Programmatic ad buying platform

The company, a scale-up in AdTech headquartered in Mexico, needed to solve this challenge: “programmatic ad buying platform”. Internal interview processes couldn't validate whether a candidate truly understood the business domain, beyond purely technical command of the stack, which had led to hires that didn't work out. On top of this, there were methodological problems in team and project management: inconsistent agile ceremonies, poor visibility into dependencies, and a delivery cadence that was hard to predict. The context was one of accelerated growth, with investment already committed and high expectations from leadership and, where applicable, investors.

Squad Challenge set up 4 challenges, one per position, focused on professionals who already had a relationship with the client —from its own team or from outsourcing firms it worked with—, evaluating an average of 5 candidates per position (20 in total) in 7 days. Since the team also carried methodological management problems, Squadmakers recommended adding a Agile Coach to the squad to bring order to ceremonies, planning, and priorities.

The squad was made up of 5 profiles (data engineer, Squad Lead, mobile developer, Tech Lead, Agile Coach) working on a stack of Go, React, BigQuery, ClickHouse, GitLab, Azure, Kotlin (Android) and Swift (iOS), sourced from the client and its outsourcing firms. This squad integrated with the company's existing in-house technical team, respecting established processes and priorities. Since some of these profiles came from outsourcing firms, their turnover was high (around 50%), which led to evaluating 2 additional replacements over the course of the project, reaching a total commitment of 16 months.