Hiring 4 Automation Engineers: How a Mid-market e-commerce company in Berlin Scaled with Second Talent
Published May 15, 2026
At a Glance: A Berlin-based e-commerce company with $18M in annual revenue hired 4 senior automation engineers through Second Talent to rebuild their deployment infrastructure. The AI-native team implemented modern CI/CD pipelines, comprehensive test automation, and infrastructure-as-code across their platform. Within 6 months, deployment frequency increased 8x while cutting costs by 70% compared to local hiring.
The Challenge
The company was stuck in a dangerous pattern. Every release took 4 weeks from code complete to production. Manual testing consumed 60% of that time. Test coverage sat at 30%, meaning most features shipped with minimal validation. The small engineering team spent more time firefighting production issues than building new features.
Their infrastructure was equally problematic. Deployments required manual steps across 12 different services. Configuration lived in scattered documentation and tribal knowledge. Rolling back a bad release took 6 hours on average. The CTO knew they needed dedicated automation engineers, but Berlin’s market presented impossible economics. Senior automation engineers with Kubernetes and Terraform expertise commanded €95,000 to €120,000 annually, plus benefits and equity expectations.
The company had budget for 2 local hires at most. That would not solve the problem. They needed at least 4 engineers to tackle CI/CD pipelines, test automation frameworks, infrastructure-as-code, and ongoing maintenance simultaneously. Hiring contractors locally cost €800 to €1,200 per day, which made the math even worse for a 6-month project.
The technical debt was compounding. Competitors shipped features weekly while they managed monthly releases. Customer complaints about bugs increased 40% year-over-year. The engineering team’s velocity dropped as they context-switched between feature work and manual deployment tasks. Something had to change.
The Solution
Second Talent presented a different model. They could provide 4 senior automation engineers, all AI-native with 6+ years of experience in modern DevOps practices. The team would work from Indonesia through Second Talent’s EOR service, handling all employment compliance, payroll, and benefits administration. Total cost would be 70% less than equivalent Berlin hires.
The hiring process took 3 weeks. Second Talent pre-screened candidates against specific requirements: production Kubernetes experience, Terraform expertise, GitHub Actions knowledge, and proven test automation skills. The company interviewed 8 candidates and selected 4 who demonstrated both technical depth and strong communication skills. All 4 were proficient in AI-assisted development workflows using tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude.
Second Talent’s EOR handled the employment setup in Indonesia. They managed contracts, local tax compliance, benefits enrollment, and monthly payroll. The company paid a single consolidated invoice. Their internal HR and finance teams spent zero hours on international employment administration. The developers started within 2 weeks of offer acceptance.
The team integrated quickly despite the 5-hour time difference. They established 3 hours of daily overlap for standups and collaborative work. The AI-native developers used LLM tools to accelerate documentation, generate test cases, and scaffold infrastructure code. Their first sprint delivered a working CI/CD pipeline for the company’s main service. By week 6, they had automated deployments across all 12 services.
The Results
The transformation happened faster than expected. Release cycles dropped from 4 weeks to 3 days within the first quarter. Deployment frequency jumped from 12 times per year to 96 times per year. Test coverage climbed from 30% to 92% as the team implemented comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end test suites. The automation engineers built frameworks that made writing tests faster than skipping them.
Infrastructure-as-code eliminated configuration drift and manual errors. The entire platform could now be replicated in a new environment with a single Terraform command. Rollback time dropped from 6 hours to 8 minutes using automated canary deployments. Production incidents decreased 65% in the first 6 months as better testing caught issues before release.
The cost savings exceeded projections. Four senior automation engineers in Berlin would have cost €440,000 annually plus recruiting fees and overhead. The Second Talent team cost €132,000 annually including EOR fees. That €308,000 difference funded 3 additional product engineers. The company’s total engineering output increased while their cost per engineer decreased. The CTO reinvested the savings into AI tooling licenses and infrastructure improvements that benefited the entire team.
Key Outcomes
- Deployment Velocity: Release cycle compressed from 4 weeks to 3 days, enabling 8x more frequent deployments and faster time-to-market for new features.
- Quality Improvement: Test coverage increased from 30% to 92%, while production incidents dropped 65% through comprehensive automated testing frameworks.
- Infrastructure Modernization: Complete infrastructure-as-code implementation across 12 services, reducing rollback time from 6 hours to 8 minutes and eliminating manual configuration errors.
- Cost Efficiency: 70% savings compared to local Berlin hiring, freeing €308,000 annually for additional product engineers and infrastructure investments.
“We needed senior automation expertise but Berlin’s market made it financially impossible to hire the team we required. Second Talent delivered 4 exceptional engineers who transformed our entire deployment process in 6 months. The combination of AI-native development practices and their EOR service meant we got better results at a fraction of the cost.”
CTO, E-commerce Company
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