- HQ
- New York, NY, USA
- Company size
- 5,000-10,000
- Funding raised
- $180M IPO (2015); Public (NYSE: TDOC)
- Lead investors
- Pre-IPO: New Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Icon Ventures, Trident Capital, HLM Venture Partners, Cardinal Partners
- Team location
- Eastern Europe
- Cooperation time
- since 2021
- Product
- Virtual care services and technology for health plans, employers, health systems and consumers
- Notable clients
- Aetna, CVS Health, UnitedHealthcare, Blue Shield of California, Highmark, Centene, Mount Sinai
Teladoc Health is a US-based virtual care company, listed on the NYSE since 2015, that delivers telehealth visits, mental health therapy, chronic condition management and expert medical opinions. It works with health plans, employers, providers, health systems and consumers across the US, Europe, the UK, Canada and Australia – 12,000+ client organizations, a network of 40,000+ clinicians and more than 17 million visits a year. Every product it ships handles protected health information, which puts its engineering work inside one of the most heavily regulated data environments in software.
Issue
In October 2021, Teladoc Health set out to build an engineering team in Ukraine. It started with four roles – a Ruby tech lead, a lead frontend engineer, a senior PHP backend developer, a senior business analyst – but they sat on top of a healthcare product, and that decided what kind of partner could do it.
Engineers on this team would have access to patients’ personal data, and the processing of that data is tightly regulated. That made compliance a selection criterion rather than a box to tick after signing – the contracting model had to be right from the first hire, not improvised and corrected later. The providers Teladoc looked at sold that compliance in bundles. Teladoc’s own assessment at the time was blunt: they were forced to pay for things they did not wish to pay for, with no option to take only the services they needed.
Then there was the hiring. As more roles opened, they landed in an unusual combination – Ruby, Scala, and Android stacks plus healthcare domain requirements: FHIR on the Scala work, HIPAA or HITRUST on the management roles. Roles like these don’t fill from an inbound pipeline. They have to be sourced.
One partner had to do both.
Solution:
Teladoc partnered with Alcor to run both halves: sourcing the engineers and contracting them. Recruitment isn’t part of a standard COR offering – that combination is why Teladoc chose Alcor.
Alcor’s tech recruiters built the pipelines as the team grew from four roles to 25 specialists, and the searches that closed, closed fast – the Senior Scala Engineer who took the job was in the pipeline the day the role opened, the Senior Business Analyst the day after. Quality showed up in what Teladoc did with the shortlists: one search opened as a Senior QA Engineer role, and after interviewing the first candidate Alcor presented, the hiring manager created a QA Engineering Manager position instead – the fit was stronger than the role that had been scoped.
The legal track ran in parallel. A Contractor of Record model: specialists engaged as registered Ukrainian sole proprietors, contractor agreements and worker classification settled, Ukrainian tax law consulting running continuously – including through martial law. Teladoc added engineers in a new country without adding an entity to its corporate structure. Operations followed the team as it grew: standardized hardware for every specialist, confirmation letters for visas and banking, payroll split into parallel cycles across Teladoc’s internal engineering teams with individual payslips and per-cost-center invoicing.
And what Teladoc didn’t choose, it was never billed for – which settled the question that had stalled the search in the first place.
RESULTS:
Build Your AI Engineering Team in 30 Days
No vendor chaos. 0 compliance risk. No more recruiting delays.
Alcor Helped Build the Foundation for Everything That Followed
Alcor begins building Teladoc Health’s engineering team in Ukraine
Teladoc’s revenue grows 18% year over year to $2.4B, alongside an expansion of the product range across the integrated whole-person care platform
Teladoc reaches $2.6B in revenue with 33% adjusted EBITDA growth and $194M in free cash flow, serving approximately 90 million members
Launches a fully integrated whole-person care experience through a new app, with services available in English and Spanish
Named to the Fortune 1000 and ranked #26 on the Fortune Best Workplaces in Health Care list
Acquires Catapult Health, adding virtual preventive care and at-home diagnostic testing capabilities, and UpLift, whose in-network health plan relationships represent more than 100 million covered lives
Surpasses 100 million US members, launches the Wellbound employee assistance program and is named one of Forbes America’s Best Large Employers
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Clients Love Us. Teams Do Too.
“The Alcor team has always been supportive and approachable whenever assistance was needed. Rather than feeling like an external resource, engineers working through Alcor are able to integrate closely with the client’s teams. This creates a more collaborative environment and allows engineers to have a greater impact.”
“My overall experience has been outstanding. Alcor’s model offered the right balance — strong operational support combined with genuine ownership and long-term collaboration. In this model, I am a core member of the team. Rather than rotating between projects, I can invest meaningfully in improving the product and establishing processes that deliver lasting value.”
“Whenever I’ve had tricky bank requests or needed extra documentation, Alcor has resolved everything rapidly. I also love their support with business trips and expense tracking—it’s incredibly convenient. Their team is always available via messenger and ready to help. Highly recommended for anyone who wants a hassle-free professional life!”
“Alcor has been a reliable partner throughout, especially in complex situations. Issues are resolved quickly — often within minutes or hours. Their ability to adapt and support us in complex situations has made a real difference for our team.”
