How Runway uses Paraform to stay lean and hire high-bar engineering talent
John Kim
•
Co-founder @ Paraform
March 15, 2026
March 15, 2026
Hires across product engineering and finance
Staff-level engineers hired
“Paraform has been one of our most valuable hiring partners as we've scaled. They understood what we were building, why the bar mattered, and how to find people who could genuinely thrive here. Because of that, we can run lean but scale fast without skipping a beat.”
Runway is a collaborative financial planning and forecasting platform used by companies to model, plan, and align their business in real time.
The company was founded by Siqi Chen (former Head of Product at Zynga and VP Growth at Postmates) and Arya Asemanfar (ex-Twitter, Mixpanel, and Lightstep) - operators who have built inside hypergrowth environments and know exactly how much every hire matters when scaling.
Over the past 18 months, Runway has scaled from roughly $150K in ARR to over $4M, serving 200+ paying customers and pushing toward $6M+ by year end.
They move fast. They run lean. And they do not compromise on talent.
Each engineer at Runway works on products customers use to simulate and make multi-million-dollar decisions. There’s no room for average.
The product engineering role they needed was truly full stack - roughly a 50/50 split between frontend and backend work - with engineers rotating through pods and projects over time rather than being siloed.
As product velocity increased, the team needed to hire multiple people across backend and product engineering to hit their roadmap. But Runway didn’t want to lower the bar or build a large internal recruiting org just to keep pace.
They needed:
“We aren't looking for volume, we're looking for precision. Every engineer at Runway works on product that helps companies make multi-million-dollar decisions, so we need people with real technical depth, strong product instincts, and the kind of ownership mindset that only thrives in a startup environment.” - Annie Wu, Head of People & Operations
Their most common rejection reasons were clear: candidates missing the technical bar and culture bar or not being ready for a startup environment. Volume was never the issue. Precision was.
They needed a partner that could hire exactly what they needed.
“Finding a recruiting partner that understands that and knows how to find these unicorns is the make or break for any startup.”
Instead of expanding internal recruiting or relying on traditional agencies, Runway used Paraform to access specialized engineering recruiters calibrated to their exact technical and cultural bar.
“What sets Paraform apart is the breadth of veteran recruiters they bring to the table and the dedicated engagement lead that keeps everything moving.”
Early alignment focused on what “great” actually meant at Runway - seniority expectations, product ownership, startup readiness, and comfort operating at the pace they needed to run at.
Runway’s stack includes React and TypeScript on the frontend, and Go, Postgres, and GraphQL on the backend - running on GCP with Kubernetes and Docker. Searches weren’t broad. They were calibrated to Runway’s bar.
After aligning on role expectations and candidate profile with Paraform’s team, the pipeline shifted from broad to precise. Fewer resumes. Great candidates. Less wasted time.
“Our POC, Emma, is a strategic partner who pushed us on calibration when market trends shifted, helping us tighten our process in real time. That kind of proactive partnership is what lets us keep raising the bar for talent and stay competitive in the market.”
Paraform allowed leadership to keep internal bandwidth focused on evaluation and closing, not sourcing and filtering.
Since kicking off, Runway has made 5 engineering hires through Paraform, including former Principal Engineers from Twilio and Snowflake.
Those hires now contribute directly to core product initiatives - from strengthening modeling infrastructure to supporting new AI-enabled functionality for their core products.
In addition to engineering hires, Runway has expanded its searches to include Forward Deployed Finance Partners - with one successful hire and more to come.
Runway’s leadership team understands hypergrowth because they’ve lived it. Postmates by Uber, Zynga, Twitter, Gusto, Mixpanel, and beyond.
They understand what it takes to win: move fast, stay lean, hire great people.
Paraform became their structural advantage.
“Rather than building internal sourcing capacity from scratch every time hiring spiked, we can dial recruiting support up when needed - and dial it back down when our priorities or needs shift.” – Kirill Klimuk, Head of Engineering
Join world-class teams using Paraform to fill roles in record time.
Join world-class teams using Paraform to fill their most important roles in record time.
