PandaDoc's CTO Will Vouch for His Leavers. Only 16% Are in the US

PandaDoc's CTO has offered to personally recommend the people he just laid off, but if your search is pointed at San Francisco, you will miss roughly five in six of them. And a public endorsement of everyone tells you almost nothing about the one person you want to hire until you turn it into a private, specific conversation.

What did PandaDoc announce in October 2026?

PandaDoc announced layoffs in October 2026 without saying how many people were affected or which teams. The most-cited headcount, 103 people, comes from dev.ua, and the company hasn't confirmed it.

Co-founder and CTO Sergey Barysiuk's post was short on detail and long on goodwill. He asked employers to consider the departing specialists, said he would work with any of them again, and offered personal recommendations. The company's stated reason, as reported by dev.ua, was "business restructuring due to financial results that did not meet management's expectations." Barysiuk's own framing was about focus.

The headcount picture is messy, and you should know why before quoting it to a hiring manager:

• dev.ua reports 103 people out of a global team of about 700, which is almost 15%.
• Nasha Niva and Devby.io cite a March figure of 860 global staff. On that base, 103 people is closer to 12%.
• Ukraine specifically: at least 10 people out of roughly 80 in the local office were let go. PandaDoc's own culture page lists 88 teammates in Ukraine.

The severance terms matter for your timeline. Leavers get three months' salary plus unused vacation, several months of continued health insurance, and a resume workshop. That is a decent package. It also starts a clock, which I'll come back to.

The leadership context is worth knowing too. In January 2026, co-founder Mikita Mikado stepped out of the CEO role to become Chief Product Officer, Keith Rabkin took over as CEO, and Barysiuk stayed on as CTO. This is also not PandaDoc's first cut. Reports disagree on the last one: about 40 people (officially around 8%) in September 2023, or about 25 people, mostly QA and Scrum Masters, in December 2023.

Across the industry, TrueUp counts 662 tech layoffs in 2026 so far, affecting 196,245 people. You're competing for attention in a crowded market, which makes geography the edge.

Where are PandaDoc's people actually located?

Only about 1 in 6 people whose profile headline mentions PandaDoc are in the United States, and very few of those are in San Francisco. Most of the company's talent sits in Europe and beyond, spread across far more countries than its office list suggests.

In Refolk's index of professional profiles, 1,188 people worldwide mention PandaDoc in their headline. That set includes current staff, alumni, and some partners or users, so treat it as a map of PandaDoc's footprint rather than a list of who was cut.

The four named hubs together hold 1.52 times as many PandaDoc-tagged profiles as the entire US. And it gets worse for a Bay Area search: in a 25-profile sample of the US set, just 4 were located in San Francisco or the Bay Area.

16%

Why the team scattered

The mechanism is history, not hiring strategy. PandaDoc was a Minsk company until 2020, when police raided its Belarus office and interrogated more than a hundred people. The company liquidated the Belarus entity and relocated employees to Kyiv, Portugal, Poland and the Philippines. In Kyiv, the Lift99 coworking space hosted relocated staff.

People who leave a country under that kind of pressure don't always stop at the first stop. That's why the "everywhere else" bucket is the biggest at 59%, with Tbilisi and Madrid among the top regions. The office list says San Francisco, Kyiv, Warsaw, Lisbon and Manila. The people say something broader. PandaDoc calls itself "remote-first and globally spread," and the index backs that up.

Lisbon, Warsaw and Kyiv lead the hubs

In a 25-profile sample of the four-hub set, the breakdown was:

• Portugal: 9 (Lisbon, Cascais, Matosinhos)
• Poland: 8 (Warsaw, Kraków)
• Ukraine: 7 (Kyiv, Odesa)
• Philippines: absent from the top regions entirely

Lisbon deserves extra attention. In December 2025, PandaDoc raised €5 million from Portuguese investors to improve its AI functionality and expand the Lisbon office. A hub that was being built up that recently is a priority market, not an afterthought.

The Manila office barely shows up

PandaDoc has a Manila office, yet the Philippines doesn't appear among the top regions in a headline search. My best guess (an inference, not something I've verified) is that support and customer success staff there don't put the employer's name in their headline. If you need CS or support talent, a keyword search for "PandaDoc" will undercount Manila badly. You have to search on role plus company history instead.

How do you source a distributed engineering team after a layoff?

Search by company history, not by metro. Find everyone with PandaDoc in their work history across every country, then narrow by function, tenure and timing.

Sourcing distributed engineering teams means finding people by what they worked on and where, not by where they happen to live today. With PandaDoc, a metro filter is the single biggest mistake you can make. Here's the sequence I'd use:

1. Start with the employer, not the location. Pull every profile with PandaDoc in its work history, not just the headline. Headlines catch people who still identify with the brand. Work history catches the quieter ones, likely including Manila.
2. Segment by function. Separate engineering, product, and go-to-market early. The reference strategy differs by function (more below).
3. Read where they read. DOU.ua, dev.ua and Devby.io are the Ukrainian and Belarusian tech outlets these engineers follow, and they broke the headcount figures. Follow-up reporting on teams will likely land there first.
4. Flag recency. Profiles updated since the announcement, "open to work" signals, and new "ex-PandaDoc" headlines are your warm list.
5. Map to your own locations last. Only after you have the full set should you ask who can work in your time zone or legal entity. Lisbon, Warsaw and Kyiv all sit within European working hours.

