HomePortfolioA Cloud Platform Provider Onboarded 20 Senior-Level Experts in Just 2 Months

A Cloud Platform Provider Onboarded 20 Senior-Level Experts in Just 2 Months

Google Cloud

A pioneer of cloud orchestration services turned to Altoros to assemble an in-house team of rare talent, while boosting development capacity and cutting HR costs by 6x.

A Cloud Platform Provider Onboarded 20 Senior-Level Experts in Just 2 Months

About the project

Brief results of the collaboration:

  • The company built an in-house team of 15 senior developers and 5 QA engineers from the ground up in just 2 months. Within 6 years, the company has nurtured around 30 senior-level experts.
  • With the acquired talent, the customer integrated 3 more clouds into its flagship platform and, thus, took the lead in a highly competitive market.
  • Thanks to well-established recruiting, onboarding, and nurturing processes, the business sped up hiring time by 6x, reduced costs on staff management, facilitated knowledge transfer, ensured uninterrupted team scaling on demand (a maximum period of 2 weeks instead of months), increased personnel retention, and enabled smooth coordination across remote locations.

The customer

Based in the US, the company pioneered cloud management services in 2000s. Being among the top funded businesses in its domain, the enterprise raised $62.1 million of total investment. In 2018, the Forrester Wave™ recognized the company as a leader in Hybrid Cloud Management/Cost Monitoring and Optimization.

The need

The customer was a promising startup developing a novel multicloud orchestration platform. To take the lead on the market, the company decided to integrate Google Cloud Platform, Windows Azure (now known as Microsoft Azure), and Rackspace into its platform. For the purpose, the business needed senior back-end developers and QA engineers. The recruiting process, though, was time-consuming (up to 12 months) and involved much bureaucracy. Traditional development outsourcing was not an option, as it came with poor communication management, slow onboarding, etc.

Relying on Altoros and its expertise in outstaffing talent, the organization wanted to build a team of professionals from the ground up, accelerate the onboarding process, ensure ongoing talent supply, and reduce costs on recruitment.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

  • Due to a tough competition in the evolving market, it was crucial to ensure that the acquired talent would not leak corporate knowledge: platform specifications, code, system and user documentation, etc.
  • Scaling the team on demand and without interruption was of high priority.
  • The new talent would operate from a different location and time zone. So, enabling smooth communication and transparency into corporate culture and business processes was pivotal.

The solution

To build the in-house team for the customer from the ground up, HR experts employed best practices of staff augmentation: defined customer’s needs to qualify candidates, used time- and cost-saving interview practices, educated engineers on customer’s corporate culture and core processes, enabled knowledge sharing to facilitate onboarding, as well as created a positive image of the company to encourage employee retention and performance.

During an interview, HR specialists evaluated hard and soft skills of candidates to identify the right fit, while articulating company’s values to evoke interest in the position. Thanks to ongoing nurturing of in-house professionals, there was always a pipeline of experts ready to step in the project immediately. If an employee quit, went on a sick leave, etc., the replacement took place within 2 weeks instead of months.

For efficient onboarding, project managers combined onsite and offsite cooperation models, introducing employees to the expected level of service delivery and engagement, aspects of working with complex cloud infrastructures, the product roadmap, etc.

Nondisclosure agreements were signed with each candidate, while transfer of intellectual property rights to the customer was ensured through standard contract terms.

To achieve a shared vision and accuracy of workflows, the technical expertise and information about corporate work ethic was properly documented in Confluence. With the tool, it was also possible to submit implementation proposals, which were then reviewed, approved, or rejected within the same flow.

Relying on the Scrum methodology, regular reporting, and tracking tools (Jira), the team gained a full control of the project and tasks they were responsible for. Starting a sprint, lead engineers conducted a preliminary assessment to estimate the scope and reveal potential discrepancies. Then, a discussion was held with a project manager to finalize a sprint assignment.

To avoid time lags, an emergency contact was appointed to communicate with the core team in Santa Barbara. For efficient time reporting, engineers customized a product by Altoros, TX Chrono, alongside with the existing tracking tools.

As a system integrator, Altoros is responsible for creating 80% of multicloud templates for the customer. The templates enable setting up and tuning virtualized environments with a few mouse clicks.

The outcome

Partnering with Altoros, the customer was able to employ 15 developers and 5 QA engineers in just 2 months. Thanks to the obtained talent, the company integrated 3 more clouds with its platform and took the lead in the market. Relying on well-established hiring, onboarding, and nurturing processes, the company sped up recruitment by 6x, reduced costs on staff management, facilitated knowledge transfer within a team, ensured ongoing talent acquisition on demand (a maximum period of 2 weeks instead of months), increased personnel retention, and enabled smooth coordination across remote locations. Over 6 years of engagement, the organization has nurtured around 30 senior-level technical professionals with rare expertise.

2 months

to build an
in-house team

30

senior
tech experts

2 weeks

on team
scaling

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Ryan Meharg

Ryan Meharg

Technical Director

ryan.m@altoros.com650 265-2266

4900 Hopyard Rd. Suite 100 Pleasanton, CA 94588