Four Senior Ruby on Rails Developers for Workato: hiring from five hub countries only, in 11 months

Request and constraints

Workato is a global B2B company and one of the leaders in enterprise automation: system integration and process automation with AI. It has more than 12,000 customers worldwide, 1,000+ employees, headquarters in the US, and a distributed, remote-first team. Workato has worked with NEWHR since 2018.

In June 2025 the company was developing new product lines and preparing to strengthen its platform team step by step. The client needed strong engineers with experience of complex platform products: integrations, APIs, load, distributed architecture and enterprise logic.

Why it was hard

How we searched

The search was led by Anna Kulesh, Senior IT Recruiter at NEWHR.

We started with companies the client had already hired Ruby developers from

In the first months Anna worked through companies with strong Ruby expertise that Workato had hired developers from before. Besides classic sourcing, she relied on NEWHR's database: over the years the agency has built up contacts with specialists in many fields and keeps in touch with them.

The interim result was 3 offers in 5 months. For such a narrow and demanding search, that is a good pace.

We offered candidates from Russia to move to a hub country on their own for the probation period

Anna did not give up on the Russian market completely: she offered motivated candidates to move to one of the hub countries on their own for the probation period. Two of the four developers hired came to the client this way.

"I didn't want to write off the Russian market entirely, so we found a workable scenario for candidates who were confident they would pass probation. Several candidates from Russia temporarily moved to Georgia. You don't need a visa there, it's easy to register as a sole trader, and if things don't work out it's not hard to go back. They passed probation in Georgia and then relocated further at the company's expense."

Anna Kulesh, Senior IT Recruiter NEWHR

This scenario did not suit everyone: it requires high mobility and readiness to organise a move quickly.

When the relevant pool ran out, we switched to two strategies at once

After the first hires Anna hit the limits of the market. From then on the search ran along two strategies in parallel: long-term work with "warm" candidates and a wider search beyond the usual donor companies.

"After the first hires the most relevant candidates ran out, and it became clear that we needed a different strategy: long-term engagement with potential candidates. I jokingly call this approach a 'siege': you don't pressure the person, but you stay in touch and come back to the conversation about the role when their situation changes."

Anna Kulesh, Senior IT Recruiter NEWHR

We went back to candidates who had said no six months earlier

At the start of 2026 Anna contacted again the Ruby developers she had talked to at the very beginning of the search, in summer 2025.

"It was no accident that I came back to them at the start of the year. After the New Year holidays many people have a pause to think about where to go next: the year is closed, bonuses are paid, the mind is a bit freer… At that moment an offer of a new role can sound quite different."

Anna Kulesh, Senior IT Recruiter NEWHR

In six months many people's situations had changed, and those who had not wanted to change jobs before became noticeably more responsive. By February the flow of interviews had picked up again.

This approach works for very targeted searches or C-level hiring, where a recruiter builds relationships with candidates over years. The hiring cycle gets longer: the candidates who come are strong and on target, but the client waits until they are ready to move. So Anna widened the funnel in parallel.

We searched beyond the donor companies and tightened selection on the agency side

Anna started looking at candidates from less well-known product teams, small projects and outsourcing companies: profiles that would not have come first in the search before.

With candidates from donor companies the context is clear: the recruiter knows what level of problems and engineering culture they have dealt with. Here there was almost nothing to rely on, so each profile had to be examined in more depth. Selection became longer and stricter: more candidates were filtered out on the agency side, and the client still received only strong and relevant specialists.

At screening Anna checked whether candidates had experience with integrations, load optimisation and large-scale projects with complex business logic. A high level of ownership was mandatory: only candidates ready to take responsibility for large pieces of work and who had taken part in architecture decisions — at least in choosing technologies or designing specific features — went further.

"By agreement with the client, I added a short technical block to the screening: four questions on Ruby and one on PostgreSQL. It helped confirm a candidate's level before the CV went to the client. But often a lot became clear even earlier: from the scale of their work, the depth of their experience and the way the candidate reasons about technical decisions."

Anna Kulesh, Senior IT Recruiter NEWHR

"In the end two strategies came to the fore: going back to the 'warm' pool and extending the search beyond the obvious donor companies. But in such a narrow market you can't rely on a single channel, so in parallel I looked at GitHub, Ruby conferences, speakers and professional communities — anything that could lead to strong candidates."

Anna Kulesh, Senior IT Recruiter NEWHR

We warned the client in advance that the flow of candidates would slow down

When the pace of the search inevitably dropped, Anna did not lower the bar for the CVs she sent to the client. Instead, she explained that the obvious pool was exhausted and showed which strategies she was using next. The client understood that the gaps between CVs were part of a more targeted search.

"I prepared the client in advance for the flow of candidates most likely slowing down: we had already worked through the obvious pool, and from then on the search was becoming more targeted and longer. In this situation it is important that the client sees not only new CVs but the work itself: which channels we are checking, where we are heading and why it takes more time."

Anna Kulesh, Senior IT Recruiter NEWHR

Funnel

Result

NEWHR filled 4 Senior Ruby on Rails Developer roles and helped Workato strengthen its platform team. The search took 11 months, from June 2025 to May 2026: three offers came in the first 5 months, and Anna filled the fourth role in 160 days after the change of strategy. Two of the four developers hired came through moving to a hub country on their own for the probation period.

What this means for your hiring