How we helped a pre-seed founder hire a founding engineer to ship their MVP

Company: Stealth mode, Pre-seed, US-based.

Ethan runs a developer tooling startup that helps engineering teams catch breaking API changes before they reach production.

Background

Ethan needed to onboard a Founding Engineer quickly to reduce the time to release the MVP. He was already pre-seed and as a technical founder he was not struggling to build. He knew exactly what needed to be built. The problem was that he could not do both things at once: hold the technical architecture together and run the company.

When Ethan came to us, the ask was specific:

“I need someone who has actually started a codebase before. Not someone who has maintained one. I need them to own things without a lot of handholding. I need them to think like a founder. And I need them fast.”

Everyone needs to hire fast. We get it. But a Founding Engineer hired at this stage was one of the most critical roles we have helped fill.

We got to work immediately.

How we screened the profiles

This was one difficult hire, we will be honest. We first used AI to filter all the noise from our top 1% pipeline. Then we only finalized the candidates that had:

• Product company experience.
• Worked in a team of less than 10 people.
• Technical depth & had driven quantifiable outcomes.

Then our recruiters further screened their resumes and spoke to them to get even more clarity. Speaking to them helped our recruiters gauge their communication skills because the candidate had to work remotely, had to be in constant touch with the founder, had to also speak to the users/clients, and cater to the US market initially.

How did Ethan zero down on a candidate

We sent him 6 profiles in the next 3 days.

He took interviews of 5 of those over the next 2 weeks. Then one stood out because had worked in a 0 to 1 startup before and had spent many weeks in the clients’ office tailoring features to their requirements.

He joined officially on April 7, 2026.

Outcome?

• MVP shipped in 10 weeks.
• Ethan’s hands-on coding time dropped from 100% to under 20% of his working week.
• Ethan could focus on investor conversations.