How Duxre Built a Repeatable System for Hiring Speed and Accuracy With Upwork

The client

Duxre is an AI-driven SaaS platform rebuilding the commercial real estate workflow from the ground up. Founded by CEO Sean Fulp, one of the most accomplished brokers in the U.S. with over 500 transactions and $7 billion in career consideration, Duxre was born from firsthand experience of where the industry falls short. After 20 years in the field, Fulp saw how legacy platforms buried professionals in low-value data, drained their marketing dollars, and stripped control of the insights they built. Duxre was created to change that, utilizing proprietary AI to help CRE professionals move faster and close more deals.

The company is on a mission to replace the slow, manual processes that have defined commercial real estate for decades with intelligent tools built around the way brokers actually work.

The challenge

Commercial real estate is notoriously slow to modernize and Duxre is betting that AI can change that. Building AI products at speed requires specialized talent, but the traditional recruiting pipeline wasn't keeping up.

Finding people with the right skills who delivered reliably was difficult. Recruiters took weeks to surface candidates, stalling product development at a critical growth phase.

Getting qualified AI talent was especially tough. "Everyone can sell themselves pretty well during an interview," said Eric Vogel, Chief Product Officer at Duxre. "But that doesn't mean they can actually perform on the job."

The solution

Upwork gives Vogel a faster, more reliable way to pinpoint truly qualified talent and validate skills through real work. Instead of waiting weeks for recruiter shortlists, Eric can post projects with highly specific requirements and start reviewing strong matches in as little as 24 hours.

For more specialized freelancers, Vogel uses Business Plus. As a subscriber, he can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork and get pre-vetted shortlists within six hours. "That's why I like the program you offer," Vogel said. "I know you guys have already vetted them."

To make hiring decisions quickly and confidently, Vogel follows a repeatable process:

• Look closely at freelancer profiles. Longer contract lengths and detailed feedback signal reliability and quality work.
• Test with real work before committing. Break down the work into smaller projects. If they do well, expand scope.
• Return to freelancers he's worked with successfully before. As Vogel finds strong performers, he keeps them in mind for future work.

The results

By changing how he hires, Vogel helped Duxre maintain product momentum through a period of rapid platform development keeping the roadmap on track without letting hiring become a bottleneck. Freelancers operate independently and supplement Duxre's internal engineering team to accelerate specific projects.

Key results:

• Find qualified talent in days instead of weeks
• Greater hiring accuracy with a repeatable, scalable process
• Adapt quickly as product needs evolve
• AI talent delivered directly to core platform milestones

"Upwork allows me to build a team more fluidly and the process doesn't slow me down," Vogel said.

One of those freelancers, senior engineer Vitaly, became a long-term collaborator on several development initiatives. "Vitaly's been fantastic," Vogel said. "We wanted someone more senior who could uplift some of the mid developers by mentoring them, making them better." Vitaly's contributions have since accelerated Duxre's AI infrastructure and helped raise the technical bar across the team.

For Duxre, the ability to hire with speed and confidence has become a genuine competitive advantage. "We're building the platform that commercial real estate has needed for a long time," Vogel said. "In this market, speed of execution matters and that starts with having the right people."

With Upwork in the mix, Duxre keeps shipping.