“We found someone who was a better fit than any of the candidates our previous executive recruiter had presented — and we did it in six weeks for the cost of a job listing. The remote-first framing attracted people who were used to leading distributed teams, which was exactly what we needed.”
Background
Payfair needed a VP of Engineering to lead their technical strategy through Series B. This was a senior, high-stakes hire that would have taken months through traditional executive search — at a cost that a 55-person fintech startup could not comfortably absorb.
The challenge
Hiring a VP of Engineering is one of the highest-stakes decisions a founder makes. For Payfair CEO Mia Okonkwo, the combination of factors made it especially difficult: the company needed someone with deep fintech experience, comfort leading a fully distributed engineering team across 5 time zones, and the ambition to scale through a Series B growth phase.
Traditional executive search had produced one candidate in four months who had not been the right fit. A second engagement with a different recruiter had stalled. Mia decided to try direct hiring through Remote Jobster, posting the role themselves and running the process internally.
Why direct hiring worked for an executive role
The Payfair listing on Remote Jobster was detailed and honest about what the role required. Rather than a generic VP Engineering description, Mia wrote about Payfair's specific technical challenges, the distributed team structure, and what kind of leader they needed. This transparency attracted candidates who had specifically chosen to build their careers in distributed environments.
Remote Jobster's audience skews senior in technical and product roles — people who have reached senior levels in their careers increasingly seek out remote-first companies where geographic flexibility is a given rather than a negotiation. This meant the applicant pool for a VP-level role was meaningfully different from a general job board.
The outcome
Payfair received 47 qualified applications in three weeks. Eight countries were represented in the final shortlist of six candidates — the breadth of the global talent pool, accessible only because remote was a given rather than an exception.
The hire was made in six weeks from posting to signed offer letter. The new VP of Engineering came from a background leading distributed teams at scale in regulated fintech environments — a background that would have been difficult to find within any single city.
The cost saving compared to executive search was substantial. "We spent less than €1,500 total, including the listing fee," Mia noted. "A recruiter would have charged us 20–25% of a first-year salary. Remote Jobster paid for itself approximately 40 times over on this single hire."