Company Overview
Blue River Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of John Deere, designs and tests advanced agtech systems worldwide to make farming more efficient and sustainable. Their flagship product, See & Spray™, uses computer vision and machine learning to detect and target weeds, reducing herbicide use by up to 90%.
The Challenge
Based in Santa Clara, California, Blue River is an agile R&D unit within John Deere’s precision agriculture division. Their work is central to advancing automation and AI across John Deere’s global equipment lineup. Blue River is dedicated to helping farmers feed the world, while protecting it.
Hiring for Blue River field roles (engineers on the ground collecting data and testing hardware) didn’t align with the standard recruiting playbooks, as hands-on agriculture required specialized knowledge and experience.
Global expansion, especially into Brazil, made the challenge more urgent. But local agencies didn’t click.
"Other solutions just didn't get it. It felt like they were trying to charge as much as possible and do as little as possible."
Shannon PickeringField Operations Recruiter
The solution
Strider adapted faster than previous external hiring solutions. “The second round went really well; great candidates right out of the gate,” said Pickering. And quality wasn’t the only win.
Strider made communication easy with Slack channels, direct access to recruiters, and a
willingness to pivot quickly based on feedback.
Language skills turned out to be critical.
"Brazil isn’t like Europe when it comes to English proficiency among grads. Strider helped us surface talent who could work efficiently with our US-based engineers. We’ve been very selective, but the candidates we’ve hired through Strider have been strong from day one."
Why Strider?
Pickering was introduced to Strider through a colleague who had used them for technical roles.
Although agtech didn’t line up with Strider’s core niche, founder Neal Kemp wanted to take on the challenge.
It wasn’t just sourcing. Blue River needed highly qualified, fully equipped candidates ready to hit the field with intense travel schedules. That meant laptops, Starlink internet, local vehicles, and more.
"Whatever we needed, they jumped in. It wasn’t just recruiting. It was operations."
Impact
After some early calibration, results followed quickly. Blue River has now hired six full-time Field Application Engineers through Strider. Four are still in place, and two were promoted to full-time roles at Blue River’s parent company, which is “exactly the best-case outcome,” according to Pickering.
Strider’s success with Blue River didn’t go unnoticed. Other Strider clients have since asked about sourcing titles beyond software developers. “I think we were the test case,” Pickering said, laughing. “But it worked.”
His overall recommendation?