Boolean strings struggle with steps 1 and 4 together, because people describe the same job five different ways and a per-country string multiplies the work. That's the gap Refolk closes: you describe the person in plain English, and it returns a ranked shortlist instead of a pile of keyword hits.

If you're hiring for a role that requires relocating to the US, set expectations early. The other 84% of this pool is your real market, and many of them have already moved country once.

How do you use Barysiuk's offer as a real backchannel reference check?

Treat the public offer as permission to ask a private, specific question about a named person, not as an endorsement in itself. A blanket "I'd work with any of them again" tells you about Barysiuk's loyalty, not about your candidate.

A backchannel reference check is a reference conversation with someone the candidate didn't list, usually a former manager or peer you find yourself. It's common: a Zety survey found that 37% of workers say potential employers contacted people they never listed.

The same survey explains why listed references are weak signals. 52% of workers have been asked to give a reference for someone they had reservations about, and 22% gave a positive one anyway.

22%

Barysiuk's post is the public version of that problem. It's sincere, and it covers everyone. Your job is to make it specific.

Ask specific questions about named people

Scope ambiguity is a known backchannel red flag, so your questions should force a concrete answer about who owned what. Bain Capital Ventures' field guide on reference checks and backchannels is a credible method reference if you want the fuller playbook. Questions that work for ex-PandaDoc candidates:

• "What did [name] personally own, and what did they inherit?"
• "Who owned [system] during the 2020 relocation, and was [name] part of that?"
• "If you were rebuilding the team from scratch, would [name] be in the first five hires? Why or why not?"
• "What would [name]'s next manager need to know in week one?"

If you get a confident, detailed answer, that's signal. Hesitation or a vague answer about scope tells you something too.

Route the question to the right person

Barysiuk is the CTO, so his firsthand view is probably sharpest on engineers. For other functions, go closer to the work.

One etiquette note: get the candidate's consent before you call anyone, even when the referee volunteered publicly. Barysiuk opened the door. Your candidate still decides who walks through it.

A public endorsement of everyone is an invitation to ask about someone. Bring a name and a hard question.

Why the 2020 relocation is a hiring signal you can verify

Many PandaDoc people moved country with their families in 2020 and kept the product running while they did it. For distributed or relocation-heavy roles, that is evidence you can check, not a soft trait you have to take on faith.

Barysiuk himself pointed to this. The move out of Minsk followed raids in which more than a hundred people were interrogated. The company liquidated an entire national entity and kept operating from Kyiv, Portugal, Poland and the Philippines.

That history gives you three things a typical layoff pool doesn't:

• Proof of remote execution. Many of these people have worked across countries and offices for six years, by necessity.
• A checkable timeline. Moves from Minsk to Kyiv, Lisbon or Warsaw often show up in work history. Ask about them in the interview and in the backchannel.
• Lower relocation risk. Someone who has relocated once under pressure knows what it costs. If they say yes to a move, they mean it.

When you're hiring laid-off engineers from Ukraine or Portugal, that history is the strongest thing in your pitch. Name it in your first message. "I know your team kept PandaDoc running through the move out of Minsk" lands better than "saw you're open to work."

How long do you have before the best PandaDoc leavers are gone?

You have roughly one quarter. Three months' severance means the strongest people will likely be off the market by around January 2027, and the best of them sooner.

Severance cuts both ways. It gives leavers room to be picky in November, and it makes them less picky in January. The top engineers won't wait for severance to run out. They'll take the first strong offer that respects their location.

A practical timeline:

• Late October to mid-November: Build the full list across all hubs. Reach out to Barysiuk or the relevant managers with specific names.
• Mid-November to December: Run interviews. Prioritize Lisbon, given the December 2025 expansion and its AI focus.
• January 2027: Expect the remaining pool to be smaller and more motivated. Revisit the "everywhere else" segment (Tbilisi, Madrid) that competitors are most likely to have skipped.

If DOU.ua, dev.ua or Devby.io report a second round or team-level details, you'll want to rerun the search fast. With Refolk, that's one sentence ("ex-PandaDoc product designers in Portugal, updated since October") instead of rebuilding a Boolean string per country.

FAQ

How many people did PandaDoc lay off in October 2026?

PandaDoc hasn't said. Barysiuk's post gave no headcount and named no teams. dev.ua reports 103 people out of about 700, which is almost 15%, but Nasha Niva and Devby.io cite a March headcount of 860, which would make it about 12%. In Ukraine, at least 10 of roughly 80 local staff were affected. Treat all of these as press estimates.

Where are PandaDoc's engineers based?

Mostly outside the US. In Refolk's index, only 191 of 1,188 PandaDoc-tagged profiles are in the United States, and just 4 of 25 sampled US profiles were in the Bay Area. Portugal, Poland and Ukraine lead the named hubs. Another 59% are spread elsewhere, including Georgia and Spain, because many people kept moving after the 2020 exit from Minsk.

Is it appropriate to contact Sergey Barysiuk about a specific candidate?

Yes, if you have the candidate's consent and a specific question. He publicly offered personal recommendations, so a short, targeted message about a named engineer is exactly what that offer invites. Skip the generic "happy to help your people" reply. For sales, support or CS candidates, their direct manager will give you a more useful answer than the CTO.

Can I hire laid-off PandaDoc engineers in Ukraine or Portugal without relocating them?

Often, yes. PandaDoc describes itself as remote-first and globally spread, with offices in Kyiv, Warsaw, Lisbon and Manila, so these engineers are used to distributed work. The practical questions are your employment setup in each country and time-zone overlap with your team, and both are easier to settle before you build the shortlist than after.