400
Engineers hired
Last updated: June 2026
24 mo
Programme length
97%
12-month retention
2
Regions, one engine
The challenge
The client — a Fortune-500 financial-services company — had decided to stand up a brand-new global engineering centre. The mandate was strategic and the timeline was aggressive: several hundred engineers in roughly two years, in a market where the senior profiles they needed were scarce and heavily competed for.
Their in-house talent team was strong, but sized for steady-state hiring — a few dozen roles a year. Nothing about the existing funnel was built to carry hundreds of hires while holding a senior bar. The first attempts showed the classic failure modes: drop-off at offer stage, slow decisions, and a candidate experience that didn't match the employer brand.
The math was unforgiving. US engineering roles take an average of 62 days to fill, and AI/ML roles 89 days (SHRM 2025); at a few dozen seats a year that is workable, but multiplied across several hundred hires it becomes the single biggest threat to a two-year timeline. The client needed a delivery model built to compress that, not absorb it.
The approach
NGRS deployed a dedicated team into the engagement — not a single recruiter, but the full stack we bring to a surge:
- Programme managers who planned the hiring roadmap quarter by quarter against the business plan
- Sales-minded recruiters who engaged senior, passive candidates the market was fighting over
- Researchers who built large, qualified funnels across the US and Europe
- Analysts who tracked every stage in real time and forecast where the next bottleneck would appear
- Coordinators who ran interview logistics and documentation so the process never stalled on operations
The first weeks were spent re-architecting the funnel itself — sourcing channels, the screening rubric, the interview loop, the offer playbook and the onboarding hand-off — before scaling volume. We worked alongside the client's internal team, lifting their process rather than replacing it.
This is the embedded model working as intended: industry research finds embedded recruitment cuts agency dependency 25-50% within six months and runs up to 40% faster than a traditional agency hand-off (CIPD 2024). On this programme that translated into a steady ~27 roles closed per four-week cycle without loosening the senior bar.
— NGRS delivery team, programme retrospective
What changed at each stage
The win wasn't more CVs — it was a higher-converting funnel held to a consistent bar across two regions. Offer-acceptance and onboarding were owned end-to-end, which is what turned a high volume of hires into a high volume of retained hires.
The results
Against a US all-roles average time-to-fill of 44 days (SHRM 2025), the programme sustained a 2-4 week time-to-fill across hundreds of senior engineering hires — and held it for the full 24 months.
- 400 engineers hired over the 24-month programme, on the roadmap the business committed to
- 97% retention at 12 months — well above the market norm for hiring at this volume
- A consistent senior bar across both regions, with candidates able to engage directly with security and architecture stakeholders
- An upgraded internal process the client's own team kept after the programme wound down
The deck
Full case presentation
The detailed walk-through — challenge, funnel design, weekly cadence, regional split and outcomes — as a presentation you can share internally.
Case deck — to be embedded
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No company of our size is set up for that kind of acceleration inside its standard process. The reason we went to NGRS was simple: we needed a large number of specialists in a very short window, and our own funnel wasn't built for it.
Questions buyers ask about this engagement
How did NGRS hire 400 engineers in 24 months?
NGRS deployed a full embedded delivery team — programme managers, sales-minded recruiters, researchers, analysts and coordinators — and re-architected the client's hiring funnel before scaling volume. The programme sustained roughly 27 roles closed per four-week cycle across two regions, hiring 400 engineers over 24 months while holding a consistent senior bar.
What retention did the Fortune-500 fintech engagement achieve?
The programme reached 97% retention at 12 months — well above the market norm for hiring at this volume. Offer-acceptance and onboarding were owned end-to-end, which is what turned a high volume of hires into a high volume of retained hires.
How fast can NGRS fill senior engineering roles?
On this programme NGRS sustained a 2-4 week time-to-fill across hundreds of senior engineering hires. For context, US all-roles average time-to-fill is 44 days and US engineering roles 62 days (SHRM 2025) — the embedded model compressed that timeline rather than absorbing it.
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