Fintech case study · Team extension
Sample case study: placeholder content, not a real client result.How a Series B fintech added 4 senior engineers in 9 days
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Key results
- Time to onboard
- 9 days
- vs. a 3-month internal average time to hire
- Launch date
- On schedule
- SEPA Instant shipped on the date committed to the regulator
- Deploy frequency
- 9 per week
- up from 2 per week before the team was extended
At a glance
A Series B payments company in Germany needed four senior engineers to hit a regulatory launch date. Fleekminds, an IT staff augmentation company, placed two React and two Node.js engineers inside the client’s squad in 9 days. The SEPA Instant launch shipped on the planned date and release frequency rose from 2 to 9 deploys a week.
What challenge did the client face?
The client had committed to launching SEPA Instant payments for business customers within five months. Its in-house team of eight engineers was already fully booked on card issuing.
Two senior backend roles had been open for 11 weeks with no accepted offer, and the frontend lead estimated the dashboard work alone at 14 engineer-weeks.
Why IT staff augmentation instead of hiring?
Hiring permanently would not have closed the gap in time: the client’s average time to hire a senior engineer was three months, plus one month of notice period.
- The work had a fixed deadline but an open-ended follow-on roadmap, so a project-based agency hand-off did not fit.
- The client wanted engineers inside its own standups, code review and on-call rotation, not a separate vendor team.
- Budget was approved for contractors, while new permanent headcount needed board approval.
What did Fleekminds provide?
Fleekminds shortlisted six engineers from its bench within 3 working days. The client’s engineering manager interviewed five and selected four: two senior React engineers for the business dashboard and two senior Node.js engineers for the payment-initiation service.
The four engineers joined the client’s existing squad, used its GitHub, Jira and Slack, and reported to the client’s engineering manager. Fleekminds kept a delivery lead on a weekly check-in to handle replacements and time off.
How did the engagement work?
Onboarding in 9 days
- Day 1–3: role brief, bench shortlist of six engineers.
- Day 4–6: client interviews and a paid half-day pairing session.
- Day 7: contracts and NDAs signed, access requests filed.
- Day 9: first pull requests merged by all four engineers.
The engineers worked a four-hour overlap with Berlin time and joined the client’s on-call rotation from month three.
What results did the client see?
- Time to onboard
- 9 days
- vs. a 3-month internal average time to hire
- Launch date
- On schedule
- SEPA Instant shipped on the date committed to the regulator
- Deploy frequency
- 9 per week
- up from 2 per week before the team was extended
- Retention
- 4 of 4
- engineers still on the team after 14 months
What did the client say?
“We interviewed on a Tuesday and had pull requests merged the following week. They work like the rest of our team, because they are part of it.”
Key takeaways
- Fleekminds onboarded 4 senior React and Node.js engineers into a German fintech’s team in 9 days.
- The client’s internal average time to hire a senior engineer was 3 months.
- The extended team shipped a regulator-committed SEPA Instant launch on schedule.
- Deploy frequency rose from 2 to 9 releases a week after the team was extended.
Frequently asked questions
How long did it take to onboard the team?
9 days from the first brief to merged pull requests. The shortlist took 3 working days, interviews 3 days, and contracts and access 3 days.
Did the engineers work in the client’s time zone?
Yes, with a four-hour daily overlap with Berlin time, including the client’s standup and code review.
Who managed the engineers day to day?
The client’s engineering manager. Fleekminds handled contracts, time off and replacements through a weekly check-in.