60+ permanent and contract hires. Seven specialist disciplines. 18 months.
Situation
Cox Automotive was undertaking one of its most significant European technology programmes – building a new, data-driven platform for a major global automotive manufacturer.
Designed to transform how used vehicle stock is managed and remarketed across multiple European markets, the platform brings together Product Engineering, data and intelligent decisioning to optimise pricing, stock, sales channels, timing and buyer behaviour.
The scale and ambition of the programme created an equally significant talent challenge.
Cox needed to rapidly build multidisciplinary technology teams, combining permanent talent to create long-term capability with specialist contractors providing immediate expertise and delivery capacity.
And they needed to do it without hiring becoming a bottleneck to the programme.
Task
djr was engaged to help Cox build and scale the teams required to deliver the platform.
This wasn’t a requirement for a handful of individual hires. Cox needed significant capability across multiple disciplines and workstreams, with requirements evolving as the programme moved through different stages of delivery.
Over an 18-month period, our remit covered:
- Product Engineering Managers
- Product & Software Engineers
- Product Owners
- Product Managers
- QA & Quality Engineers
- Project Managers
- Programme Managers
The objective was clear:
Build the capability Cox needed at the pace the programme demanded.
Action
We worked closely with Cox’s Product and Technology leadership to understand the platform, its roadmap, technical environment and the capability required across each stage of delivery.
Rather than treating every requirement as an isolated search, we built specialist talent communities around the programme and anticipated where capability would be required next.
That allowed us to support permanent and contract hiring simultaneously — deploying specialist contractors where immediate expertise or additional delivery capacity was required, while identifying permanent hires to strengthen long-term capability.
Our networks across Product Engineering, Software Engineering, Product, QA and Technology Delivery enabled us to support multiple workstreams and product-aligned teams at the same time.
As the programme scaled and requirements changed, we could respond quickly because we already understood the environment, the leadership teams and what successful delivery looked like.
Result
In just 18 months, djr delivered 60+ permanent and contract hires across Product, Engineering, QA and Programme Delivery.
Those hires have helped Cox build the multidisciplinary capability required to design, engineer, test and deliver a sophisticated data-driven platform operating across multiple European markets.
The platform combines significant volumes of automotive and market data with intelligent decisioning to optimise fundamental commercial decisions around what to sell, when to sell it, where to sell it and at what price.
By combining permanent recruitment with specialist contract capability, Cox has been able to scale teams quickly while continuing to build long-term capability internally.
What started as recruitment support has developed into a strategic talent partnership supporting one of Cox Automotive’s most significant European technology programmes.
- 18 months. 60+ hires. One critical programme.
- Permanent + Contract
- Product + Engineering + QA + Delivery
- Multiple product-aligned teams
- Multiple European markets
When a technology programme needs to scale, recruitment can’t be the thing that slows it down.
We build the teams that keep delivery moving.
we are djr 🔵⚪
