How We Helped on of the top Perp Exchange Hire Elite Rust & Quant Engineers in Just 14 Days

Backpack Exchange — Top 1% Engineering Search (Case Study)

The Challenge

Backpack only hires the top 1% of engineers full stop. Culture fit is non-negotiable. You can be a world-class engineer, but if you don’t match their intensity, pace, and ownership mindset, you don’t last a week.

Leaders like Armani Ferrante know that exceptional output demands exceptional people.

Several recruitment firms had already tried  and failed. Finding Rust engineers with HFT-level speed, quant-native thinking, and crypto-first instincts is one of the hardest searches in the industry. Finding them fast is even harder.
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Backpack needed a partner who could:

• Uncover off-market, hidden talent globally
  
• Judge technical excellence and cultural alignment instantly
  
• Execute at startup speed, without compromising quality
  

That’s where WorkInCrypto stepped in.

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Our Approach

1. Day 1:  Alignment in Real Time

Before you can recruit, you must understand the environment. As soon as Backpack confirmed they needed Rust + HFT pedigree, we tested alignment immediately by sharing three pre-vetted profiles from our pipeline.

This ensured we were calibrated on day one - not week three.

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2. Days 2–8: Full Market Mapping (Two Recruiters, Zero Shortcuts)

When a company takes hiring seriously, so do we.

We assigned two specialist tech recruiters to the search.

We mapped:

• Every Rust + HFT engineer in Europe and APAC
  
• Every low-latency / quant-adjacent Rust profile in APAC and Europe

We then looked for things like how long they have worked in a company, what are their success story, what is their pedigree 

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3. Speed + Precision: The 90/10 Rule

Speed alone is reckless. Precision alone is slow.
The combination is where the magic happens.

We spoke to hundreds of engineers. We submitted less than 10%.

Why?
Because after 14+ years recruiting top-tier engineers, we can feel cultural fit.
We knew what would thrive at Backpack and what would crash on day one.

Backpack saved enormous time because they only saw “hell yes” profiles.

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4. Day 14: Offer Accepted in a Brutal Talent Market

Rust + HFT engineers are aggressively pursued.
Closing them requires psychology, not pressure.

We manage expectations early, build trust quickly, and make sure candidates understand both:

• What the role demands
  
• What the environment actually feels like
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At WorkInCrypto, we have one rule:

If a candidate doesn’t match our values, we don’t present them; no matter how good they look on paper.

It protects us.
It protects our clients.
It’s why our retention rate is what it is.

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The Results

• Time-to-hire: < 14 days
  
• Reach: Global (Europe, APAC, remote-first)
  
• Retention: 100% — all hires still at Backpack
  
• Operational efficiency: 80% reduction in internal hiring load

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Key Takeaway

Hiring the top 1% is never about having a big database.
It’s about:

Domain intelligence; You must actually know the space. Tech, trading, crypto… if you don’t understand the world your client operates in, you’re guessing, not recruiting.

Real headhunting; Not job posts. Not inbox mining. It’s spending 14 straight days talking to candidates, mapping the market, and having conversations others don’t even know exist.

Cultural pattern-matching; Top recruiters can visualise a client’s culture as if they’re sitting inside the office. Pace, expectations, pressure, communication style, you know instantly who fits and who won’t survive a week.

Intuition from hundreds of searches;  The “recruiter gut” isn’t magic. It’s pattern recognition built from working with high-performance teams for years. It tells you exactly who will be a hire and who will be a future headache.

That’s why when other firms failed, WorkInCrypto delivered- fast, precise, and without lowering the bar.

When others can’t fill it, we fill it with precision.

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