[EliRivers]

Can you not just say "someone who is interested in the same software engineering and organization practices as the rest of the team"?

I get that it's more than two words, but it clearly expresses what you're trying to say and makes it clear you don't mean what so many others mean when they say "culture fit"; same schools, hobbies, affluence, political attitude, and so on.

That said, seems like you might benefit more from people interested in different practices; people who can bring something new to the team, rather than more of the same.

[ebiester]

There's a difference between someone who is looking through new ideas and suggesting that we try experiments to improve our quality, time to delivery, or the other things our team finds important, and someone who is irritated at the thought of writing unit tests or that they have to test a peer's code.

In other words, http://programming-motherfucker.com/ advocates are a bad fit.

[EliRivers]

someone who is looking through new ideas and suggesting that we try experiments to improve our quality, time to delivery, or the other things our team finds important

So someone who is interested in different software engineering and organization practices? Not the same software engineering and organization practices as the rest of the team?

It sounds like you don't want a culture fit so much as you have a culture in mind that doesn't fit, and you don't want that one. Different culture fine, except from a particular range of damaging cultures.

I would suggest that the very fact this thread (and others nearby) exist indicate that "culture fit" really isn't a good term, given how much extra definition is required.