rareengineers. Get on the list

Search firm · hard remote engineering roles

Twelve recruiters wrote to you this week. Eleven wouldn't say who, or how much.

We're two people running three or four deep searches at a time. You'll hear from us maybe twice a year, and the first message already has the company, the money, the employment route and the actual problem in it. Here's the shape of one.

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No fee to you, ever · No CV needed to talk · One-click removal

Our rules

Six promises, each with the thing you do when we break it.

A promise without a remedy is marketing. These are the remedies.

The company is named in the first message

Never "a well-funded scale-up in fintech". If a client won't let us name them, we don't take the search.

If we break itDon't reply. An agency hiding the name is protecting a fee, not a client.

The band is in the message, in the currency you'd be paid in

Equity terms and vesting too, when there are any. If we don't have the number yet, we say so instead of dodging.

If we break itSend the word "competitive" back to us and we'll get you the real range within a day.

Your CV moves only after you say yes to a named company

One yes covers one company. We don't hold a pile of CVs to send to whoever calls next.

If we break itAsk who holds your details. You get the full list the same day, and deletion on request.

Five working days for a yes or no, after every stage

If the client goes quiet, that's ours to chase, not yours. Silence from us is a failure, not a signal.

If we break itChase us on day six. You get an answer that day, even when the answer is "they've gone quiet on me too".

A real reason when it's a no

Including the awkward ones: they wanted deeper distributed systems, the band moved, someone internal got it.

If we break itAsk once more. If we still can't tell you, we'll say that the client refused rather than invent something kind.

"Ask me in a year" means a year

Not next Tuesday from a different address. Tell us the month; we write once, then go quiet again.

If we break itReply "stop" and you're deleted, not suppressed. Confirmation comes back the same day.

Open searches · last checked

Three live. Everything you'd have to ask on a call is already here.

Live2 in final stage

Firmware lead, safety-critical

Pay
€120–145k base + options
Company
Industrial robotics, 90 people, Munich
Employed
EOR across the EU, own entity in DE
Overlap
Core hours 10–15 CET, 4 on-site weeks a year
Stack
C, Zephyr, ISO 26262
Process
2 calls, 1 architecture session, no take-home

Hard because: they need signed-off safety evidence in your history and someone who can argue with a hardware team without it becoming a war.

Not a fit if: you want to be fully async, or you've never shipped to a regulator.

Ask about this one

LiveJust opened

Backend engineer, ledgers

Pay
£95–120k base + 10% bonus
Company
Payments platform, 60 engineers, London
Employed
UK payroll, or EOR in the EU
Overlap
4 hours with London, otherwise async
Stack
Go, Postgres, double-entry, PSD2
Process
2 calls, 1 paid day (£600)

Hard because: plenty of people have worked near a ledger. They want someone who took one through an external audit and remembers what broke.

Not a fit if: you're looking for greenfield. Most of this is a decade-old system that cannot be wrong.

Ask about this one

LiveShortlist closing

Inference performance engineer

Pay
$220–260k base + equity
Company
Model serving, 25 people, US-incorporated
Employed
US payroll, or contractor outside the US
Overlap
Any timezone, 3 fixed hours with PT
Stack
CUDA, Triton, vLLM
Process
2 calls, 1 kernel review, no whiteboard

Hard because: cost per million tokens is your number from week one, and it has already been squeezed once by someone competent.

Not a fit if: you want to train models. This is serving, all the way down.

Ask about this one

Nothing here for you is the normal outcome — three or four searches at a time isn't much. Get on the list and we'll write when one matches, which might be next month and might be next year.

The ledger ·

Last quarter, in full, including the parts that don't flatter us.

Anyone can promise to be different. This is the only way we know to show it: the same funnel our clients see, published from your side of it.

214People we wrote to
61Replied at all
24Took a call
9Went forward
3Had an offer
2Started
4Asked to be deleted
0Still waiting on us

Two of the nine who went forward were rejected for things we should have checked before we ever wrote to them — one of them had told us his constraint in the first reply and we didn't act on it. We told them both exactly that. The four deletion requests were completed the same day, including the one that came with an entirely fair amount of swearing.

If you reply

What actually happens next.

You can stop at any point and it closes out without a follow-up sequence.

Same day

A reply from a person

Not an application receipt. If you asked something, it gets answered before we ask you for anything.

Within 3 days

Thirty minutes, mostly you asking

No CV needed for this. We'd rather you interrogate the role now than find the catch at stage three.

Before you apply

You see the scorecard and the contract shape

The actual criteria they'll judge you on, every stage with names and formats, and how you'd be employed — payroll, EOR or B2B, with the numbers that change between them.

At offer

The band we've seen elsewhere, even when it's higher

Including when saying so costs us. You'll also get our read on the counter-offer, which is usually: don't.

Get on the list

Tell us when to write, and we'll write then.

One email, no account, no CV, no call to "understand your motivations". Say "only if it's exceptional" and you'll hear from us roughly never, which is the correct amount.

What to say

  • What you'd want to be working on — the stack, the problem, the depth
  • Where you are, and how you'd want to be employed
  • When to write: now, in three months, in a year, or only if it's exceptional
Write to [email protected] No form, no account, no CV. This page stores nothing.

Straight answers

The questions you'd ask on the call.

Do I pay anything?

No. The company pays 20–22% of your first-year base. We tell you that because you should know our incentive exactly: we're paid when you start, and paid more when you're paid more. Read the rest of this page knowing that.

So won't you push me into the wrong job?

The fee is worth one placement. Your answering our next message is worth years of them, and engineers in these markets all talk to each other. That's arithmetic rather than virtue, but it's more reliable than a promise would be.

What happens to my details?

Held in our own system in the EU. Shared with a named company only after you say yes to that company. Deleted within one working day of you asking, and we confirm when it's done. No enrichment tools, no list sales, no exports.

I'm not looking. Any point?

That's the ideal time. Tell us what would move you and when to check back, and we leave you alone until then. Most people we've placed said "not looking" the first time we wrote.

Contract or day-rate work?

Permanent roles only, whether that's payroll, EOR or a B2B contract. If you want day-rate work we'll point you at people who do it properly instead of pretending.