Find the Real Top Talent | Software Engineers Vetted by the Most Challenging Process

In an ever-growing tech industry, accessing the right talent is crucial. As technology advances, businesses increasingly seek specialized engineers capable of delivering fast, scalable solutions while adapting to shifting priorities. Consequently, every IT services provider—whether offering end-to-end development, team augmentation, staffing, personnel leasing, or recruitment platforms—promotes its talent pool as the most efficient solution.

“Get access to the top 2% (or 1%) of vetted engineers” is a common claim among such providers. While these engineers are undoubtedly skilled, the messaging may create unrealistic expectations. Two critical questions arise: 2% of what? And how does the vetting process work? It may vary from business to business, but in most cases, vetting involves an initial AI-driven screening followed by one or more generalized technical interviews. As a result, the “top 2%” often represents only a selection from a provider’s candidate pool, making it difficult to compare across different talent sources. While still impressive, this benchmark does not necessarily satisfy the needs of highly innovative tech companies seeking the world’s true top software engineers.

Where To Look For The True 0.1% Top Talent

A strong indicator of elite talent lies in the history of the ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest), a competition that has run for 55 years on an international scale. Every year, ICPC attracts 60,000 computer science students worldwide to tackle some of the toughest algorithmic problems. Through rigorous national and regional elimination phases, the ICPC World Finals bring together the best 400 participants. The initial pool consists of the top 5% of students from each computer science university—many of whom are former high school STEM Olympiad medalists. Simply qualifying for the World Finals places a participant in the top 0.1% of the world’s six million computer science students.

Engaging with former ICPC World Finalists and medalists guarantees access to a truly elite group of engineers. Unlike any subjective vetting processes, ICPC provides a globally recognized and uniform benchmark of excellence. One very interesting part is in the methodology itself – it does not give partial points – you have to fully resolve the problem to get the point. The complexity of ICPC World Finals problems is so high that even the latest-generation large language models (LLMs) have yet to solve them. Marius Dumitran, lecturer, ICPC team coach, and professor at the University of Bucharest, believes this will remain true for the foreseeable future.

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has a long-standing tradition of excellence in mathematics, beginning in primary school and continuing through high school STEM Olympiads. As a result, the region consistently achieves outstanding ICPC results. However, because ICPC is a university-based competition, top Western European institutions remain strong contenders. Due to economic factors, many highly talented students from CEE migrate to Western Europe for university, a trend we have previously discussed. Notably, a significant number of these students return after completing their studies.

Diving Into The World of Top Talent

A competitive educational environment, continuous participation in elite contests (STEM Olympiads and ICPC), and training at top European universities—often complemented by internships at leading tech companies—creates an environment that fosters world-class talent. This is further reinforced by Emerging Europe’s latest study, which ranks Romania as the second most competitive talent market in the region, following Poland.Since our founding, Softbinator has been committed to identifying and supporting exceptional talent in their pursuit of international recognition. We actively encourage and engage with these individuals, celebrating their achievements. In our latest podcast, we sat down with Marius Dumitran for an inspiring conversation about the world’s true top 0.1% of engineers.

In the final part of our interview, we explored how AI advancements will shape the future for these gifted students and why they are the ideal engineers to drive innovation in AI development. We invite you to watch this engaging one-hour discussion or read the summary below.

1. Tell us about your history and career so far.

Key takeaways:

• Strong academic background in Romania with international experience.
• Worked at major tech companies (Google, Palantir) before returning to teach.
• Took a sabbatical to travel the world before resuming his academic career.

I did high school here, bachelor, master’s and PhD at the University of Bucharest. I did a short Erasmus in Sorbonne and a short research visit in Germany. […] During university, I had internships at Google, Facebook, and Twitter. […] I worked as software engineer at Palantir in London and Google in Zurich. […] Took a seven-month trip around the world before coming back to Romania to teach.

2. You mentioned that you coached the ICPC team. What is that and why is this competition relevant? Are there any other relevant contests?

Key takeaways:

• IOI and ICPC are the main programming competitions, testing problem-solving and algorithmic skills.
• IOI is for high school students, ICPC is for university students and is team-based.
• These contests develop strong coding skills and foster teamwork.

IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics) is for high school students, with individual problem-solving and partial credit scoring. […] ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) is team-based, requires full solutions, and has a strict error-free requirement. […] It’s the oldest programming contest, with over 60,000 participants annually. […] This contest does not accept small mistakes. So if you’ve done 99% of the problem, but you have one mistake, you get zero points. […] You have to be able to think about your code, to write the main ideas on paper maybe before coding because you have limited time to code.

3. Why are those students so highly regarded? Does winning mean they can code better? Why do top tech leaders headhunt them?

Key takeaways:

• ICPC winners excel at solving complex problems quickly.
• Some are great engineers, but others excel only in competition settings.
• Companies like Google, Facebook, and financial firms actively seek them.

Out of the 60 000 participants only around 400 students get to the world finals so way less than 1% […] Some ICPC contestants are naturally great engineers, while others are more focused on problem-solving. […] ICPC teaches teamwork and real-world coding discipline, unlike IOI. […] Google, Facebook, and finance firms actively recruit these talents for their ability to solve hard optimization problems.

4. How strong is Romania and CEE in these contests?

Key takeaways:

• Romania consistently ranks among the top five countries in IOI.
• The region’s education system emphasizes math and computer science.
• Many top students move to Western universities or tech companies.

Romania is in the top five for IOI medals. […] CEE education emphasizes math, algorithms, and problem-solving from an early age. […]  Our educational system, especially in Romania, but in other countries around it’s the same, focuses a lot on STEM, on math, on computer science, on physics. […] we also have good representation from all genders in technology and so there’s a larger area us to get talent from. [..] Many top students later migrate to Western Europe’s universities or companies.

5. How competitive is the talent pool from Romania and why?

Key takeaways:

• Competitive culture in schools fosters top talent.
• Economic challenges push students to excel.
• Talented engineers prefer meaningful projects over just high salaries.

Romania’s education system promotes competition early on. […]  We talk about differential equations, dynamic programming, max flow in 10th, 11th grade. So like this is a ridiculous amount of math and computer science […]  in Romania, we had great results in math and computer science. So we’ve put focus on that. There has been a lot of TV news about this. My brother actually won two gold medals at the International Olympiad and we had press coming to our house quite often [..] Also, the economic struggles make students work harder to achieve success. […] Many top talents prefer meaningful work over just high salaries.

6. How has AI impacted these talents? Are ICPC participants more prepared for AI work?

Key takeaways:

• AI competitions are growing, attracting some ICPC talents.
• ICPC problem-solving skills translate well to AI research.
• Some top AI researchers, like OpenAI’s chief scientist, have ICPC backgrounds.

ICPC winners have strong problem-solving skills that are useful for AI. […] Jakub, OpenAI’s chief scientist, was an ICPC competitor and credited it for his success. […] AI is pulling some top talents away from traditional algorithmic contests.

7. How is the life of the ordinary CS student influenced by AI?

Key takeaways:

• AI is changing how students learn and do homework.
• Over-reliance on AI tools can weaken critical thinking.
• Teachers struggle to ensure deep learning remains a priority.

AI makes it easy to get instant answers, reducing critical thinking. […] Students should solve problems on their own before relying on AI. […] Andrew Yang suggests keeping core CS subjects AI-free to ensure deep learning.[…] Encourage students to work through problems before using AI. […] try to solve this problem by yourself for an hour, for two hours, for a day before relying on LLMs.

8. How do you see software engineering in the future, given AI advancements?

Key takeaways:

• AI will assist coding, but engineers need strong fundamentals.
• Testing and debugging skills will become more critical.
• Software engineers will shift towards understanding AI-generated code.

Software engineering isn’t disappearing, but roles will evolve. […] AI-generated code still needs human oversight, testing, and debugging. […] Understanding system architecture and prompt engineering will be essential.

9. Final Advice: How should startups hire top talent and prepare for AI?

Key takeaways:

• Test candidates on debugging and problem-solving, not just coding.
• Encourage deep problem-solving before relying on AI.
• Look for adaptability and critical thinking over specific technical skills.

Hiring should focus on debugging skills, not just coding ability. […] Understanding AI’s limits and strengths is key for future engineers. […] LLMs will produce errors, so I would try to find these critical thinking skills in the people. […] Hold an interview where the candidates try to deconstruct things and see if the person understands the pieces and can solve the problems.

by Rareș Cârligeanu HR Manager