How SOTA Cloud scales engineering with pre-vetted talent from the Philippines
A conversation with Dustin Johnson, co-founder and CTO of SOTA Cloud, on competing globally for engineering talent, why pre-vetting changed how they hire, and how Full Scale engineers became top performers across the entire company.
"The Philippines is great because the cultural similarity between folks in the United States and the Philippines is very strong relative to other regions that we could be getting talent from."
— Dustin Johnson, Co-Founder and CTO, SOTA Cloud
From a 1987 imaging pioneer to cloud software in over 1,000 dental offices
SOTA Cloud builds cloud-based dental imaging software that runs entirely in the browser. Practices capture, view, and share X-rays without an imaging server, with AI oral disease detection, 3D and CBCT imaging, and analytics built in. The FDA-cleared platform works with virtually any dental sensor or camera and connects to more than 20 practice management systems.
The company didn't come from nowhere. It spun out of SOTA Imaging, a dental imaging hardware maker founded in 1987 that once built custom lens assemblies for NASA. In 2022, Albert Kim and Dustin Johnson launched SOTA Cloud as its own cloud-native company to catch the industry's shift away from on-premise imaging servers.
The bet is paying off. Dental Innovation Alliance invested in July 2025. PDS Health, one of the largest dental support organizations in the country, made a strategic investment in December 2025 and is rolling SOTA Cloud out across its 1,000+ practices. In April 2026, the company launched its own Smart Sensor hardware.
Plenty of offshore providers. Not enough real engineers
SOTA Cloud was growing fast in a specialized technical space, and quality engineering talent proved hard to find. Plenty of companies in the Philippines serve customer support and back-office work. Engineers who could build a medical imaging platform were a different story.
Meanwhile, the company was competing in a global market for talent with a one-person HR team. Filtering candidates, coordinating interviews, and evaluating technical fit consumed senior engineering time the team didn't have to spare.
A crowded market with a thin engineering pool
The Philippines is full of providers serving customer support and business services. Engineers with real technical depth were much harder to find. As Dustin puts it, engineering eluded them for a while.
Global competition for the same talent
Every company SOTA Cloud competes with is hiring beyond US borders. The bigger your talent pool, the better your odds of finding the right person for the role.
One HR person for the whole company
Every hiring cycle ran through a single HR teammate, plus senior developer time spent filtering candidates. That overhead doesn't scale when you need to grow fast.
An industry where engineers job-hop
Engineers move between companies chasing new technologies or career advancement. For a platform serving over 1,000 dental locations, losing continuity is expensive.
"The capability of the folks that Full Scale has brought to our team has been phenomenal. The Full Scale team has staffed us with top performers in our company, even relative to some of the folks that we have here in the US."
— Dustin Johnson, Co-Founder and CTO, SOTA Cloud
Pre-vetted engineers who show up ready to ship
Full Scale's model is staff augmentation: engineers in the Philippines who join the client's team directly, with no project-manager layer in between. For SOTA Cloud, that means .NET developers working on the imaging platform as full members of Dustin's engineering org, screened for technical capability and cultural fit before the first conversation.
SOTA Cloud didn't commit blind. They ran an initial pilot because, as Dustin says, "we just felt like the level of service was going to be high." The pilot confirmed it. The team has performed ever since, and SOTA Cloud is now working with Full Scale to expand it.
Vetted before the first conversation
Full Scale screens every engineer for technical capability and cultural fit before SOTA Cloud ever sees a candidate. The hiring funnel starts pre-qualified instead of cold.
Time and expense back for a lean team
Pre-vetting saves the one-person HR org and the senior developers from filtering hundreds of resumes. The hiring process moves faster and costs less.
Top performers, not seat fillers
Dustin ranks the Full Scale engineers among the best in the entire company, including against the US-based team members he manages every day.
Cultural fit that compounds
The strong cultural alignment between the Philippines and the United States makes onboarding and daily collaboration smoother than other offshore regions SOTA Cloud considered.
"Having a pre-vetted list of people that have already been pre-qualified, it saves everybody time, it saves us expense, and it helps the hiring process move more quickly."
— Dustin Johnson, Co-Founder and CTO, SOTA Cloud
Retention is a partnership job, not a hiring afterthought
Software engineers job-hop. They chase new technologies, or they believe moving is the only way to advance. For a company whose platform sits inside more than 1,000 dental offices, losing the engineer who knows a critical system is not a line item. It's a real risk.
That's why SOTA Cloud treats retention as a shared responsibility with Full Scale. Engineers matched for genuine technical and cultural fit stay longer. And when circumstances threaten that continuity, the partner steps in instead of shrugging.
"We really highly value retention, and so Full Scale has been a great partner on the retention front to ensure that we have continuity with the folks that we really value on our team."
— Dustin Johnson, Co-Founder and CTO, SOTA Cloud
The engineer they almost lost
One Full Scale engineer was leading a very high-stakes project for SOTA Cloud when a wrench got thrown into the process. Circumstances outside everyone's control meant the company thought it was going to lose him mid-project.
Full Scale stepped in and made sure the relationship held. The engineer wanted to stay with SOTA Cloud, and Full Scale worked the problem until he could.
"Who by the way is fantastic. He's one of my favorite people on our team," Dustin says. That's the engineer a staffing partner is supposed to help you keep.
What other engineering leaders can take from SOTA Cloud's playbook
Talent competition is global now
Every company you compete with is already hiring beyond US borders. Limiting your search to one market means competing for fewer engineers at higher prices.
Pre-vetting collapses hiring overhead
With one HR person, SOTA Cloud couldn't run full cycles for every role. Candidates screened for technical and cultural fit saved time, expense, and senior engineering hours.
Top performers can sit anywhere
SOTA Cloud's Full Scale engineers in the Philippines became standout contributors company-wide, even measured against their US-based teammates.
Cultural fit is a hiring criterion
Technical skill alone doesn't make an integrated team. The cultural similarity between the Philippines and the US made collaboration work from day one.
Retention is something a partner can own
When SOTA Cloud nearly lost a key engineer mid-project, Full Scale stepped in and kept the relationship intact. That's what a staffing partner is for.
Pilot, prove, expand
SOTA Cloud started with a small pilot, watched the results confirm the bet, and is now expanding its Full Scale team. No leap of faith required.