Hire senior AI & software engineers from Eastern Europe.
Vetted shortlist in 5 days.
Recruo is an AI-augmented recruitment agency delivering vetted shortlists of 3–5 ready-to-interview candidates in 5 days — AI-led CV and technical screening, human-reviewed decisions, at a 15% success fee instead of the usual 22–33%. Backed by a 90-day replacement guarantee.
The three questions every CTO asks first
Where do your candidates come from?
80% CEE (Ukraine, Poland, Romania), 15% Southern Europe, 5% other. All remote-ready, most with EU work authorisation. We use LinkedIn Recruiter, DOU, Djinni, Just Join IT, and our private network.
Do you integrate with our ATS?
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.
Who owns the candidate data?
The candidate. Consent-first processing, GDPR-compliant, data deleted on request. We never share candidate information with third parties without explicit consent.
Built for Series A–C engineering teams
Validated across 20+ placements with Series A–C scale-ups in UK, DACH and the Nordics, sourced from Eastern Europe. Pass rate vs ~20% typical agency submit-to-interview rate.
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
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, DOU, Djinni, direct outreach, our private CEE 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, DOU, Djinni, direct outreach, our private CEE 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
Pricing
Transparent pricing.
32% cheaper than classical agencies.
Success-fee model. You only pay when you hire.
Standard
Scale-ups hiring 3–10 engineers/year, mixed seniority.
15%
of annual salary, paid 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
- Unlimited roles in the month
- AI Skills Validation (optional add-on)
Fixed-fee
Junior/mid roles below $60K salary, or when you want capped cost.
$8,000
per placement, predictable spend
- Same full flow as Standard
- 90-day replacement guarantee
- Capped cost per hire
- Ideal for volume hiring
Retained
Urgent VP/Head/C-level roles where you need dedicated sourcing and the deepest possible validation.
Custom
1/3 up front, 1/3 at shortlist, 1/3 on placement
- Dedicated recruiter assigned
- Exclusive search + passive headhunting
- AI Skills Validation included
- Recruo Secure Browser included
- Weekly progress calls
- Executive reference checks
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. Run your own numbers before you judge our fee.
Bad hire cost calculator
Edit the values below to see your number
True cost of this bad hire
£220,850
That's 1.7× the engineer's annual salary — not 30% like the old SHRM rule.
Prefer a straight fee comparison? Try the savings calculator on the pricing page.
First Hire Pilot — 25% off
Your first placement at 25% off our Standard fee (11.25% effective) — for scale-ups closing their first mandate with us. Pay only 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. No upfront fees on Standard and Fixed-fee plans.
Why Recruo
How we compare.
Forward this to your Head of People or CFO.
| Recruo | Classical agency | In-house recruiter | AI tool only | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per senior placement ($70K salary) | $10.5K | $14–15.4K | $6–8K/mo salary | $250–750/qtr + your time |
| Time to shortlist | 5 days | 10–15 days | Variable | Instant, unvalidated |
| Structured AI report per candidate | Yes | No | No | Partial |
| Human culture-fit interview | Yes | Partial | Yes | No |
| EU AI Act compliance | Yes | N/A | N/A | No |
| Your engineering time per role | 2–3 hours | 15–25 hours | 5–10 hours | 10–20 hours |
| AI skills validation (optional) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Proprietary anti-cheat browser | Yes | N/A | N/A | Partial |
| CEE → EU cross-border specialisation | Yes | Partial | No | No |
Benchmarks from SHRM 2025 Talent Trends and Bullhorn GRID 2026. Recruo figures: medians across our first 20 placements (2025–2026).
EU AI Act
Compliant by design,
not bolted on.
AI-driven hiring is classified as high-risk under Annex III of the EU AI Act. Penalties reach €35M or 7% of global turnover.
Recruo's model is human-in-the-loop by design: AI is a recommendation engine, a human recruiter owns every decision. That maps directly onto what regulators require — not something we added after the fact.
Compliance checklist we publish per engagement
Candidate notification of AI use, in writing, before interview.
Full audit trail of AI scoring decisions, retained 5+ years.
Bias audits across gender, age, disability and ethnicity — published quarterly.
Right to human review on any AI-rejected candidate, enforced at the platform level.
CE marking and EU database registration tracked and timestamped.
No fully-automated rejection — ever. A human recruiter sees every decision.
EU AI Act Rollout
Feb 2025
Prohibited AI practices ban
Aug 2025
GPAI + governance obligations
Dec 2027
NextHigh-risk AI (hiring) obligations
delayed from Aug 2026 (AI Act Omnibus)
Aug 2028
Embedded AI systems + €35M penalties
Recruo is ready today
Human-in-the-loop is our default, not a retrofit. Every engagement ships with a full compliance checklist.
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.
FAQ
Questions CTOs
actually ask.
The objections we hear most — and our honest answers. The three biggest ones are answered up top.
On a $70K placement, a classical 22% agency charges $15,400. Recruo Standard charges $10,500 — you save $4,900 per hire. For high-volume hiring or junior roles, our $8K fixed-fee plan is even more predictable.
Yes. Most clients start with one open role to validate the flow before signing a multi-role mandate. No retainer required, no upfront fees — you only pay on placement, with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
Median across roles in our first 20 placements. VP/Head roles take longer (10–14 days). The clock starts when we have a signed mandate and approved JD.
We re-run sourcing at no extra cost. If after a second shortlist there's still no fit, we refund the engagement fee. Our 80% client interview pass rate means this rarely happens.
For Standard and Fixed-fee plans, our anti-cheat layer flags 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, we recommend the Fixed-fee plan at $8,000 per placement for predictable spend.
Recruo is compliant by design. Every engagement ships with a compliance checklist covering candidate notification, audit trails, bias audits, and human review rights. See our whitepaper for the full breakdown.
Get started
Ready to stop losing
engineering time to hiring?
Fill out the form and we'll reach out within 24 hours to scope your first role — or skip the wait and book a 30-min call directly below.
No upfront fees
Pay only on placement
90-day guarantee
Free re-search if hire leaves
EU AI Act ready
Compliant by design