How a global payments leader scaled its digital hub: 60 technology roles across 20+ specialisations in 12 months

The Client

Our client's digital centre in Romania is the technology engine of a global payments group serving tens of millions of users and hundreds of thousands of corporate clients across more than 40 countries. The products built there — mobile applications, payment platforms, merchant integrations — are used daily at enormous scale, which means the engineering bar is set by production reality rather than by job descriptions.

The hub was in the middle of an aggressive scale-up: growing from a small founding team into a full technology organisation, while simultaneously taking on group-level responsibility for strategic domains such as cloud, data, security and engineering governance.

The Challenge: Breadth Is Harder Than Volume

Sixty hires in twelve months is a significant volume. What made this mandate genuinely difficult was not the number — it was the spread.

The roles covered more than twenty distinct specialisations: .NET and Java development, Angular and Flutter front-end work, API development, cloud architecture and cloud automation, DevOps, AWS engineering, cloud security, CMDB and BPM architecture, QA and test automation, QA leadership, data engineering, data science, data PMO and product ownership on data, modern workplace engineering, and agile roles including Scrum Masters and Product Owners.

Each of those is a different talent market. A cloud security engineer and a Flutter developer share almost nothing: not the sourcing channels, not the competitive landscape, not the compensation logic, not the conversation that persuades them to move. A recruiter who understands one does not automatically understand the other.

Some of the pools are very small. Cloud architects, cloud security engineers, BPM and CMDB specialists and senior data profiles are thin markets in Romania. In each of them, the same handful of companies compete for the same handful of people.

And the pace could not drop. The hub was scaling on a plan with group-level commitments behind it. Sixty roles spread across twenty specialisations means, in practice, running twenty small searches simultaneously — for twelve consecutive months.

Our Approach

Segmented, not generalised. We mapped the mandate into distinct talent clusters — application development, cloud and infrastructure, data, quality engineering, agile and delivery — and applied a dedicated strategy to each rather than a single sourcing approach with a shared pipeline.

Consultant expertise matched to cluster. Roles were allocated to consultants with genuine depth in the relevant area. In thin markets like cloud security or data engineering, the difference between a consultant who knows the community and one who is learning it is the difference between closing and not closing.

A single, coherent employer story. Across twenty different candidate profiles, the pitch was consistent: products used by tens of millions of people, real group-level ownership, and a hub with genuine strategic weight rather than an offshore delivery arm. Candidates in scarce markets can afford to choose — so the reason to join has to be true, specific and repeatable.

Rhythm over bursts. Sustained hiring across a year is an operating cadence, not a campaign. We maintained continuous pipelines per cluster so that delivery stayed predictable rather than arriving in unpredictable waves.

The Delivery

60 technology roles closed in 12 months, across more than twenty specialisations and every layer of the stack — from front-end and mobile to cloud architecture, security, data and quality engineering.

Depth in the thin markets. The scarce profiles that typically stall this kind of programme — cloud architecture, cloud security, senior data roles, BPM and CMDB specialists — were delivered alongside the higher-volume development roles, not left behind them.

Leadership and delivery roles together. QA leadership, architecture and product ownership were recruited in parallel with individual contributors, so that teams gained structure as they gained headcount.

The Long View

The hub we helped scale has since grown into the group's largest technology centre worldwide — an organisation of several hundred specialists and the group's competence centre for strategic programmes including cybersecurity, cloud, stability, data and engineering, providing governance and technical leadership across the wider group. It builds the mobile application deployed globally and the payment solutions used across dozens of markets, supported by a technology investment programme running into billions of euros since the group began its digital transformation.

The centre grew from roughly twenty people at launch to several hundred. Sixty of those hires, in a single decisive year, came through us.

Key Takeaways

• Breadth is the real test, not volume. Twenty specialisations is twenty markets. The capability that matters is running them in parallel without letting the scarce ones fall behind.
• Specialist knowledge decides the thin markets. In cloud security, data engineering or architecture, community knowledge is what converts an approach into a hire.
• Scaling a hub is a cadence, not a campaign. A predictable monthly rhythm is what lets a client plan product roadmaps against hiring plans.
• A credible story outperforms a generous offer. Candidates with options choose scope, ownership and product impact. Those arguments only land when the recruiter can hold a real technical conversation.