The Story

Mihail Gutan, CTO at Meridian, found that U.S.-based hiring was not only expensive and slow, but often lacked the long-term commitment necessary for a growing engineering organization. By shifting his strategy to Latin America, Mihail moved beyond "mercenary" contracting to build a core team of committed, capable engineers in Brazil who act as true owners of the product.

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The Vision/Challenge

‍For a CTO, the "contractor treadmill" is a major drain on velocity. Mihail’s challenge was to find senior talent that provided high-level accountability without the inflated price tags of the US market. He needed a way to reduce hiring costs while actually increasing the level of commitment and cultural alignment within his squad.

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The Revelo Partnership

Meridian used Revelo to hire senior engineers based in Latin America who plugged directly into their team's culture and workflow — senior Kotlin backend depth alongside full-stack capability across React, Java, and Kotlin, strengthening both core services and the product layer. With access to Revelo's network of 400,000+ vetted engineers, Mihail cut hiring costs by more than 50% while keeping the team in the same time zone.

Revelo handles payroll and compliance, so he could scale headcount without adding operational overhead.

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In Their Words

"U.S.-based hiring was expensive and lacked commitment. With Revelo, we reduced our costs by over 50% and finally found engineers in Brazil who are truly accountable and aligned with our culture."

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