Meet 3–5 senior engineers who have already passed the screen.
In 5 business days.
Every shortlisted engineer completes a role-specific technical screen. You get CV evidence, the interview scorecard and recruiter notes — then pay only when you hire, with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
Built for Series A–C engineering teams
Recruo is a productized engineering recruitment agency that delivers a shortlist of 3–5 technically screened senior engineers in 5 business days. Every candidate completes an AI technical interview reviewed by a human recruiter; fees are success-based — typically 15% of first-year salary, paid only on placement — with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
Validated across 20+ placements with Series A–C scale-ups in UK, DACH and the Nordics, sourced across the EU, Latin America and North America. Pass rate vs ~20% typical agency submit-to-interview rate. See the placement case →
Three questions buyers ask before the first call
How fast is "5 days to shortlist" really?
Median across roles in our first 20 placements; VP and Head-level searches take longer (10–14 days). The clock starts after the job description is approved and the mandate is signed. Day 0 is the intake call; inside the window we run sourcing, AI CV screening where only candidates scoring 70+ progress, a human soft-skills interview and a role-specific AI technical interview — so the 3–5 candidates you meet on day 5 are already technically validated, with a scorecard and recruiter notes attached. That validation is why 80% of Recruo-shortlisted candidates pass our clients' own technical interviews, against a ~20% submit-to-interview rate typical for contingency agencies.
Can we engage Recruo for a single role first?
Yes. Most clients start with one open role to validate the flow before signing a multi-role mandate. No retainer required, no upfront fees on Standard — you only pay on placement, with a 90-day replacement guarantee. A single-role pilot gets the same process as a multi-role mandate: a 30-minute intake call, sourcing across the EU, Latin America and North America, AI CV screening where only candidates scoring 70+ progress, a human soft-skills interview and a role-specific AI technical interview — ending in a shortlist of 3–5 technically validated candidates, typically in 5 business days. If the pilot works, the Hybrid plan can reduce the effective fee on later searches.
What happens if none of the shortlist fits?
We re-run sourcing at no extra cost. If the second shortlist still misses, you owe nothing on Standard — and on Hybrid or Retained we refund what you've paid upfront. Our 80% client interview pass rate means this rarely happens.
The deliverable
What you actually get.
Every role ends with one document like this — per candidate, 3–5 candidates per role. Below is a real shortlist (redacted) for a Senior LLM Engineer at a Series B UK fintech.
Candidate A
ActiveAI Match Result
EXCELLENT MATCH
Based on job requirements analysis
AI Executive Summary
Candidate A is an excellent fit for the Senior LLM Engineer position. With 6 years of backend experience and 3 years shipping LLM-backed features to production, they exceed the core requirements: RAG architecture, fine-tuning, and inference cost optimisation. Strong culture fit signals and salary expectations within budget. Minor gap in multimodal pipelines, addressable through onboarding.
Matched Skills
Skills Gap
Missing Core
Get this exact deliverable as a redacted PDF
Proof, not promises
Watch the AI interview actually run
A separate, real backend-interview example shows the voice agent taking consent, probing with adaptive follow-ups, then generating a scored report with anti-cheat signal analysis.
Real interview, real report — published with consent from everyone on screen; personal contact details are blurred. English captions start automatically. The full cut opens with the recruiter-led soft-skills screen before the AI agent connects. This is a separate backend example, not the candidate in the shortlist preview above.
Pricing
Pay only when you hire.
Standard engagements are typically 15% of first-year salary, with no upfront fee and a 90-day replacement guarantee.
Standard
Scale-ups hiring 3–10 engineers/year, mixed seniority.
10–20%
of first-year salary — typically 15%, paid only on placement
- Full 6-step flow
- Shortlist of 3–5 candidates per role
- AI CV screening + technical interview
- Human soft-skills interview
- 90-day replacement guarantee
- Run multiple roles in parallel
- AI Skills Validation (optional add-on)
Need a fixed budget, executive search or a continuous pipeline? Compare all engagement models →
For context: a wrong senior hire costs $50K+ in its first 90 days, average time-to-fill runs 6+ weeks, and screening agency CVs eats ~20 hours of your team's time per role. Our model returns ~$2.40 in value for every $1 of fee — the calculator below shows the other side of the ledger. Run your own numbers before you judge our fee.
Bad hire cost calculator
Edit the values below to see your number
Estimated true cost of this bad hire: £220,850, or 1.7 times the engineer's annual salary.
True cost of this bad hire
£220,850
That's 1.7× the engineer's annual salary — not 30% like the old SHRM rule.
Avoiding this is also cheaper on your time: hiring through Recruo takes 2–3 hours of your team's time per role, vs 15–25 hours screening agency CVs.
