Faster Hiring and Lower Costs: Driving Taboola’s R&D Growth

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The Opportunity: Accelerating Mobile Innovation in a Talent-Scarce Market

Between 2018-2019, Taboola identified a strategic opportunity to push the boundaries of mobile innovation and redefine how users engage with digital content. Known for its forward-thinking culture and rapid innovation cycles, Taboola set out to expand its mobile ecosystem and bring new experiences to customers a global scale.

However, Israel’s mobile talent market was becoming increasingly competitive, making it challenging to secure the high-caliber developers needed to sustain this pace of growth. To maintain its leadership position, Taboola needed a partner capable of matching its speed, innovation, and technical ambition.

Our collaboration was built around four key pillars that reflected Taboola’s visionary approach:

• Scaling with Niche Expertise: Taboola’s product vision demanded specialized engineering skills that could bring new mobile features to life quickly and flawlessly. Recognizing that innovation depends on precision, the company sought a partner able to deliver hard-to-find, elite tech talent ready to contribute from day one.

• Accelerating Time-to-Market: With innovation cycles measured in weeks, not months, Taboola required a flexible talent model that could support rapid prototyping, deployment, and iteration -without compromising on code quality or user experience.

• Strategic Resource Optimization: True to its forward-looking mindset, Taboola aimed to keep its core teams laser-focused on high-impact architecture and product innovation. Partnering with a trusted engineering talent provider enabled its leadership to streamline recruitment complexity and maintain momentum across multiple product verticals.

• Maximizing Budget Efficiency: Innovation at scale requires not only great ideas but also smart resource management. Taboola’s approach was to implement a cost-efficient, high-performance scaling model, ensuring that every investment directly contributed to immediate development outcomes and long-term growth.

How 5Blue Stepped In: Enabling Scalable Innovation Through Engineering Excellence

Our approach was built around creating seamless integration with Taboola’s in-house teams and ensuring immediate impact from day one.

Here’s how we made it happen:

• Embedded Technical Partnership: We assembled a dedicated engineering team tailored to Taboola’s product needs - senior mobile developers and QA specialists who shared the company’s obsession with performance, precision, and innovation. Each hire was pre-vetted for both technical excellence and cultural fit, ensuring an instant connection with Taboola’s fast-moving environment.

• Accelerating Time-to-Market: From sprint one, our engineers operated as part of Taboola’s internal ecosystem - participating in stand-ups, code reviews, and product planning sessions. This level of collaboration ensured that 5Blue talent worked as an extension of Taboola’s own R&D, not an external contractor.

• Strategic Resource Optimization: Our team helped Taboola accelerate the delivery of new mobile features, reducing release cycles and increasing overall product velocity. With a focus on reliability and performance optimization, 5Blue’s engineers enabled Taboola to bring user-centric innovations to market faster and more efficiently than ever before.

• Maximizing Budget Efficiency: As Taboola’s roadmap evolved, so did our collaboration. 5Blue’s flexible engagement model allowed the company to scale engineering capacity dynamically, ensuring that critical milestones were met without compromising quality or timelines.

Strategic Outcomes:

• 7 Years of Sustained Partnership
• 15+ Embedded Engineers
• 5-Year Average Retention
• ~30% Cost Efficiency

We delivered a product so successful our client adopted the entire outstaffing team to create a new in-house department. This allowed them to enter a new niche with minimal risk and expert talent already in place.