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What does it take to find a hiring model worth carrying into your next three companies?
3 companies, 4 years: James has introduced Remotely to every engineering team he has led since 2020, from a seed-stage startup to Spring Health, a Series E mental health benefits platform, because the engineers it produced stayed, performed, and made the case for themselves at each new company.
About Spring Health
Spring Health is a mental health benefits platform that connects employers and health plans to evidence-based mental health care. A Series E company valued at $3.3B and backed by Generation Investment Management and Kinnevik, Spring Health was named to TIME's 2026 list of the 100 Most Influential Companies and holds Great Place to Work Certification for 2025 to 2026. Spring Health operates in a sector where regulatory standards and patient safety make every engineering decision matter. James, Senior Engineering Manager, oversees the virtual telehealth platform and the clinical notes system, with 14 engineers reporting to him across both teams. Matt McKenna, Associate Director of Engineering, manages the electronic health record system that providers use when delivering care to members. James arrived at Spring after four years of building teams with Remotely across two previous companies. Matt heard about Remotely through James and brought the same model to his own team independently.
The Challenge
James has spent his career in early-stage health tech. When he became founding CTO at Early Day, the constraints were concrete: no budget for a recruiter, a limited hiring runway, and a roadmap that needed a team larger than a US-only budget could support.
The agency quality problem came later. After Early Day was acquired by Wonderschool, James inherited a group of 15 to 20 engineers based in India through a traditional staffing agency. The issues were familiar to anyone who has been through it.
"When we're comparing the Remotely model versus former agencies I've worked with, the big pain points were time zone, usually South Asia, so it's the middle of the night for everybody, and we'd often pay a set fee and they'd say it's a senior engineer, but it's often a junior engineer. With the Remotely model, you can tell how experienced someone is by how much they're paid, so that transparency really helped, and we'd put them through the same interview process as if we're hiring in the US. Whereas with these agencies, we would ask for a senior engineer, and the next day we have one, and 50% of the time that's not a great fit and probably takes more time than hiring them ourselves." — James Watling, Senior Engineering Manager at Spring Health
On top of the time zone and pay-transparency problems, there was no practical way to reward strong performers either, since any raise or bonus had to clear the agency's approval chain and cut first.
For Matt McKenna, joining Spring's Care Delivery team, the concern was different but equally specific. His team does not run on a ticket-execution model. Engineers own the product and the thinking throughout the whole process. Adding a contractor to that environment introduced a risk that had nothing to do with technical skill.
"My biggest concern when hiring someone that is technically a contractor is that there's going to be less of an ownership mentality, where the person will kind of expect the work to be already sort of parceled out and made just so they can take a ticket and execute the ticket, which is just not the way we work. So I was relieved when we were talking to people, and I think they had that same mindset that we were looking for." — Matt McKenna, Associate Director of Engineering at Spring Health
The Solution
Early Day: where it started
James was introduced to Remotely by his investors at Early Day. Two things landed immediately: the transparency of the fee model, and the speed. He hired four engineers. Every one stayed through the acquisition. Every one continued at Wonderschool after the deal closed.
"The thing that really connected with me was the business model of the transparency with the fee and how much the engineer gets paid." — James Watling
Wonderschool: the displacement
When James brought his Early Day team into Wonderschool, the contrast with the existing offshore setup was visible quickly. His Remotely engineers performed. Other teams noticed.
"Once my team joined, they saw like, 'Hey, these guys are awesome.' Shout out to those guys for just being excellent engineers and kind of making a case for them." — James Watling
Over the following months, Wonderschool wound down the India-based contractor group from 15 to 20 engineers to the 6 to 7 highest performers and replaced the rest with Remotely engineers. The result was a smaller, better-aligned team that moved faster and cost less.
"Cost us less money. Engineers were happier. We were able to get our roadmap done faster, and time zone aligned. It was just like a perfect fit for us." — James Watling
In total, James hired approximately 15 engineers across teams at Wonderschool through Remotely.
Spring Health: the model spreads
When James moved to Spring Health, Remotely came with him. He currently has five Remotely engineers across his two teams. Other engineering teams at Spring have since adopted the same model on their own.
Matt McKenna's team followed independently. The same interview process Spring Health uses for full-time engineers applied to every Remotely candidate: an engineering manager screen, a coding assessment, a system design interview, a pair programming exercise, and a product team conversation before any offer. Candidates from Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil all went through the same sequence.
"If what you're looking for is someone to join the team that feels like they're not a contractor, that they are part of the team, then interviewing them yourselves, like the way Remotely does, is probably the best way to do that." — Matt McKenna
The ownership concern that brought Matt to the process with caution was resolved in the interviews themselves.
"I was relieved when we were talking to people, and I think they had that same mindset that we were looking for." — Matt McKenna
The Engineers in Practice
After four years and three companies, the distinction James draws is not about technical competence. It is about how Remotely engineers think.
"There's something about Remotely engineers that's different. They're often advocates for the product, or they're thinking about it more holistically. It's not a ticket factory that we have with other companies where, 'Here's a ticket, deliver it, next ticket.' They actually are producing designs. They're working with other teams. They're working with product. And there's something about the kind of candidate that goes through Remotely that is entrepreneurial, thinking outside of the box more than just producing." — James Watling
Retention reflects that quality. Every engineer James hired at Early Day stayed through the acquisition and continued at Wonderschool. His read on what drives it: being treated as a full employee, not a contractor, extending all the way to how compensation gets handled.
"I think one of the interesting things about Remotely is that retention is very high. I think we treat them as if they were a US employee, and I have a probably higher retention rate than I do with US employees. We're also able to give them a raise or a bonus directly, things we couldn't do if we're in an agency. With my current agency, we wanted to give someone a raise and it's a huge pain, and we have to have approvals and they take a cut, and it's not fair for us to give a tip to the agency." — James Watling
Looking Ahead
The answer to the opening question is not a recruiter, a cheaper rate card, or a faster agency. It is a hiring model that survives the company that first proved it. James has now carried Remotely through a seed-stage founding team, an acquisition, and into Spring Health, a Series E organization where the same engineers keep clearing the same bar as every US full-time hire.
What makes that durable at Spring Health is that Remotely is no longer only James's preference. Other engineering teams have started adopting the model on their own. Matt McKenna is the clearest proof: he heard about Remotely through James, ran Spring's full interview process on his own team, and kept going once candidates showed the ownership mindset Care Delivery requires.
For engineering leaders who are too busy to rebuild top of funnel every quarter, that is the operating advantage. Remotely keeps the pipeline stocked. The hiring team keeps the bar. The engineers who clear it stay long enough to matter.
"It's nice to have Remotely make sure the top of funnel is fully stocked, and then that we can just, on our team, walk through that funnel. I think that's super helpful in a world where everyone's really busy and it's easy for things like that to get lost." — Matt McKenna
Four years and three companies later, James is still hiring through Remotely, and other Spring Health managers are now doing the same.
Key Results
~20+ engineers hired across the startups James has brought Remotely into, from Early Day through Wonderschool to Spring Health
100% retention at Spring Health since the first Remotely hire in July 2025 (0 churn). That tracks with how James describes the engineers themselves: product advocates who think beyond tickets, treated as full team members, with retention he estimates higher than his US employees
3 engineering managers at Spring Health now hiring through Remotely, across different teams and specialties, a model that earns its own advocates
