Privacy Notice for Candidates
Coda Talent Ltd Version 1.1, 18 August 2026
Who we are
Coda Talent Ltd is a specialist recruitment agency. We introduce engineers, technologists and production people to companies that are hiring, and the client pays us if a hire is made. We never charge candidates for anything.
We are the data controller for the information described here.
Coda Talent Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 17186696. Our registered office is 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA. You can reach us at nick@codatalent.co.uk or on +44 7957 510097. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZC222414.
What this notice covers
How we handle your information when we source you, contact you about a role, represent you to a client, or keep in touch for the future. It applies whether you approached us or we approached you.
Our website sets cookies. That is covered separately in the cookie notice on the site.
Where we get your information
Most of it comes from one of four places.
From you, when you reply to us, send a CV, tell us what you are looking for, or talk to us on a call.
From public and professional sources such as LinkedIn, GitHub, conference listings, published papers, personal sites, portfolios and company pages. Anywhere you have put your professional profile in public view.
From contact-data providers and our own records. These are services that compile business and personal contact details. We use them to find a working email address or phone number so we can reach you in the first place. We will tell you exactly where we got your details if you ask, and it is usually the first thing people want to know.
From a referral, when someone suggests we speak to you. We will say who, if you ask.
What we hold
Your name, and the contact details we hold for you. This may include a personal email address or mobile number as well as a work one.
Your CV or professional profile: employment history, education, skills, projects, publications and public code.
What you have told us you are looking for: role type, salary expectation, notice period, location, right to work, and what you would and would not move for.
Our own notes from conversations with you, feedback from clients about your application, and a record of the messages between us.
We do not ask for, and do not want, special category data. That means health, ethnicity, religion, political views, sexual orientation or anything similar. If you volunteer something because it is relevant, an adjustment you need for an interview for instance, we use it only for that, we tell you what we are passing on, and we delete it when it is no longer needed.
We never ask for your bank details, your passport number, or any payment information. If a message claiming to be from us ever does, it is not us.
Why we hold it, and our legal basis
To find you and contact you about a specific role. We cannot introduce you to anything if we cannot reach you. Our legal basis is legitimate interests: ours in running a recruitment business, and yours in hearing about relevant work. We have weighed that balance and written the assessment down, and you are welcome to ask for it.
To discuss your search and represent you to a client. Once you have asked us to act for you, we rely on legitimate interests and on the steps you have asked us to take before any contract.
To keep in touch about future roles. Most people change jobs more than once, and the engineer who is happy this year is often the one moving next year. Legitimate interests again, and you can stop it at any time.
To keep records of a placement, and the invoices and tax that follow it. Here we have no choice. We are required to by the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, by HMRC, and by the Companies Act.
To honour an opt-out. If you tell us to stop, we keep just enough to make sure we never contact you again by mistake. That is a legal obligation, and frankly it is also in our interest to get it right.
We do not sell your data. We do not use it to train AI models. No decision about you is made by an automated system: a person reads everything, and a person decides.
Who sees it
Clients. If we think a role fits, we tell you about it first. We only send your details to a client once you have agreed, for that specific role. We name the company before we send anything.
Service providers who process data on our behalf. They act on our instructions and cannot use your data for their own purposes. They are:
- Atlas, our candidate database and system of record
- Google Workspace, for email, calendar and documents
- LinkedIn Recruiter, for sourcing
- Apollo.io, for finding and verifying business contact details
- Anthropic, whose Claude assistant helps us with drafting and admin, which can involve candidate details
- Xero, for invoicing, which holds no candidate data
Nobody else, unless the law requires it or you ask us to.
Where it is stored
Our candidate database is hosted in the European Union, in Ireland. Some of the providers listed above process data in the United States. Where they do, the transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or by Standard Contractual Clauses, which is the safeguard UK law requires.
How long we keep it
If we sourced you but never made contact, we keep your details for 12 months from the date we found you.
If we spoke but you were not placed, 2 years from the last time we were meaningfully in touch.
If you applied for a specific role and were not hired, 12 months from the decision, unless you ask us to keep you on file.
If we placed you, 6 years from the end of the placement, because we are required to keep those records.
If you opted out, we keep your name, your email address and the date, indefinitely, purely so that we never contact you again. Nothing else.
We review all of this twice a year, in April and October, and delete whatever is past its date.
One honest caveat. Our providers keep backups. After we delete something it can sit in those backups for up to about 90 days before it is gone for good. We cannot shorten that, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Your rights
You can ask us to show you what we hold, and we will send you a copy free of charge. You can ask us to correct anything that is wrong, or to delete what we hold. You can ask us to stop processing your data, or to restrict what we do with it. You can ask us to send it to you or to someone else in a portable format. And you can object to us relying on legitimate interests at all, including objecting to being contacted.
Email nick@codatalent.co.uk. We will acknowledge within 5 working days and deal with it inside one calendar month. There is no charge, and you do not need to give a reason.
Coda is a one-person business, so the person reading your request is the person who can action it. That tends to make it quick.
Not hearing from us again
Reply to any message and say so. No thanks, remove me, anything at all. It takes effect immediately and permanently. You do not have to explain, and it will not affect how we would treat you if you came back to us later.
Every message we send carries a way to opt out.
If you are unhappy
Tell us first, because we would rather fix it. If you are still not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK data protection regulator.
Their complaints page is at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, and their helpline is 0303 123 1113. Complaining to the ICO is free and does not affect any other rights you have.
Changes to this notice
If we change how we handle your data we will update this page and change the version date. Material changes will be flagged to anyone we are actively in touch with.
Version 1.1, 18 August 2026. Coda Talent Ltd, 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA.