CASE STUDY · FINTECH · Q1 2026
A regulated payments team filled a staff engineer seat in nine days.
Fintech · Series B · Berlin
The brief
A Berlin-based payments company licensed under BaFin needed a staff engineer to lead the rebuild of their authorisation pipeline ahead of a PSD3 migration window.
Internal recruiters had run the search for eleven weeks. The pipeline had stalled at three candidates, none operating at the level the brief described. The hiring manager submitted a brief to XpertDirect on a Wednesday afternoon.
The match
Two vetted specialists with documented track records in regulated payments infrastructure were briefed within four hours. Both returned shortlists by Thursday evening.
The combined shortlist contained five candidates. Four had shipped authorisation systems at comparable scale. The hiring manager interviewed three the following Monday.
The result
An offer was extended on day nine and accepted on day ten. The candidate started four weeks later and led the PSD3 migration to completion inside the regulator's window.
The buyer rated the engagement 9 out of 10 and has since submitted two further briefs through XpertDirect.
- Time-to-shortlist
- 28 hours
- Time-to-offer
- 9 days
- Fill rate
- 100%
- Buyer NPS
- 71
single engagement, n=1
single buyer, post-placement survey, Q1 2026
The shortlist arrived inside thirty hours and every candidate was operating at the level the brief described. That has not been our experience with recruiters.
— VP Engineering, regulated payments company, Berlin