LatamCent Case Study · B2B SaaS
Eight engineers hired in Brazil. $835,000 saved a year. 88% retention. A full engineering org, built nearshore.
Eze Campo, Head of GTM & Ops, LatamCent
Client: Monarch, formerly TestBox · Engineering built in Brazil
Monarch sells to the teams that demo software
Monarch, the company that operated as TestBox until its rebrand, gives B2B sales and solutions teams live, fully integrated, automated demo environments and proof of concepts. The platform generates synthetic data so a sales engineer can show a product working against real customer tooling instead of an empty sandbox.
Co-founder and CEO Sam Senior started the company in 2020 as a marketplace for buyers to test B2B software side by side, then pivoted it in 2023 into the product sales teams run today. That pivot is the context for everything below. A product rebuild needs engineers who can own core systems, and it needs them without a Bay Area payroll.
Series A · San Francisco · CTO Alex Nauda · Brazil footprint in Rio and Caxias
01 The Problem
Burn decides the roadmap before the roadmap does
Series A companies live and die by engineering velocity, and US senior engineers are the most expensive line item they carry. A senior software engineer runs $185,000. A back-end or full stack engineer $165,000. An engineering manager $210,000. Staff a full team at those rates and burn decides the roadmap before the roadmap does.
Monarch needed senior engineers who could own core product work from day one, not junior contractors who needed hand-holding. So it built the team in Brazil.
02 The Build
Eight hires, almost all engineering
An engineering manager to lead. A senior software engineer and a software engineer on core product. A core experience engineer and two customer software engineers on the customer-facing side. Plus an IT and compliance specialist.
Every candidate is English-tested, cleared a LatamCent interview, and completes a technical assessment before Monarch ever sees them. What reaches the client is a short list that has already cleared the bar.
03 The Gap
The same eight roles, two payrolls
Role by role
Teal is what Monarch pays. The full bar is the US market rate for the same role.
48% less
63% less
68% less
68% less
70% less
72% less
72% less
37% less
“Just posting jobs is one thing, but looking for the right people that have the right experience and the right context within Brazil specifically, that requires some more effort. And that’s basically where LatamCent comes in as a great partner.”
Lucas Soranzo, Engineering Lead, Monarch
04 The Hardest Role
The search they did not want to announce
Monarch runs two groups in Brazil. Technical solutions architects work out of Rio. The customer engineering team sits in the south, centered on a physical office in Caxias. Bringing those two groups closer together meant changing how the engineering team was run, and that needed an experienced manager. Alex tells that story on video here.
CTO Alex Nauda wanted the search kept off the job boards until he knew what was out there.
“We preferred not to publicly list the job because we didn’t want to broadcast to the whole company until we knew what we would find.”
So it ran as a separate pathway. A private Slack channel, and a shared Notion board carrying every candidate and their stage, visible to both sides.
“One of the things that I found really helpful was when you created a separate recruiting pathway for this. We kept it in a private Slack channel. We had a separate Notion board, which is a really great way of sharing information in a transparent way.”
Three hard requirements
“I was blown away because LatamCent was able to find more than one qualified candidate who met all of it. So it turned out it wasn’t a unicorn, at least not for you. That was really impressive.”
Alex Nauda, CTO, Monarch
05 How It Runs
Requirements in, screened candidates back
Lucas Soranzo has been at the company about four years and leads the integration work. The dev team in Brazil grew heavily over that stretch, which is where LatamCent fits.
“We definitely noticed the difference in the level of the candidates that we get just organically from the candidates that we get from LatamCent.”
Lucas Soranzo, Engineering Lead, Monarch
“You also help us on keeping up with the pipelines, because sometimes we have different streams that receive people. It’s easy to lose track of all the details and correctly following up with people. The work from LatamCent also helps us to give candidates a better experience throughout the process.”
Lucas Soranzo, Engineering Lead, Monarch
06 Why It Held
Cheap hires that leave in six months are not savings
This team stayed. Retention sits at 88%, seven of the eight hires still on the team, all still building. For a team assembled over roughly the past year, that is the number that matters.
07 The Team
The team, by the numbers
| Role | LatamCent | US market | Saved | Fill | Tenure | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering Manager | $110,000 | $210,000 | $100,000 | 35d | 4mo | Active |
| Senior Software Engineer | $68,000 | $185,000 | $117,000 | 74d | 9mo | Active |
| Software Engineer | $52,000 | $165,000 | $113,000 | 62d | 7mo | Active |
| Full Stack Engineer | $52,000 | $165,000 | $113,000 | 58d | 11mo | Active |
| Core Experience Engineer | $50,000 | $165,000 | $115,000 | 66d | 8mo | Active |
| Customer Software Engineer | $46,000 | $165,000 | $119,000 | 44d | 6mo | Active |
| Customer Software Engineer | $46,000 | $165,000 | $119,000 | 41d | 5mo | Departed |
| IT & Compliance Specialist | $66,000 | $105,000 | $39,000 | 31d | 0mo | Active |
| Total | $490,000 | $1,325,000 | $835,000 | |||
Fill is days from kickoff to signed offer. Tenure is months on the team to date.
The two hires, in their own words
Frequently asked questions
How does LatamCent vet candidates?
Every candidate is English-tested, cleared a LatamCent interview, and completes a technical assessment before the client reviews a short list. The client makes the final call.
How long does it take to hire engineers through LatamCent?
Senior engineering searches take longer than volume roles, and several of these ran two to three months given the seniority bar. For most roles we place pre-vetted talent in 21 days or less.
Senior engineers in Brazil and across Latin America, pre-vetted and ready to own core product work. Most roles filled in 21 days or less.