Not ready to talk? Get a real (redacted) shortlist PDF instead.
Prefer a straight fee comparison? Run the fee & ROI estimator on the pricing page.
Pilot-friendly: start with a single role
Most clients start with one open role to validate the flow before signing a multi-role mandate. No retainer, no upfront fees on Standard — you pay on placement, same 5-day shortlist, same guarantee.
90-day replacement guarantee
If your hire leaves or is let go in the first 90 days, we re-run the search at no cost. Included on Standard, Hybrid, Retained, and Fixed-Fee.
Why Recruo
How we compare.
Forward this to your Head of People or CFO.
Swipe or use arrow keys to compare all options
| Recruo | Classical agency | In-house recruiter | AI tool only | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cash cost / buying model ($70K role) | $10.5K | $14–15.4K | $6–8K/mo salary | $250–750/qtr + your time |
| Median shortlist time (after mandate + approved JD) | 5 days | 10–15 days | Variable | Instant, unvalidated |
| What you end up with | A hired engineer, 90-day guarantee | A hired engineer | Depends on your pipeline | A ranked CV list — hiring is still on you |
| Structured AI report per candidate | Yes | No | No | Partial |
| Your engineering time per role | 2–3 hours | 15–25 hours | 5–10 hours | 10–20 hours |
| Human culture-fit interview | Yes | Partial | Yes | No |
| AI skills validation (optional) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Cross-border hiring specialisation (EU · LATAM · NA) | Yes | Partial | No | No |
| EU AI Act alignment controls | Yes | N/A | N/A | No |
| Proprietary anti-cheat browser | Yes | N/A | N/A | Partial |
The cost row shows different buying models, not like-for-like per-placement totals. Benchmarks: SHRM 2025 Talent Trends and Bullhorn GRID 2026. Recruo figures are medians across our first 20 placements (2025–2026).
How it works
From job description to shortlist.
Six steps. Five days.
AI does 80% of the screening. A human decides who makes the shortlist.
Intake call
30-min scoping call. We capture the JD, must-haves, culture, budget, timeline.
Output:
Signed mandate
Sourcing
LinkedIn Recruiter, direct outreach, and regional networks across the EU (DOU, Djinni, Just Join IT), Latin America and North America — plus our private candidate network.
Output:
60–120 raw candidates
AI CV screening
Every CV scored against the JD. Only 70+ scores move forward.
Output:
Top 15–25 ranked
Soft-skills interview
20–30 min call: motivation, culture fit, salary, English, availability.
Output:
Structured notes
AI technical interview
AI-conducted technical interview on video with adaptive follow-ups and anti-cheat checks — up to the fully locked-down Recruo Secure Browser. Every result is reviewed by a human recruiter.
Output:
Hard-skills report + score
Shortlist delivery
3–5 candidates delivered in a single document per role.
Output:
Full candidate package
- 0
Intake call
Human (AM)30-min scoping call. We capture the JD, must-haves, culture, budget, timeline.
Output: Signed mandate
- 1
Sourcing
RecruiterLinkedIn Recruiter, direct outreach, and regional networks across the EU (DOU, Djinni, Just Join IT), Latin America and North America — plus our private candidate network.
Output: 60–120 raw candidates
- 2
AI CV screening
AIEvery CV scored against the JD. Only 70+ scores move forward.
Output: Top 15–25 ranked
- 3
Soft-skills interview
Recruiter20–30 min call: motivation, culture fit, salary, English, availability.
Output: Structured notes
- 4
AI technical interview
AI AgentAI-conducted technical interview on video with adaptive follow-ups and anti-cheat checks — up to the fully locked-down Recruo Secure Browser. Every result is reviewed by a human recruiter.
Output: Hard-skills report + score
- 5
Shortlist delivery
Human + AI3–5 candidates delivered in a single document per role.
Output: Full candidate package
Role-specific market intelligence
Hire where you need. Or discover where the market is.
We source across eligible markets in Europe, the US, Canada and Latin America. If location is fixed, we map the available pool there. If it is flexible, we show where the strongest market for the role actually sits — before sourcing begins.
Flexible-location capacity map and recommendation shown.
Map my roleTell us the role and constraints. We'll reply with a realistic market route, pool assumptions and next step.
Senior AI-ready Android Engineer
- Target
- Europe
- Location
- Flexible
- Markets
- Eligible only
Prioritise CEE and Southern Europe for pool depth. Keep a DACH lane when local presence is required.
Illustrative estimate · every must-have verified during screeningYour open engineering role
- Market
- Client-defined
- Timezone
- Required overlap
- Eligibility
- Verified
Choose the country. We map the reachable pool there, account for timezone and work authorisation, then apply the same technical bar.
