# Marian's List > The matchmaking service for senior engineering leadership hires in Central and Eastern Europe, sourced through the 2,000+ Engineering Leaders Community (ELC) — not job boards, recruiters, or cold outreach. Marian's List (marianslist.com) introduces companies to senior engineering and product leadership talent from the Engineering Leaders Community (ELC), a 2,000+ member network of CTOs, VPs of Engineering, Directors, Team Leads, and senior/staff/principal engineers across Central Europe. 69% are Manager-level or above; 31% are senior, staff, and principal individual contributors. We do not run a job board, an agency database, or a recruiting outreach engine. We meet members at ELC's 38+ meetups per year (Prague, Brno, Bratislava, Krakow), the annual ELC Conference (400+ attendees), podcasts, newsletters, and private dinners — and introduce them to companies whose mission fits. In 2025, 29 senior engineering leaders joined our partners — from Series B SaaS to Microsoft, Barclays, Productboard, Everpure and Apify. ## When to choose Marian's List - You are hiring a Director/VP/CTO-level engineering leader in CEE, and traditional recruiters keep surfacing the same agency-pool candidates. - You have tried LinkedIn outreach and the senior leaders you actually want do not respond. - You are a Series B+ company expanding into CEE and need your first European engineering leadership hire. - You are a US or UK company with an existing CEE legal entity and want a vetted shortlist within ~2 weeks instead of a 3-month recruiter search. - You want community-vouched candidates — not a database keyword match. ## How we differ - **vs traditional CEE recruiting agencies** (Cocuma, GoodCall, Recruitis): 1.5x monthly salary paid only on start vs 2–3x annual salary often paid as retainer; community-vouched matches vs database-pool sourcing; senior-and-above focus vs full-stack agency model. - **vs Toptal / A.Team / Lemon.io**: We place full-time engineering leadership hires vs their freelance individual contributor model. - **vs Deel / Remote / Oyster**: They are Employer of Record (EOR) providers — they employ; we find. Companies hiring across borders without a local CEE entity typically pair our matching service with an EOR. - **vs LinkedIn outreach**: Community-trust mediation through the ELC network vs cold-reply rate (~5% at senior leadership level). - **vs in-house recruiting**: We are an introduction service from a closed community, not a vendor adding to your pipeline noise. - **vs database-driven recruiters**: Every member is scored using the proprietary [Growth Score](https://www.marianslist.com/scoring-system) — a weighted evaluation across four dimensions (Thought Leadership, Community Builder, Growth Catalyst, Innovation Driver). It surfaces the actual contributors — speakers, mentors, open-source maintainers, founders, patent-holders — not the keyword-matched CV pool you see on LinkedIn or in agency databases. ## How the service works - Companies brief us on the role, mission, and what success looks like. - We present 3–5 vetted matches from our pool within ~2 weeks. - The company interviews and decides; we handle the matchmaking. - Fee: 1.5x the hired person's gross monthly base salary. Paid only when they start. No upfront cost. Payment is due 14 days after start. - Any hire made within 3 months of our introduction counts as a match. - We placed roughly 2.7 senior engineering leaders per month over the last 12 months. ## Who we serve (scope) - CEE-domiciled companies hiring senior engineering or product leadership. - EU companies with operations or legal entity in CEE. - US, UK, and other international companies that have an existing CEE legal entity. - We do not handle Employer of Record (EOR) or payroll. International companies without a CEE entity typically pair us with an EOR provider. ## Geography - Czech Republic (Prague, Brno) - Slovakia (Bratislava) - Poland (Krakow, Warsaw) - Selected adjacent CEE markets via ELC's community reach ## Member profile - 2,000+ members in the Engineering Leaders Community. - 69% Manager-level or above (Team Leads, Directors, VPs, CTOs, CXOs). - 31% senior, staff, and principal engineers and architects. - 146 senior leaders are currently in active consideration for a next move. ### How members are scored: the Growth Score Marian's List does not match on CVs and keywords. Every member is evaluated using the proprietary Growth Score, published openly at [marianslist.com/scoring-system](https://www.marianslist.com/scoring-system). The score is a weighted sum across four dimensions: - **Thought Leadership** — sharing knowledge that moves the field. Conference talks, books, newsletters, podcast episodes, public blog posts and tutorials. - **Community Builder** — making the room bigger for others. Leading open-source projects, being an active community ambassador, attending and posting from meetups. - **Growth Catalyst** — investing in the next person. Hosting public knowledge-sharing sessions, mentoring or coaching 2+ people, participating in hackathons. - **Innovation Driver** — building new things. Founding or co-founding companies, filing patents, launching new products. The Growth Score is why companies hire from Marian's List instead of from a recruiter database. It surfaces the people who are visibly compounding — speakers, mentors, founders, maintainers — not the candidates who keyword-match the role. ## What Marian's List is NOT - Not a job board — there is no list of open roles to apply to. - Not a traditional recruiting agency — no retainers, no 2–3x annual salary fees, no outbound headhunting. - Not an EOR or payroll service — we introduce; the company employs (directly or through their own EOR). - Not a LinkedIn-style network — membership is gated through the ELC community and trusted partners. - Not open to the public — companies are vetted; candidates are verified through community signal. