Built a 10-person Product & Innovation function, avoiding over €120,000 in traditional recruitment fees.

The Client Brief

As part of an ambitious international growth strategy, our client needed more than just individual hires.

They needed to build a team responsible for developing the products, platforms and technology that would underpin the next phase of the business.

This meant recruiting specialist talent across Product Management, Artificial Intelligence, Data Engineering and Automation, while ensuring every appointment aligned with a wider product roadmap.

Rather than engaging multiple specialist recruitment agencies across different disciplines, the client chose Bullfinch’s Embedded Recruitment model to build the entire function as part of one coordinated hiring programme.

The Delivery

Working as an extension of the client’s internal HR and Talent team, Bullfinch partnered closely with Product, Technology and senior business stakeholders to build out the Product & Innovation function.

Over the course of the programme we successfully delivered:

• Product Owners
• Product Manager
• Generative AI Engineering Team Lead
• AI Data Engineering
• Automation & Solutions Specialist
• Product Designers

Rather than treating these as isolated vacancies, every hire was sequenced to strengthen the wider product organisation, ensuring leadership, technical capability and execution capacity evolved together.

Let’s Talk Numbers

• 10 strategic Product & Innovation hires delivered
• Traditional agency fees would have exceeded €120,000
• One embedded recruitment partnership delivering the entire function

Because these hires formed part of Bullfinch’s wider Embedded Recruitment partnership, the client avoided paying more than €120,000 in contingency recruitment fees elsewhere.

Why It Worked

One recruitment partner

Instead of coordinating multiple niche recruitment agencies across Product, Technology and AI, the client worked with one embedded recruitment team that understood both the business strategy and long-term hiring roadmap.

Building a function, not filling vacancies

Recruitment wasn’t driven by individual job descriptions.
Every hire was made within the context of building a scalable Product & Innovation organisation capable of supporting future international growth.

Specialist hiring capability

Bullfinch successfully recruited across Product Management, Artificial Intelligence, Data Engineering, Automation and Product Design through one integrated delivery model, eliminating fragmented ownership and inconsistent candidate experiences.

The Bullfinch Impact

Traditional recruitment models often require businesses to engage multiple agencies, each specialising in a different discipline, resulting in duplicated effort, inconsistent candidate experiences and significant placement fees.

Bullfinch delivered the entire Product & Innovation function through one embedded partnership, providing consistent delivery, complete visibility and predictable recruitment costs throughout the programme.

The result wasn’t simply ten successful hires.

It was the creation of a strategic function that now supports product development, automation, artificial intelligence and future platform innovation across the organisation.

Looking Ahead

With its Product & Innovation capability established, the business is well positioned to accelerate platform development, expand automation initiatives and continue investing in AI-driven products and customer experiences.

As with the wider partnership, Bullfinch remains embedded within the client’s hiring strategy, supporting the next phase of international growth.