OFFSHORE CASE STUDY
How a Coinbase-backed firm built its first offshore team
out of Pakistan
Elwood evaluated agencies across three continents before
picking Taraki.
ABOUT ELWOOD
Elwood Technologies provides the front-to-back technology stack for institutional investors operating in digital asset markets. Their platform covers execution, portfolio management, risk, collateral, and reconciliation, a single integrated system for the full trade lifecycle.
This isn’t a retail product. Elwood is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority, works with institutional counterparties globally, and sits at the infrastructure end of the digital asset market. Their platform is used by some of the world’s most sophisticated financial institutions.
The company is headquartered in London with a team of 75+. They raised $70M in a Series A led by Coinbase. Until they engaged Taraki, they had never run an offshore team.
Series A led by Coinbase. $70M raised. 75+ person team. Authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority.
THE CHALLENGE
This wasn’t a typical offshore hiring request. Elwood didn’t come to us looking for one or two engineers. They came to us looking for someone who could design, build, and run their entire offshore capacity in Pakistan which included sourcing, interviewing, contracts, payroll, onboarding, and ongoing feedback on both sides. The full operation, run by us.
The question they were asking wasn’t “can you find us engineers?” It was “can you be our offshore HR function?”
Elwood evaluated agencies across South America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. We won on how clearly we ran our process, not on Pakistan having a digital asset talent pool, because it doesn’t. We made the case that a strong engineer learns a new domain in weeks, not years.
We won the work on process transparency, not a pitch deck. Every promise we made about sourcing, vetting, and managing the team, we made in writing, with clear ownership of who did what on both sides. Elwood needed to know what they were buying. We gave them a blueprint.
HOW WE WORKED
Our first profiles didn’t land. That’s worth saying and it’s where most offshore agencies would deflect, over-promise, or stop responding.
We took the feedback and reran our intake. Structured briefing sessions with their engineering leads. Direct questions about the specific behaviours and working styles that had succeeded and failed in their culture. What does “ownership mindset” look like inside a UK institutional finance environment, versus a San Francisco startup? These are meaningfully different things, and we hadn’t gotten the distinction right the first time.
Once we had that picture clearly, the quality of profiles improved sharply. The relationship held through the difficult early period because we communicated through it, honestly, often, and without hiding what wasn’t working.
From there, the operation ran the way we’d promised it would:
01
Sourcing
Against the calibrated profile, drawing on our talent pool of senior engineers with strong English communication.
02
Pre-screening
Every candidate ran through our technical and behavioural screen before Elwood saw them.
03
Interview management
We scheduled, briefed, and managed every interview — including expectation-setting with candidates on working model, time zone requirements, and Elwood’s culture.
04
Close
We handled the offer stage end-to-end, including the contract conversion that brought the engineers onto a structure Elwood could trust.
The interview process itself was rigorous, CPO, CTO, and multiple engineering leads. Every engineer we placed cleared all of it. By the time the team was operational, Elwood wasn’t just trusting us to find people. They were trusting us to run the next phase.
THE OPERATING MODEL
Most offshore agencies stop when the contract is signed. Ours doesn’t because that’s where things usually go wrong. Engineers get siloed. Communication breaks down across time zones. Cultural friction builds invisibly until someone resigns. We’ve seen it happen. The model we run with Elwood is designed specifically to prevent it.
01
Payroll & contract administration
We run contractor payroll on the Pakistan side end-to-end. Elwood has one point of contact. We handle the rest.
02
Onboarding with cultural intelligence
New hires are briefed on UK institutional culture before their first day. How feedback works. What “ownership” means in their context. How to navigate ambiguity in a regulated environment.
03
Monthly check-ins, engineer side
Structured conversations with the Pakistan engineers. We surface where they feel underutilised, where communication is breaking down, and what’s working.
04
Monthly feedback, client side
We share that intelligence back to Elwood leadership in a structured format. They get a clear picture of the offshore team’s health without having to manage it themselves.
05
Cultural coaching for the client
We work with Elwood’s UK leadership on managing across cultures. What motivates Pakistani engineers? How to give feedback appropriately. How to build retention over time.
These aren’t five separate services we sell. They’re one operating model, designed as a system. The monthly check-ins surface what onboarding missed. The client-side feedback shapes the next round of sourcing. The cultural coaching closes loops that would otherwise stay open. Elwood doesn’t have to coordinate any of it. They just receive a working team and a steady stream of intelligence about how it’s actually doing.
THE OUTCOME TODAY
Elwood has a connectivity engineering team running out of Pakistan — built and managed entirely through Taraki. The interview process involved their CPO, CTO, and multiple engineering leads. Every engineer placed cleared all of it.
Their board and investors are aware of and supportive of the offshore structure. That kind of institutional confidence isn’t incidental. It reflects the quality of the engineers we placed and the operating model running around them.
Their first offshore team
Connectivity engineering, in production
Running on the Pakistan side
What Elwood manages
The relationship is positioned for multi-function expansion. Elwood started with connectivity engineering. The same model, sourcing, vetting, managing, and coaching, can extend to QA, operations, and finance functions over time. What began as an offshore engineering experiment is becoming a strategic capability.
IN THEIR WORDS
Michael Abib
CEO, Elwood Technologies
