How REalchemy hired a Senior DevOps Engineer with confidence — from 500 applicants
A nimble proptech studio built by North America's largest MLSs
REalchemy is a software development organization formed as a joint venture between Bright MLS and California Regional MLS (CRMLS) — the two largest Multiple Listing Services in North America. Headquartered in Toronto and founded in 2022, the company was created to build high-value technology products for agents, brokers, and MLS organizations across the continent.
With a deliberately small, high-calibre team, REalchemy operates as a startup within the real estate ecosystem — nimble, agile, and relentlessly product-focused. Every engineering hire matters. There is no room for mis-hires.
500 applicants. A critical role. And a resume shortlist that still told only half the story.
When REalchemy opened a posting for a Senior DevOps Engineer, they were clear on one thing: the hire had to be fully remote, highly skilled, and genuinely capable of operating independently in a fast-moving engineering environment. What they didn't anticipate was the scale and complexity of the hiring challenge that followed.
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Overwhelming application volumeNearly 500 applications arrived from popular job platforms. A large proportion were poor fits — but a significant subset had polished resumes with all the right keywords, making manual screening a time-intensive and inconclusive exercise.
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The résumé-reality gapIn previous hiring cycles, candidates who looked strong on paper underperformed in interviews. Strong résumé signals did not reliably predict real-world capability, leading to wasted interview rounds and false confidence.
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Candidates using AI to cheat in interviewsFor a fully remote role, the integrity of the screening process was paramount. The team had seen evidence of candidates using AI tools to craft answers in real time — undermining the validity of the entire process.
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Scheduling and coordination overheadCoordinating individual interviews across a large shortlist and time zones consumed significant recruiter and engineering team bandwidth — time better spent building product.
A smarter interview process: adaptive, scalable and able to detect cheating
REalchemy had already done initial resume screening and arrived at a shortlist. But the shortlist was still too long to efficiently interview through traditional means. They turned to AceUnlock to transform that shortlist into a rigorous, scalable, and fair screening process.
The hiring team invited the entire shortlist in one go. Candidates received interview links and could complete their interview at any time, eliminating scheduling back-and-forth.
AceUnlock's AI-driven interview adapted dynamically to each candidate's responses — probing deeper, asking follow-up questions, and assessing true depth of knowledge.
Evaluation criteria tailored specifically to the Sr. DevOps role — covering infrastructure, CI/CD, cloud architecture, and team collaboration competencies.
REalchemy added targeted questions on top of the adaptive engine to probe for experience specific to their real estate technology environment.
AceUnlock analyzed transcript, audio, and video signals from every interview to surface potential cheating behaviour — giving the team confidence the results were authentic.
Before deploying to candidates, REalchemy ran the interview with an internal engineer and external architect to benchmark scores and validate the experience end-to-end.
REalchemy's internal engineer and an external architect completed the interview to validate the rubric and benchmark performance expectations.
All shortlisted candidates received interview links via AceUnlock. No scheduling coordination required.
Over a 3-week window, candidates completed their interviews on their own schedule. More than 95% completed in a single sitting with no technical issues.
The AceUnlock dashboard surfaced the top 10 candidates ranked by rubric scores. The hiring team reviewed recordings and integrity reports side by side.
The top-ranked candidate by the rubric was the same candidate they hired — validating the entire screening process.
A confident hire — backed by data, not gut feel
At the close of a three-week screening window, the AceUnlock dashboard gave REalchemy's hiring team something they hadn't experienced before: clarity. The process produced a ranked shortlist of top candidates, each with a recorded interview, a rubric-based score, and an integrity report.
Applications received, screened to a manageable shortlist without manual overhead
Of candidates completed their interview in a single sitting, no technical issues
Candidates auto-surfaced by dashboard with scores and recordings for review
Agreement between the rubric's top-ranked candidate and the person ultimately hired
Beyond the numbers, the team left the process with something harder to quantify: confidence. The ability to watch interview recordings, review integrity flags, and see rubric scores side by side meant the hiring decision was grounded in evidence — not impression management or resume keywords.
AceUnlock makes it really easy to interview candidates. When I watched the interview videos, I was really impressed with how adaptive the interview was and how deep it went.
What made the difference
REalchemy's experience with AceUnlock points to three factors that distinguished this hiring process from their previous efforts:
Depth over surface. The adaptive two-way interview went far beyond what a scripted question set or recruiter phone screen could achieve. It adjusted to each candidate's answers in real time — following technical threads and surfacing genuine expertise or its absence.
Integrity at scale. For a remote-first organization hiring a fully remote engineer, trust in the screening process is non-negotiable. AceUnlock's analysis across transcript, audio, and video gave the team confidence that what they were evaluating was genuine.
Calibrated evaluation. The QA benchmarking feature — using an internal engineer and external architect as reference points — ensured the rubric was grounded before a single candidate sat for their interview. The result was a scoring system the team trusted enough to act on.