Building Arenadata’s Engineering Team: Growth Story from the Inside

Company Background

Arenadata was founded in 2016 by engineers from Pivotal and Mirantis.
The idea for the company emerged back in late 2014 — to build a platform based on an open-source tech stack that would allow customers to handle large-scale data processing with minimal maintenance and operational costs.

By 2017, the core team of five people was in place. At that time, the company focused mostly on technological development rather than commercial activities.
The first investment came after Arenadata presented its solution to a major systems integrator, who decided to invest in the promising project.

In 2018, Arenadata signed a technology partnership with DIS Group, and by November 2019 the company, as a part of IBS, had begun a joint project with Mail.ru Cloud Solutions to develop a cloud data platform.

**
My Journey with Arenadata**

I joined Arenadata in mid-2020 — right when the company was transitioning from a bold open-source idea into a strong, fast-growing product organization.

What attracted me was the company’s philosophy: open technologies, strong engineering culture, and a focus on multi-product data solutions.
Arenadata wasn’t just building software — it was building an ecosystem for big data processing.

The Pandemic and Rapid Growth

During the pandemic, demand for Arenadata’s solutions skyrocketed. Clients across industries were looking for efficient, scalable data platforms.
The challenge was clear: to handle the growing number of projects, we needed to scale five engineering teams simultaneously, hiring 3–5 mid and senior engineers for each team every month.

At that moment, the global tech talent market became extremely competitive — startups were “vacuuming up” engineers, offering salaries five to ten times higher than average.
We couldn’t just hire — we had to build a strategic, scalable hiring system that engineers would genuinely want to join.

How We Built the Talent Strategy

1. Market Research and Talent Mapping

We analyzed around 160 tech companies, studying their team profiles, employer value propositions, and what actually motivates their engineers.
Based on this research, we built a portfolio of “donor companies” and crafted our own unique value offer for potential candidates.

1. Laying the Foundations of the Employer Brand
   • Created a unified visual style for job posts and candidate communication;
   • Defined our unique selling points:
   — open-source core,
   — product autonomy,
   — strong engineering leadership;
   • Launched official company pages on LinkedIn, VK, and Telegram, supported by a scalable content strategy.

2. Process Automation and Metrics

We implemented Huntflow CRM to automate recruitment workflows and designed a primary candidate evaluation system.
Each month, we tracked key metrics: time-to-hire, probation pass rate, response time, CSAT, and NPS.

1. Academic Partnerships

We signed long-term cooperation agreements with three universities, enabling internship programs and graduate referrals — a sustainable source of emerging talent.

**
Personalized Approach to Candidates**

Our hiring philosophy was simple — every message should sound human.

Here’s one of my actual icebreakers:

Hi Alexander!
I came across your Java projects on GitHub — really clean code, nicely thought through.
How do you manage to keep such solid architecture in production, especially with Mail.ru’s crazy load?
At Arenadata, our engineers face similar challenges — always curious how others handle the bottlenecks.

This personalized approach made our pipeline highly targeted — offer declines never exceeded 10%.
We used a mix of sourcing channels: job boards, Telegram communities, LinkedIn, niche tech forums, and recruitment aggregators.

Results

Over two and a half years at Arenadata, we achieved measurable and lasting results:
• Grew the engineering team from 50 to 250 people;
• Increased offer acceptance rate from 50% to over 90%;
• Reduced average time-to-hire from 4 months to 2 weeks;
• Built a recognizable employer brand in the open-source and big data engineering communities.

What This Experience Taught Me

This experience proved that even in uncertain times, companies can grow if they stay true to their values — openness, professionalism, and respect for engineers.
People don’t join job offers — they join people who speak their language and create an environment of trust and creativity.

For me, Arenadata became an example of how a company can scale rapidly while keeping the spirit of a startup — open, ambitious, and human-centered.