Case Studies: SIXT
SIXT's Road to Portugal: Scaling fast with Damia's Recruitment Expertise
How a leading global brand of high-quality mobility services chose the best local talent partner to scale their team in the growing Portuguese Hub.
Overview
>3
Over three years of partnership - since SIXT openened the Hub in Portugal, back in 2022.
>10
Senior tech hires.
>5
Tech profiles inclding Data Engineers, Engineering Managers, Software Developers, Cybersecurity, and Quality Assurance Engineers.
Today, we have a large scope of engineering that is solving real problems, and that’s really inspiring for tech professionals. Damia proved to be an invaluable partner to scale in a fast but also informed way over the years.
Dr. Ingmar Zanger
Managing Director
@ SIXT Hub Lisbon
The challenge
As a global mobility leader with 800 engineers across 4 Tech Hubs worldwide, SIXT identified Lisbon as its next shared services Hub.
With little knowledge of the Portuguese talent market, SIXT was aware that a local partner would be key to success. More than a recruitment provider – a talent partner that understood and could add value from employer branding to sourcing and recruiting, while sharing important salary inputs and valuable market benchmarks, to avoid costly mistakes.
Finding the right talent partner
After setting up in Lisbon, Damia was not the first tech recruitment agency that SIXT hired. They had just partnered with another agency due to its lower pricing.
However, when we met Dr. Ingmar Zanger at a wine tasting event promoted by their previous agency, Hélio Costa approached Ingmar. He learned about SIXT’s growth in Lisbon and how they needed a next-level partner that could deliver the quality they were expecting.
We convinced Ingmar to give us a chance with a bold statement: “Send us the job profile and we’ll get you a perfect candidate within two weeks.” And the rest is history.
Beyond Hiring: The Power of Strategic Talent Branding
Part of SIXT’s strategy to attract the tech talent they needed involved a shift from just a pure rental car business to also being a tech company.
By creating valuable content and being visible for the tech community, from social media to pivoting tech conferences and other smaller user group events, market awareness began to happen.
Educating the market by joining and powering Damia’s 2025 Portuguese Tech Salary Benchmark also posed a great strategy to assert tech leadership in the country. What started as a great first resource for SIXT’s understanding of market salaries and dynamics resulted in the co-organisation of a major tech event at the beginning of 2025, with a panel of 6 tech leaders, 200 attendees, and a lot of media awareness.
We really came a long way with SIXT and touched pretty much everything a talent partnership can cover, and that alone is something that deserves to be celebrated.
Partnership Achievements
Provided expertise on scaling Tech Teams, with end-to-end processes of sourcing, attracting, hiring, and informed insights about highly skilled tech talent.
Facilitated all interactions with multiple stakeholders, including Hiring Managers, Area Leaders and HR, making sure the candidate experience was world class: smooth and aligned to our time-to-hire benchmarks.
Brought market knowledge in order to increase competitiveness and achieve what others could not.
Successfully enhanced candidate’s experience, ensuring that every process, regardless of the outcome, had a positive impact on every single person, strengthening the Partner’s employer branding along the way.
Enabled Partner’s informed decision-making with Salary Benchmarks, Talent Mapping, and valuable insights, avoiding costly mistakes.
Provided candidate’s success metrics to ensure that any bottlenecks would be identified and corrected before affecting either the roadmap or the candidate’s experience.
About SIXT
SIXT’s Lisbon Hub started in 2022 with the goal of hiring over 100 tech professionals, from product development to data science, data security, and specialized IT support.
In 2025, the strategy is to expand all TECH teams and operational layers, such as customer sales and service, finance, HR and operations, with many opportunities to join the ride.
Permanent Recruitment
Embedded Recruitment
