Workato
Two engineers for Workato's platform team: hired for level, not language, and one grew into a Staff Engineer
We hired two engineers for Workato's platform team for their level rather than their stack: one was promoted to Staff Engineer, the other leads development of an internal database in Rust
Workato, a US enterprise automation platform, searched twice for engineers for its platform team. Both searches started as a Go Developer role and ended with hires the job title would never have found: NEWHR searched for engineering level, not for a language. The first engineer learned Rust quickly and was promoted to Staff Engineer after the probation period; the second leads development of Workato's internal database in Rust.
Request and constraints
Workato has worked with NEWHR since 2018. Both searches in this case were for the platform team.
First search: a strong engineer with no tie to a language
- A strong engineer with no tie to a specific programming language
- High-load experience
- Deep Kubernetes expertise
- Readiness to learn Rust quickly after joining
Second search: a Go Developer whose profile changed
- A Go Developer for the platform team: the original request
- Halfway through: rare experience building databases (ScyllaDB)
- A deep understanding of low-level systems
Why it was hard
Language was not a criterion
In the first search we could not screen by stack: the engineer was to move to Rust after joining, so we had to assess level and learning speed.
The role changed halfway through
In the second search the client redefined the need midway: instead of a Go Developer, it needed an engineer with database development experience.
Rare experience
Experience building ScyllaDB and a deep understanding of low-level systems are found in few engineers.
How we searched
We searched for engineering level, not for a stack
In the first search NEWHR assessed a candidate's engineering level rather than knowledge of a specific language. The main signal was how quickly the candidate had picked up new technologies in the past.
We switched the search from Go Developer to Distributed Systems Engineer
When the client redefined the need in the second search, NEWHR rebuilt the profile: instead of a Go Developer, we searched for a Distributed Systems Engineer with experience building databases (ScyllaDB) and a deep understanding of low-level systems.
Result
The language-agnostic engineer grew into a Staff Engineer
The engineer learned Rust quickly, became one of the key people in the platform team and was promoted to Staff Engineer after the probation period.
One of the best technical candidates, with high growth potential and fast adaptation to new languages.
Workato
The Distributed Systems Engineer leads development of an internal database
The engineer now leads development of Workato's internal database in Rust.
One of the hardest and most valuable hires at Workato, with deep systems expertise.
Workato
Workato on working with NEWHR
Over the years NEWHR has filled more than 30 R&D roles for Workato.
NEWHR was the first recruitment agency we turned to. Since then we tried other agencies to experiment and strengthen our search, but in the end dropped all of them except NEWHR. We hired across our whole stack: Go, Python, Ruby, Java, frontend, infrastructure and ML. Many of the people we hired have grown into Head roles.
Alexey Pikin, VP of Engineering, Workato