About Staffing Studio

Most placement firms make money when your hire quits. We don't.

Same recruiting engine xFusion has run since 2020. Same team. Same talent base in the Philippines and Kenya. New brand, built for founders who want a senior hire that stays.

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01 / Mission

Our mission

We find unicorn talent across eight job areas. We place them on your team as a direct hire. We set up the search so the person stays for years, not months. We vet humans, not resumes. We scope the role before we look for anyone. We pay a living wage so the hire shows up for a career. That's the whole game.

02 / Origin

Why we built Staffing Studio

A short history of how international staffing broke, what xFusion proved, and why Staffing Studio is the next chapter.

In 2020, Jim and David took a hard look at international staffing. Most of what they saw was broken.

Workers were paid so poorly they had no reason to stay. Three months in, six months in, they would leave for a seat that paid a few dollars more. Clients ate the loss. They hired again. They trained again. They watched the cycle repeat. The whole model ran on churn. The agency took a cut every time someone got replaced. Nobody won.

The bet was simple. Pay people well. Vet them hard. Set clear expectations up front. Treat them like the senior pros they are. Would the math still work for clients?

It did. It worked better.

That bet became xFusion. Six years and 100+ placements later, we have about 70 team members across the Philippines, Kenya, and a small bench in the U.S. Less than 1% of monthly applicants make it through the TraitX funnel. Placements stay more than 12 months on average. The industry average is six. Clients keep coming back.

Staffing Studio is the same engine for founders who want the hire on their own team. Same recruiters. Same vetting. Same case-study roster. New brand. xFusion places senior contractors that xFusion manages for the client. Staffing Studio places senior direct hires onto the client's team in eight job areas: admin, sales, operations, customer support, customer success, marketing, software engineering, and finance.

We are not the cheapest option, and we don't try to be. We are the option that keeps the people you place.

03 / Team

The team behind every placement

About 70 people make Staffing Studio and xFusion run. We have offices in the Philippines and Kenya, plus a small bench in the United States. We invest in culture the way other companies invest in software. Living-wage pay. Holiday gifts. Branded swag. Regular team events. Birthday and anniversary recognition. Account managers who know every team member by name.

The reason is simple. People who feel cared for stay. People who stay get great at the work. People who get great at the work make our clients look brilliant. The whole thing compounds.

Staffing Studio Philippines team-building gathering — Philippines 35 team members

Staffing Studio Kenya team-building gathering — Kenya 35 team members

~70

Team members

Continents

6 yrs

In business since 2020

<1%

Of applicants placed

04 / Leadership

The leaders who run the work

Operations, account management, and recruiting are run by the same leaders who built xFusion's track record. They scope every role. They screen every panel. They stay close to clients and team members after the hire starts. New brand, veteran team.

Daniel Juma

Head of Operations

Martin Onami

Account Manager

Reggie Rendal

Account Manager

Marie Medina

Account Manager

Felix Maru

Operations Engineer

Bianca Dadulla

Lead Recruiter

05 / Co-founders

The co-founders

David Tran and Jim Coleman started xFusion in 2020 with one rule. Hire people you would be proud to have your customers talk to. Treat them like senior pros. The rest takes care of itself. Six years later, that's still the bar. Staffing Studio is the next brand they built around it.

05 / Co-founder

David Tran

Co-founder

David studied Computer Science at UC Berkeley. He then spent years as a software engineer at Uber and Salesforce. At Uber, he worked on internal tools, growth, mobile, dispatch, and anti-fraud systems. At Salesforce, he kept building tools other engineers relied on.

That engineering mindset shapes how Staffing Studio vets people. Recruiting at scale is a systems problem before it's a people one. David's instinct is to look at the funnel, find where the right candidates get lost, and rebuild the part that's failing. TraitX is what that instinct built over six years.

David is a first-generation Vietnamese American. He is a newlywed and an avid traveler. He believes great companies are built by people who care. He thinks you can tell within ten minutes of meeting someone whether they do.

05 / Co-founder

Jim Coleman

Co-founder

Before Staffing Studio and xFusion, Jim worked as a detective. He then built and sold a few businesses of his own. After that, he ran operations for a software-focused private equity fund. The detective work taught him to read people. The businesses taught him how operations make or break a company. The PE work showed him what happens when you put the right person in the right seat at scale.

One thread ran through all of it. The right people change everything. Vetting them well, treating them well, and keeping them for years matters more than almost any other call a business makes. Staffing Studio is that idea built for founders, with no middle layer between them and their hire.

Jim and his family live near Denver, where they raised five children. They were a foster family for many years and are also an adoptive family. Jim's wife and kids are the reason most of the work gets done.

06 / Values

What we stand for

A short list. We try to live by it.

Integrity

Our word is our bond. We tell clients the truth, even when it costs us a deal.

Dignity of work

Good work changes families. We treat every role we fill as a real career, not a gig.

Ownership

We build it. We fix it. We don't pass the buck.

Long-term thinking

We don't measure success in months. We measure it in years on the same client, and years in the same role.

Service

We put others first. Clients, team members, each other.

Passion for people

We go the extra mile because people matter more than the metric.

Tenacity

We go after hard problems. The ones nobody else wants are usually the ones worth solving.

Empathy

We listen before we act. Most problems get smaller once someone feels heard.

07 / Talk to us

Come talk to us.

If any of this hits home, get on a call with our founding team. We'll listen to where hiring is breaking in your business. We'll tell you straight whether we can help. And we'll walk you through what working together would look like.

Book a discovery call

30 minutes. No commitment. You'll talk directly with our founding team.