How to hire developers in Poland: our optimal formula

Poland has become the tech heart of Central and Eastern Europe:

• 650,000 IT specialists
• half a million developers
• over 60,000 tech companies

Talent competition is fierce here, and sometimes you really have to dance with a tambourine to get results. Here’s how we do it.

‍A vacancy lands in our inbox. What happens next?

When a startup needs to build an R&D team, the process doesn’t drag on. As soon as we get a request, we start sourcing right away — and on average, customers see the first candidates within 72 hours.

We split all our efforts into two types.

1. The base

This is the backbone of our hiring engine: the channels we’ve tested, broken, rebuilt, and now trust with our eyes closed.

• LinkedIn job openings. Our go-to base. We try to publish roles as soon as a position opens and use the free posting options.
• LinkedIn organic posts. We create posts that usually get 2,000–4,000 views. It’s the routine work we never skip, and somehow it reliably brings in candidates that make up a solid part of the pipeline.
• LinkedIn outreach. We reach out to targeted candidates and nurture conversations.

Overall, Linkedin is our unglamorous workhorse where 8 out of 10 hires happen.

• Internal newsletter. People subscribe to our newsletter themselves, usually after hearing about our activities and events. Within this database, we have 6,000+ active candidates, and emails see 60–78% open rates. On top of that, we also send campaigns to our broader 60,000+ contacts stored in Lever ATS.
• Referrals. We actively ask our network and past hires for recommendations, and depending on the quarter, 3–15% of hires come from someone saying, “I know a good person for this role”.
• Local tech communities. Our network comprises about 230 communities, including around 50 with whom we have active, ongoing collaboration. They range from tiny 100-person chats to huge 80,000-member groups, where we post vacancies iteratively and nurture relationships with engineers.

2. The accelerator

When a role is hard to fill, seems impossible to staff quickly, or when we know there are big upcoming plans to scale the team, we pull out the heavy artillery:

• run TechSpot events for 100+ engineers. Sure, lots of companies sponsor tech events, that’s common practice. We do it too, give talks, network with the community, and feature open positions. But, on top of that, we organize our own events (which, without false modesty, are pretty good), and most importantly, we collect the attendees’ contacts so we can keep the right people engaged and in our orbit.
• publish PR pieces in local media to build brand recognition and trust in R&D.
• create thought-leadership content on our blog and actively promote it to highlight the R&D team, their expertise, and product.

By the way, we recently analyzed all 11 recruitment channels we use, their actual costs, performance, and how they stack up against ChatGPT’s hiring benchmarks. If you’re curious which channels perform best (and which ones don’t), feel free to take a look.

Hiring timelines and a 10-Day case study

Let’s be honest: hiring timelines are rarely linear. They’re shaped by the role’s complexity, market demand, the seniority level, the rarity of the skill set, the complexity of the process, candidate expectations, and sometimes, pure luck.

Sometimes filling a role takes months. Other times, it happens insanely fast, as in this case. This wasn’t just about skill. It was the result of well-tuned processes, a motivated recruiting team, a bit of luck, and maybe even a sprinkle of divine blessing.
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The context:

A stealth-mode startup was building their R&D team from scratch and needed a Senior Data Analyst with 4+ years of experience.

Knowing one approach wouldn’t cut it, we ran a full-spectrum recruiting campaign:

• LinkedIn outreach → 111 candidates
• Local tech communities → 22,000+ professionals reach
• Recruiters’ and colleagues’ LinkedIn posts → 4,400+ members reach
• Referral program → 1 recommendation

In this case, the time-to-hire was a record‑breaking 10 days, and the hire came directly from our LinkedIn outreach. But, as we mentioned earlier, such a fast hire is more the exception than the rule.

The kinds of roles we work with

We hire for both dev and non-dev roles across all seniority levels, from junior to director level, in the following domains:

• Engineering & Development
• Design & UX
• Product & Data
• QA & AQA
• Sales & Marketing
• Technical Leadership & Management

And here are a few hard-to-fill roles we’ve successfully closed (yes, the tricky ones too):

• Security Researchers
• eBPF Specialists
• Linux & Kernel Engineers
• GRC Experts
• Game Engine Developers

Individual hires or full organic teams

We offer flexible engagement models to match your needs. Whether you need to recruit a single specialist or build an entire organic team from scratch, we have the expertise to deliver both.

For example, we’ve helped build and grow engineering teams like:

• Orca Security (55+ engineers)
• Unity (30+ roles filled)
• Cycode (20+ team members)‍

Planning to grow your team?

If hiring is part of your roadmap, we can step in with two core services:

• Tech recruitment – hire pre-vetted talent 2–3x faster in Poland and Georgia
• Offshore R&D center – build or scale a 100% dedicated team from scratch in Poland

We’ve spent years working in the local market and are happy to share our experience and help you with hiring. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to learn more.