Scaling from 10 to 100 engineers without breaking your hiring process

Growing from ten engineers to one hundred is a fundamentally different challenge than making your first ten hires. The scrappy approaches that worked early on stop scaling. The founder network that produced your first engineers runs dry. What felt like a strength becomes a bottleneck when you need to evaluate fifty candidates a month.

Most companies hit this wall somewhere between Series A and Series B. Hiring velocity needs to increase three to five times while maintaining the quality bar that got you here. The founders cannot interview everyone anymore. The one recruiter you hired six months ago is completely underwater. Engineering managers are spending half their time on hiring instead of building product. Something has to change, and understanding why enterprise hiring slows down helps you avoid the same traps.

The 10 to 25 phase: systematise what works

At ten engineers, you probably hire through networks and referrals. Founders interview everyone. Decisions happen quickly in Slack threads or over lunch. The process is informal but effective because everyone involved has deep context on what the company needs.

This works, but it does not scale. Before you need to hire faster, take time to document what "good" looks like at your company. What interview questions consistently reveal the engineers who succeed versus those who struggle? What signals predict someone will thrive in your environment? Building a quality of hire framework early pays dividends later.

Standardised processes improve outcomes dramatically at scale. Build interview scorecards that capture the specific competencies you evaluate. Train hiring managers on consistent evaluation criteria. Create feedback templates that capture meaningful signal, not just "thumbs up" or "seems smart."

This systematisation phase is about building infrastructure before you desperately need it. The investment feels premature when you are hiring two people a quarter, but it pays off enormously when volume increases.

The 25 to 50 phase: add dedicated capacity

Somewhere between 25 and 50 engineers, you need dedicated recruiting capacity. Founders and engineering managers simply cannot source candidates, screen applications, coordinate interviews, and manage offers while also doing their actual jobs. The math stops working.

Your first option is hiring an internal recruiter. A good technical recruiter in Germany costs €60,000 to €80,000 fully loaded with benefits and overhead. They need three to six months to ramp up, learn your technology stack, and start producing results. But hiring your first head of talent is harder than most founders expect.

Your second option is embedded recruiting. This makes sense if you need capacity quickly, are unsure about long-term hiring volume, or want to test the model before committing to a full-time hire. An embedded recruiter can start producing results within two weeks because they come with training, tools, and experience already in place. Check our pricing to understand the economics.

Many companies use embedded support strategically to bridge gaps. The embedded recruiter handles immediate hiring needs while you search for and onboard your first internal hire. Companies like Forto used this approach to scale without stalling.

The 50 to 100 phase: build the function

At this scale, recruiting becomes a function rather than a role. You need multiple recruiters covering different teams or geographies. You likely need dedicated sourcing to build pipeline, which is why embedded sourcing outperforms outsourced lists. Someone needs to coordinate the overall operation and ensure consistency across teams. TIER Mobility followed this progression as they scaled through hypergrowth.

The common mistake at this phase is adding recruiter headcount without adding infrastructure. Three recruiters using different processes, applying different standards, and tracking candidates in different ways will not produce consistent results. Before you scale the team, scale your systems.

Structured interviews outperform unstructured interviews at predicting job performance, and this matters even more at scale. Train every interviewer on your specific process. Create calibration sessions where hiring managers align on what "senior" actually means.

Common mistakes when scaling engineering hiring

The first and most damaging mistake is lowering the bar to hit hiring targets. When leadership wants fifty engineers and you only have twenty qualified candidates in pipeline, the pressure to compromise is enormous. Resist it. One mediocre hire at this scale does not just fill a seat poorly. They influence the engineers hired after them and can poison team dynamics for everyone who follows.

The second mistake is ignoring candidate experience as volume increases. When you are interviewing hundreds of people, the candidates you reject become your reputation in the market. Slow feedback, disorganised interviews, and ghosting candidates create a brand tax you will pay for years.

The third mistake is scaling recruiting without scaling onboarding. Hiring fifty engineers who churn at six months because they never got properly ramped is worse than hiring thirty who stay and become productive.

The bottom line

Scaling from ten to one hundred engineers requires different approaches at each phase. Systematise early while you still have time to be thoughtful. Add dedicated recruiting capacity before you are desperate and making reactive decisions. Build the function with infrastructure and process, not just headcount.

The companies that scale engineering successfully treat hiring as a core competency rather than a support function. For leadership hires during scaling, consider executive search support to ensure you get critical roles right. And see how Wolt scaled to 4,300+ hires while maintaining quality.

FAQ

When should I hire my first dedicated recruiter?

‍When hiring managers spend more than 20 percent of their time on recruiting activities, or when you have five or more open roles consistently. Either signal indicates you have outgrown informal approaches.

How many recruiters do I need to support 100 engineers?

‍A rough benchmark is one recruiter per 15 to 20 hires per year, plus sourcing support for technical roles where passive candidates dominate. Adjust based on role difficulty and market competition.

Should engineering managers interview every candidate?

‍At scale, no. Train senior engineers to evaluate technical skills reliably. Reserve engineering manager time for culture fit assessment and final round conversations.

How do I maintain quality while scaling velocity?

‍Scorecards, calibration sessions, and data. Track offer acceptance rates, time to productivity, and six-month retention broken down by source and interviewer. Compare your approach to what high-performing companies do.