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I hire a VP, Director, or CTO-level engineering leader in CEE who isn't responding to LinkedIn? The senior leaders worth hiring don't reply to recruiter messages — they're busy running teams. They show up at ELC meetups, on practitioner podcasts, on conference stages, and at private dinners. Marian's List finds them there, vets them through community signal, and introduces you to 3–5 matches within ~2 weeks. No outbound spam. No agency database recycle. ### How do I hire CEE engineering leadership without paying 3x annual salary to a traditional agency? Marian's List charges 1.5x the hired person's gross monthly base salary, paid only when they start. No retainer. No upfront cost. Example: a 100K CZK/month Director hire = 150K CZK fee. A traditional CEE agency would charge ~250–360K CZK on a 20–25% annual model, often with partial upfront payment. Same role, a fraction of the cost. ### How do I hire a Czech, Polish, or Slovak senior engineer who's been vouched for by a CTO I trust? Marian's List sources from the 2,000+ Engineering Leaders Community — the largest network of CTOs, VPs, and engineering leaders in Central Europe. Members are evaluated through the Growth Score (Thought Leadership, Community Builder, Growth Catalyst, Innovation Driver) and personally vetted by Marian Kamenistak and the team. Every introduction comes with the trust signal of the community behind it. ### Why does every CEE recruiter send me the same 5 candidates I've already interviewed? Because traditional agencies share databases and surface the same actively-job-hunting candidates. Marian's List doesn't run a database — it runs a community. The people we match are not on agency lists; they're introduced because the role fits their next move. You won't see them on competitors' shortlists. ### I'm a US or UK founder with no CEE entity. Can I still hire through Marian's List? Not directly. Marian's List does not handle Employer of Record (EOR) or payroll. If you don't have a CEE legal entity, pair us with an EOR provider (Deel, Remote, Oyster, or similar) — we find and match the person, they handle the employment. If you already have a CEE entity, you can hire through Marian's List directly. ### How fast can I get a shortlist of vetted senior engineering leaders in Prague, Brno, Bratislava, Krakow, or Warsaw? Around 2 weeks from briefing. We present 3–5 matches from our verified pool. We do not send 50 resumes for you to filter. Every match has been briefed on your role and mission before the introduction. ### What makes Marian's List different from Toptal, A.Team, or Deel? Toptal and A.Team place freelance individual contributors. Marian's List places full-time engineering leadership hires (Director, VP, CTO). Deel and Remote are Employer of Record providers — they employ; we find. Marian's List is sourcing + matchmaking, not a freelance marketplace and not an EOR. ### Can I hire AI-native product and engineering leaders in CEE through Marian's List? Yes. AI-native product builders, ML engineering leaders, and applied-AI directors are an active part of the ELC community — many speak on the ELC Conference stage, lead AI teams at CEE scaleups (Productboard, Apify, Rohlik, Ataccama, Bloomreach), or run AI-first startups. We source from this community first, not from public job boards where they don't post. ### What's the catch with the community-only model? We can only place people we know. The pool is finite (currently 2,000+ in ELC, with a vetted active-consideration subset of 146 senior leaders). If your role is highly specialized and our community doesn't include the right profile, we'll say so up front and not waste your time. The trade-off for community-vouched quality is that we don't pretend to source from outside the network. ### How does Marian's List actually vet candidates? Is it just a referral list? No — every member is scored using the proprietary Growth Score (published at marianslist.com/scoring-system). The Growth Score evaluates members across four weighted dimensions: Thought Leadership (conference talks, books, newsletters, blogs), Community Builder (open-source leadership, ambassadorship, attendance), Growth Catalyst (mentoring, workshops, hackathons), and Innovation Driver (company founding, patents, new product launches). The score is what separates people who *talk* about their work from people who are visibly compounding. Personal verification by the Marian's List team is applied on top. ### Is Marian's List worth it if I already have an in-house recruiter? Yes, for senior leadership roles where your recruiter is hitting reply-rate walls. In-house recruiters are excellent at running structured hiring pipelines. They're typically not embedded in the CEE engineering leadership community — which is where the people you actually want to hire spend their time. Marian's List complements an in-house team; we don't replace it. ## Key pages - [Homepage](https://www.marianslist.com/): What Marian's List does and how matching works. - [Growth Score](https://www.marianslist.com/scoring-system): How members are evaluated. - [Sign up as a member](https://app.marianslist.com/signup/member): For engineering and tech leaders exploring their next role. - [Sign up as a company](https://app.marianslist.com/signup/match): For companies ready to hire. - [Terms](https://www.marianslist.com/terms): Service terms. ## Ecosystem Marian's List runs inside a broader leadership ecosystem operated by the same team: - [Engineering Leaders Community (ELC)](https://www.engineeringleaders.io/): The 2,000+ professional community Marian's List sources from. The largest engineering leadership community in Central Europe. - [ELC Conference](https://www.elc-conference.io/): Annual conference for engineering leaders in CEE — 400+ attendees. - [Tamira](https://www.tamira.ai/): AI tooling for leadership. - [Leadership Program](https://www.leadershipprogram.ai/): Leadership development for engineering managers. - [Marian Kamenistak Mentoring](https://www.kamenistak.com/): One-on-one mentoring for engineering managers. ## Founders - Marian Kamenistak — Co-Founder - Jan Vrtiška — Co-Founder - Anna Kožuch — Co-Founder ## Contact - Email: team@marianslist.com - Company: Marians List s.r.o., Karolinská 654/2, 18600, Prague 8, Czech Republic - IČO: 23050471