The systematic construction of string theory duals for (perturbative) field theories, such as Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), would be a major advance in the quest to access non-perturbative physics. Symmetric orbifold theories in 2-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) provide a promising stage to explore new ideas for such a perturbative holography. While they can be controlled with the rich toolbox of 2D CFTs they do share some basic features with their higher dimensional gauge theory cousins. In my talk, I will show the engineering of dual string backgrounds at work in the context of some symmetric product orbifolds. The construction ensures that the amplitudes of the dual string theory inherently reproduce the correlation functions of the two-dimensional CFT, order-by-order in perturbation theory, without requiring explicit computation on either side of the correspondence.