Most staffing firms answer a requisition with volume. Tephra was built to answer it with one well-matched person: a Rails developer who has actually shipped inside a startup, a business analyst who understands the credit default swaps market. We have been doing exactly that for companies from first-round ventures to multinationals since 1998.
Permanent search, contract staffing, and all of the screening that happens before a résumé ever reaches you.
How we workContract and permanent work for mid- to senior-level technologists, placed with companies across the United States.
What we placeWe run the search ourselves: sourcing, outreach, screening and reference work. We stay with the placement after the offer is signed. Nothing is handed to a résumé mill.
Permanent placement for the roles your own pipeline has not produced. We work the search directly and go outbound for the person who is not currently looking, rather than forwarding whoever applied.
Contractors for a project, a backfill or a capacity gap, placed on the same screening standard as a permanent search. We are flexible on right-to-hire clauses and on rates.
The work around a placement that most firms leave with you. Available alongside a search or on their own, for candidates you have sourced yourself.
Not a category and not a keyword: a specific profile with a reason attached. These are the firm's own long-standing examples of the searches it exists to run.
“A Rails developer who has actually shipped inside a startup.”
Not a framework match. Someone who has carried a product through the part where there is no team to hand it to.
“A business analyst who understands the credit default swaps market.”
Domain knowledge that cannot be taught in a ramp-up window, in a candidate pool that is small and mostly employed.
A third representative search, in your own words, for a role you have filled recently.
On the handover list. It ships empty rather than invented: no example is written here that the firm has not published itself.
The sequence matters here, so it is numbered. You are told where the search is at each stage, and you never receive a candidate we have not spoken to.
We take the requisition in a conversation rather than a form field: the team, the stack, the constraints, and what "right" actually looks like.
Our own network first, then outbound to the people who fit the profile and are not currently on the market.
Every candidate is screened against your requirements before you see them. Assessment testing and background checks on request.
A short list with our reasoning attached, why this person and where the gaps are, rather than a stack of résumés.
We stay in it through offer, references and relocation, and we check in once the placement has started.
Neither side of this business is a footnote on the other. Each page carries the full picture for that reader.
What we place, how a search is run and priced against your requirements, what we need from you to start, and the value-added services available alongside a placement.
The kind of work we place, how a contract engagement actually runs, what happens after you send a résumé, and the current list of open roles.
Each of these can be bought on its own, for a candidate you found yourself.
One form, two doors. Tell us which side you are on and we will answer as a person, usually the same business day.
