RPO for technology teams

    Tech recruitment process outsourcing

    Embedded RPO for software, data and product teams. We work inside your engineering org, run hiring under your brand, and give your engineers their calendars back.

    New to this? Read the plain-English guide to what RPO is

    Why tech hiring needs a different model

    Engineering hiring fails in specific, repeatable ways. Job specs are written as wish lists rather than scorecards. Screening is delegated to recruiters who cannot tell a strong backend engineer from a confident one. Interview loops are booked around whoever is free rather than what actually needs assessing. And the people best placed to fix all of that — your senior engineers — are the people you least want spending their week in interviews.

    Embedded RPO puts a recruiter inside the team who learns your stack, your architecture decisions and your bar. They own the funnel, calibrate with your engineering leads once rather than for every role, and protect engineering time by only putting genuinely assessed candidates in front of them.

    It also fixes the thing agencies structurally cannot: consistency. When five agencies work the same three roles, candidates get contacted five times, your employer brand takes the hit, and nobody owns the outcome. One embedded function means one process, one candidate experience and one set of numbers.

    This works across the full technology stack — backend, frontend, mobile, platform and SRE, data engineering and analytics, security, and the product, design and delivery roles that sit alongside them.

    How it works

    What an engagement actually looks like

    01

    Calibrate the bar

    We sit with your engineering leads and turn the roles into scorecards — the signals that actually predict success here, not a list of technologies.

    02

    Rebuild the loop

    A defined interview process per role family: who assesses what, in what order, with structured questions and a shared rubric so decisions are comparable.

    03

    Source and screen

    Direct outreach into the market plus proper technical screening, so what reaches your engineers has already been filtered against the scorecard.

    04

    Run the funnel

    Scheduling, feedback chasing, candidate comms and offer management — all inside your ATS, all under your brand.

    05

    Report and hand back

    Weekly numbers on pipeline, conversion and time to hire, and a documented process your team keeps when the engagement ends.

    What's included

    • Role scorecards built with your engineering leads
    • Structured interview kits and rubrics per role family
    • Direct sourcing and outbound into the tech market
    • Technical screening before engineering time is used
    • Interview scheduling and feedback chasing
    • ATS hygiene and pipeline reporting
    • Offer management and closing support
    • Market and salary insight for your stack and location
    • A documented process handed back at the end

    A good fit if

    • You're scaling an engineering team and hiring multiple roles at once
    • Senior engineers are losing significant time to interviewing
    • You've used multiple agencies and got inconsistent quality
    • You have no internal talent acquisition function yet
    • You want candidates to experience your brand, not a third party's

    Probably not if

    • You need one specialist role filled and nothing more
    • You want CVs sent within 48 hours with no process work
    • Hiring managers can't commit any time to calibration
    • You're looking purely for the lowest cost per hire

    FAQs

    Common questions

    We calibrate with your engineering leads before sourcing starts, and screening is done against the scorecard you signed off — not a keyword match. Where a role needs deep technical assessment, that stays with your engineers; our job is to make sure they only spend that time on candidates who have already cleared a real filter.

    An agency is engaged per role and paid on placement. Embedded RPO is engaged to run the function: we own the process, the tooling, the reporting and the candidate experience, and we work under your brand rather than our own.

    Yes. We work in your systems so the data, pipeline history and candidate records stay with you. If you don't have an ATS yet, we'll help you choose and set one up.

    Yes — the embedded model covers whatever mix your hiring plan needs. We'll be straightforward about where contract hiring is the better answer for a given role.

    You keep it. Scorecards, interview kits, templates, tooling configuration and reporting are yours — the point is to leave a hiring function behind, not a dependency.

    Yes. Product management, product design, UX research and delivery roles are part of the same hiring system, and it's usually inefficient to split them across separate providers.

    Other ways we work

    Fractional: RPO & embedded hiring

    Embedded delivery within our Fractional model — we run hiring end to end and leave the process behind.

    Learn more

    Contingent search

    Role-by-role hiring on a no win, no fee basis when you need one or two people.

    Learn more

    RPO for hospitality

    High-volume, multi-site hiring where speed and candidate experience decide the outcome.

    Learn more

    Tech hiring in London

    The deepest engineering market in the UK, and the one where slow processes lose offers.

    Learn more

    Tech hiring in Manchester

    A fast-growing North West tech scene where employer brand outweighs budget.

    Learn more

    Not sure this is the right model?

    Tell us what you're hiring for and we'll tell you honestly which approach fits — even when the answer isn't us.