Case Study
How Wispr Flow hired 2 engineers with Contrario after testing 50+ recruiting channels
Wispr Flow has raised $81M in under four years. Here's how they hired two remote engineers with Contrario after writing remote hiring off entirely.
Arya Marwaha
Co-Founder & CEO
May 16, 2026
$700M
Valuation as of Nov 2025
2
channels ever hired from
15 days
to meet hire on their most recent search
Wispr Flow turns speech into finished writing inside any application, running on foundation models it trains itself. Founded in 2021 by Tanay Kothari and Sahaj Garg, the company has raised $81M, most recently in a round led by Notable Capital.
Ramon Honório
Member of Technical Staff
Mateus Calisto
LATAM iOS & Desktop Quality Engineer
The Problem
Two remote hires that did not work out
Both of Wispr Flow's last two remote engineering hires turned out to be working multiple jobs. Neither had raised a flag in a standard interview process, and the divided attention showed up in the work. The design and UX fidelity on iOS suffered, and testing stopped at the obvious paths.
Nobody owned QA in the first place. Testing was absorbed by engineers between sprints, and Wispr needed someone who could take it over outright from the first week.
So Wispr Flow changed what it was evaluating. Instead of a pipeline, it evaluated one recruiter's placement record, with that recruiter accountable for every candidate who reached them.
The Solution
One recruiter, embedded and recalibrating live
Contrario matched Wispr Flow with Tony, a recruiter on the platform with deep LATAM engineering networks. Tony ran both searches end to end, working directly alongside Wispr Flow's engineering leadership.
Wispr Flow initially scoped a standard SDET role. Cliff Chang, VP of Engineering, explained why that would not work: the product has to handle real voice across different apps and accessibility layers, which no existing testing framework covers. They needed a creative, problem solver, not a conventional SDET.
Tony rebuilt the search around that insight and kept the volume deliberately low, screening against Cliff and Ayushi's notes.
This is what Wispr Flow works with Contrario for. The company does not want a marketplace or a volume of submissions. It wants one recruiter whose judgment it has already tested, running the process directly.
The impact
Two engineers, no compromise on the bar
Tony went to his own network and did the outreach himself for both hires.
Mateus Calisto joined as an iOS and Desktop Quality Engineer, an Apple Developer Academy alum and WWDC23 Swift Student Challenge winner. Wispr Flow's team was looking at his profile just 15 days into the search.
Ramon Honorio joined as an iOS Engineer, coming off a DoorDash contract and referenced by engineering managers at Nubank and Mira Educação. Wispr Flow took the longer runway on his search deliberately, given how central the role was to the iOS roadmap.
Both hires are still on the team. After two remote hires that did not hold, that continuity matters to Wispr Flow more than how quickly the roles got filled.
A higher bar, by design
Wispr Flow is one of the most demanding customers on Contrario's platform, and that is the point. The company continues to hire through the same recruiter, because a bar that strict only has to be cleared once to be worth trusting again.
"We've tested 50+ recruiting channels and only hired from 2. Contrario was one of them."
— Tanay Kothari, Founder & CEO
Wispr Flow
Voice-Native Dictation
SERIES A EXTENSION · NOV 2025
$81M
raised
Industry
AI Voice / Productivity Software
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Employees
50+
Stage
Series A
FOUNDERS
Tanay Kothari
Co-Founder / CEO
Sahaj Garg
Co-Founder / CTO
Roles Hired via Contrario
iOS Engineer
iOS & Desktop Quality Engineer
1+ roles ongoing…
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