Coverage confirmed per mandate · sanctioned markets excludedEU AI Act
Aligned by design,
not bolted on.
Employment is one of the AI Act's high-risk areas. Recruo operates the screening workflow and provides the audit trail, candidate notices, human-review records and engagement documentation. Your responsibilities as employer or deployer remain, but the evidence does not have to be assembled from scratch.
AI recommends; a human recruiter reviews and owns each shortlist decision. We document the provider-side controls and map the hand-off points your team needs to oversee, interpret and explain the process.
EU AI Act alignment controls in each engagement
Candidate notification of AI use before assessment.
Traceable scorecard and recruiter sign-off for every shortlisted candidate.
Documented monitoring and bias-testing approach.
Human review and escalation path for contested assessments.
Retention, deletion and audit-log terms confirmed per engagement.
No fully automated shortlist decision.
EU AI Act Rollout
Feb 2025
Prohibited AI practices ban
Aug 2025
GPAI + governance obligations
Dec 2027
NextHigh-risk AI rules for employment
current timeline following the AI Omnibus agreement
Aug 2028
High-risk AI embedded in regulated products
Controls in place today
Human review is the default. Every engagement includes the records and hand-off points needed to assess the workflow responsibly.
The 2027 timeline does not pause GDPR or existing employment and equality obligations — those apply to AI screening today.
Official EU implementation timeline ↗FAQ
Questions CTOs
actually ask.
The objections we hear most — and our honest answers. The three biggest ones are answered up top.
Our success fee is 10–20% of first-year salary — typically 15%, confirmed before the search starts based on seniority, scarcity and region. On a $70K placement at the typical rate, that's $10,500 versus $15,400 with a classical 22% agency — roughly $4,900 back per hire. The fee covers the full six-step flow: sourcing, AI CV screening, a human soft-skills interview and a role-specific AI technical interview, with every result reviewed by a human recruiter before the shortlist reaches you. There are no upfront fees and no retainer on the Standard plan — you pay once, on placement — and every placement carries a 90-day replacement guarantee: if the hire leaves or is let go within the first 90 days, we re-run the search at no cost.
On every engagement, our anti-cheat layer flags signals including screen-sharing, suspicious latency, copy-paste behaviour, and eye-tracking anomalies — and flagged candidates are re-interviewed by a human. For Retained mandates, the interview runs in our proprietary Recruo Secure Browser, which fully locks the candidate session: no tab switching, no external apps, no second-screen ChatGPT. Available as add-on for other plans.
Yes, but our economics work best at mid/senior. For junior roles, ask about our Fixed-Fee plan — a flat fee per placement, quoted for your region — for predictable spend.
Recruo's workflow is designed around EU AI Act alignment. Every engagement includes an alignment checklist covering candidate notification, audit trails, documented bias testing, and human review and escalation paths. Your responsibilities as employer or deployer remain.
Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable via native exports. Others via CSV/Zapier. We deliver shortlists in a single document — most clients forward it directly to their hiring channel.
We source across the EU — Ukraine and Poland are our deepest networks — plus Latin America and North America, matched to your timezone, budget and work-authorisation needs. Channels: LinkedIn Recruiter, DOU, Djinni, Just Join IT, regional communities and our private network. All candidates are remote-ready.
The candidate. We use consent-first processing aligned with GDPR, delete data on request, and never share candidate information with third parties without explicit consent.
Get started
Tell us the role.
We'll reply with the shortlist plan.
Add whatever you know about the role, stack and hiring timeline. Your name and work email are enough to start; we'll reply within 24 hours.
Pay on placement
No upfront fee on the Standard plan
90-day guarantee
Free re-search if hire leaves
EU AI Act aligned
Aligned by design
Your point of contact
Two people own your shortlist.
No SDR queue. No account-handover. Olena scopes the role, Sofiia runs it week-to-week — and you have both on the same thread.
Owns the buyer side of every Recruo engagement — from the first discovery call to the 90-day retention check-in. Places senior engineers for Series A–C scale-ups across UK, DACH and the Nordics, and turns vague briefs into measurable mandates on the 30-minute intake. A decade across Sales, Customer Success, and GTM — startups through a successful B2B SaaS M&A exit. Most CTOs meet her first.
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Owns the product side of every Recruo engagement — what 'good' looks like for your role, and how the screening engine measures it. Translates your hiring brief into the evaluation criteria each candidate is scored against, calibrates seniority signals to your stack, and feeds buyer-side data back into the product roadmap. Two years of B2B AI product delivery behind her.
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Hiring a specific senior engineer?
Each role page covers the salary band, hiring context, and CEE talent depth specific to that engineer.