Building Winning Teams for Conduktor

16 Oct

Conduktor is the governance hub for streaming, bringing security, trust, and control to Kafka environments of any scale or complexity.
Platform-agnostic and compatible with all major Kafka providers, Conduktor makes data discoverable, secure, resilient, and AI-ready — without slowing teams down.

Their mission: to make operational data ready to use, trusted, and AI-ready by connecting it to the right people at the right time.
Led by founders Nicolas Orban (CEO), Stéphane Derosiaux (CTO), and Stéphane Maarek (Chief Evangelist), Conduktor has grown rapidly from its 2020 founding through major funding rounds, including a $20 million Series A led by Accel and a $30 million Series B supporting global expansion.

The company operates from London and New York, powering innovation for enterprise customers across financial services, retail, logistics, and AI-driven sectors.

The Challenge

When Conduktor first partnered with The Recruiter, the company was in its earliest growth phase, hiring their fourth employee and preparing for significant expansion.
They faced the typical early-stage hurdles:

A technically complex product built around Apache Kafka
Limited brand awareness in a competitive SaaS landscape
No defined interview or hiring process
An urgent need to hire the first commercial team, from SDRs and Account Executives to Marketing and RevOps

Working closely with the founders, we were tasked with designing and implementing a scalable, standardised recruitment framework capable of attracting exceptional talent to Conduktor’s mission.

The Approach

We adopted a hybrid model of Embedded Recruitment + Retained Search to support Conduktor’s rapid growth.

Embedded: Two days per week as an integrated team member — complete Slack and email access, participation in leadership meetings, and full use of their Workable ATS.
Retained: Strategic oversight and delivery for senior or business-critical roles.

This combination allowed us to:

Operate as an extension of Conduktor’s internal team
Mirror their tone, values, and brand in every candidate interaction
Ensure consistency and fairness in the newly created interview process
Move fast without compromising quality

The Results

Over a two-year partnership (2021 – 2023), we built the foundation of Conduktor’s go-to-market organisation across EMEA, hiring 15+ commercial professionals who would go on to shape the company’s growth trajectory.

Roles Filled

Account Executives × 4
Business Development Representatives × 6
Revenue Operations x 2 & Sales Development Leader
Senior Field Marketing Manager

Each of these hires represented foundational positions within the business, the first of their kind at Conduktor.

Key Outcomes

Established and scaled Conduktor’s EMEA Sales & Marketing function
Supported the company through its $20 million Series A
Delivered a candidate experience reflective of Conduktor’s values and product excellence

Feedback from Conduktor

David Khan – VP Sales

“Pragmatic, strong point of view and analytical. I worked with John to build the EMEA sales team in a very early-stage startup. He creates strong connections with candidates by coaching them during the process while guiding the manager to take fair decisions on hard and soft skills.”

Michael Thornton – Manager, Sales Development

“John was instrumental in building out the SDR function for Conduktor in EMEA. He coached candidates at every stage of the process, and the level of talent was consistently high. I’d highly recommend him to any early-stage startup building its Sales or SDR function.”

The Impact

By combining embedded partnership with retained precision, The Recruiter helped Conduktor:

Launch and mature their EMEA go-to-market strategy
Build cohesive commercial functions from the ground up
Attract high-calibre talent aligned to Conduktor’s mission and values
Establish a scalable hiring model fit for future growth

The collaboration continued through their Series A and beyond, positioning Conduktor for accelerated international expansion and continued success in the streaming-data space.