At a glance
- Time to first hire
- ~1 month
- Engagement
- Professional Search · contract via agency
- Candidates in pipeline
- ~23
- Finalists presented
- 5
- Hires
- 2 Lead Rust engineers
- Project duration
- 12 months
The challenge
Lead/Staff Rust engineers — urgently — when Berlin and Germany were empty.
Our client is a Berlin-based technology company of around 500 people, building privacy-first, decentralized identity solutions. Their in-house team had strong mid-level Rust developers but no Lead or Staff-level engineers — and a 12-month project that needed to move faster than the existing seniority could carry.
The brief was clear: add experienced Lead-level Rust engineers immediately, on contract, hired through our agency for a 12-month engagement. The hard part was the market. Lead-level Rust engineers in Berlin and the wider German market were effectively unavailable inside the timeline. We had to look beyond Germany while keeping the engagement EU-based.
The engagement
Professional Search across Berlin and Poland, run as one contract pipeline.
We took the brief as a Professional Search mandate run through our agency on a contract model — so the engineers could start fast without the client having to expand its German payroll for a fixed-term project.
Outreach focused on senior Rust engineers across Berlin first, then immediately expanded into Poland once the German pool was exhausted. We ran one shared shortlist process so the client could compare candidates on a like-for-like basis regardless of location.
Roles hired
Two Lead Rust engineering seats, on a 12-month contract.
Lead Rust Engineer #1 — closed in ~1 month
Senior hands-on Rust engineer, Lead/Staff level, sourced from Poland and contracted through our agency. Joined the in-house Berlin team to add seniority above the existing mid-level Rust developers and accelerate the 12-month project roadmap.
Lead Rust Engineer #2 — added 2 months later
Second Lead-level Rust engineer placed two months after the first hire, when the client returned with a request to scale the senior layer further. Same profile, same contract model, same pipeline — closed quickly because the search infrastructure was already in place.
Candidate landscape
Berlin was empty — the answer was Poland.
Senior Rust engineers in Berlin & Germany
Mapped first. Pool of available Lead/Staff Rust engineers open to a 12-month contract was effectively zero inside the timeline. Most senior Rust talent in Berlin was locked into permanent roles at well-funded companies.
Lead Rust engineers in Poland
Found the seniority the client needed — engineers with real production Rust experience, lead-level scope, comfortable working in English with a Berlin team and aligned to EU working hours.
Privacy & decentralized identity background
Prioritised candidates who already understood cryptography, privacy primitives or decentralized identity — so the new Leads could shape architecture from week one rather than ramp on the domain.
Contract-ready, EU-based
Every shortlisted engineer was set up to work as a contractor through our agency and based inside the EU, so the client onboarded quickly without permanent-headcount or non-EU compliance overhead.
How we ran it
First hire in about a month — second hire in the same pipeline.
- Week 1
Briefing & calibration
Joint kickoff with the engineering leadership in Berlin. One scorecard for Lead Rust seniority, agreement to expand sourcing into Poland early, and an explicit framing of the contract model through our agency.
- Weeks 1–3
Mapping & outreach
Direct outreach to senior Rust engineers across Berlin first, then Poland. ~23 candidates engaged; 5 finalists qualified on Rust depth, lead-level scope and contract availability.
- Week ~4
First hire signed
First Lead Rust engineer signed and onboarded onto the 12-month contract through our agency. Joined the Berlin team and started lifting the seniority of the in-house Rust group immediately.
- Month 3
Second hire from the same pipeline
The client returned about two months later with a request for a second Lead Rust engineer. Pipeline was still warm — second hire signed quickly on the same contract model.
The outcome
Two Lead Rust engineers added to a 12-month project — fast.
We engaged ~23 candidates and presented 5 finalists for the first seat. The first Lead Rust engineer signed inside roughly one month from kickoff, contracted through our agency for the 12-month project window.
Two months later the client came back with a second request and we placed a second Lead Rust engineer from the same warm pipeline. Both hires were sourced from Poland, work as EU-based contractors and lifted the in-house team's seniority above its existing mid-level Rust developers — directly accelerating the 12-month roadmap.
FAQ
Hiring senior Rust engineers in Berlin, answered.
- Why look outside Germany for Lead Rust engineers?
- Because the Berlin and wider German market for Lead/Staff Rust engineers available on a 12-month contract was effectively empty inside the timeline. Poland gave us the seniority and Rust depth we needed, with EU working hours and English-speaking teams already used to working with Berlin clients.
- How does the contract-via-agency model work?
- We hire the engineers through our agency on a fixed-term contract aligned to the project window. The client gets senior capacity inside their team without expanding permanent headcount, and the engineers get a clean EU-based contractor setup. Onboarding is typically faster than a permanent hire.
- Can you place multiple senior engineers from the same pipeline?
- Yes — and it is often the cheapest path to the second hire. In this engagement the second Lead Rust engineer was sourced from the same warm pipeline two months after the first, which compressed the second search dramatically.
- How fast can you deliver the first Lead Rust engineer?
- On contract searches like this one, around 4 weeks from kickoff to signed contract is realistic — provided the client is ready to interview quickly and to consider EU-based candidates outside Germany.
- Do you cover privacy and decentralized identity domains specifically?
- Yes. We routinely run searches for engineers with cryptography, privacy primitives and decentralized identity backgrounds — both for established 500-person players and earlier-stage teams.
Related
Service: Professional Search →
Targeted, off-market search for senior Rust, Go and systems engineers across Germany, the EU and beyond.
Roles we hire: Tech →
Lead and Staff engineers, ML engineers, platform leads and CTOs across Berlin, Germany and Europe.
Industry: SaaS →
How we partner with technology companies — from privacy-first infrastructure to vertical SaaS scale-ups.
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