Fashion marketplace gets app, backend and cloud in one hire

Breadth was the first problem. The brief combined Flutter, Bootstrap, Node.js and AWS in one person, and most developers are strong in one or two of those. Many list all four. Plenty of Flutter developers had never built or deployed a backend, and plenty of Node.js developers had never published a mobile app. A keyword scan cannot tell someone who used AWS for a side project from someone who has deployed, monitored and secured production services, so the funnel narrows hardest between initial screening (837) and résumé evaluation (220), where we asked for evidence in every area.

Production ownership was the second. A marketplace moves money, orders and parcels, so a bug costs a buyer or a seller something real. The developer had to think about security, scalability and performance, not only about getting screens working. We wanted people who had owned a live system: debugged an incident in production, handled payment or order flows, deployed through a proper pipeline and run the cloud underneath. Candidates who could talk about those things fluently but had never been the one responsible were filtered out in technical conversation.

The terms were the third. A remote role, a six-day week and a fixed salary range, as the main engineer on the product, did not suit everyone who cleared the technical bar. Many strong full-stack developers expect a five-day week, a permanent role elsewhere or a higher salary, and some did not want to be the only engineer on a product. That is why the pass rate dips again at the second internal round, from 86 to 19, where expectations were confirmed in live conversation.

Before sourcing, we split the brief into must-haves and good-to-haves so the rubric reflected this product rather than a generic full-stack checklist. We sourced 1,119 profiles across Flutter, Node.js and full-stack mobile backgrounds and screened to 837. Résumé and background evaluation then took that to 220, keeping only candidates with shipped work across mobile, backend and AWS rather than a single strength.

86 reached our first internal round, which checked range across Flutter, Node.js, AWS, databases and Git workflows against the must-haves. 19 cleared a second round, held as a live conversation, on communication, independence, production experience and comfort with the schedule and terms. Technical depth and fit were scored separately at both rounds, so neither could carry the other.

Nine candidates reached the client, three made its final round, and one was hired. We then onboarded the developer on our managed EOR: we hold the employment contract, payroll, statutory compliance, benefits and HR, and the client directs the day-to-day work.

The client hired a developer with working depth across Flutter, Node.js and AWS, and the independence to be the main engineer on a live consumer product: from the screen a seller lists on, through the APIs that handle orders and payments, to the cloud services underneath.

The developer joined on our managed EOR in late October 2025 and is still on the product a year later. When the client needed testing capacity, it added a part-time QA engineer through the same setup in February 2026, at 20 hours a week for the first two weeks and 10 hours a week after that.

Out of 1,119 profiles, one cleared every filter, about 0.1% of the pool. The client's team met nine candidates and ran a final round with three to find them.