptions
✅ Sourcing Innovation: Introduced video-intro process to minimize time drain on customer team
✅ Geographic Expansion: Shifted to CEE market when local senior talent dried up
🔹 No Compromises on Quality – Every candidate was a seasoned Symfony expert, handpicked to meet customer’s high standards.
🔹 Unmatched Retention – Only one team member left since 2021, a testament to both our hiring quality and long-term team engagement. It goes without saying that the probation period passing rate was 100%
🔹 Hiring Precision – As one client email put it:
“Well done! All the candidates are excellent and truly handpicked! Please invite all.”
🔹 Recruitment Edge – Our internal joke: “We now know every Ukrainian Symfony developer personally.”
While every developer shared the same core skillset, they were deployed across distinct areas of the customer platform. The team functioned as a tightly aligned unit, with flexible collaboration and clearly divided ownership.
✔️ Built a fully senior Symfony team from scratch
✔️ Maintained consistent delivery velocity even during global disruption
✔️ Achieved near-perfect retention over multi-year cooperation
✔️ Continually adapted sourcing strategy to keep quality high and screening time low
✔️ Expanded talent acquisition to new markets, successfully hiring two developers from Poland
