Retained search for VPs and Heads of Engineering across Sydney and Australia.
Executive Search
Head of Engineering search.
We scope every engineering leadership search around the size and maturity of the team the hire inherits, how the role splits with the CTO, and whether the job is to ship a product, scale a function or fix delivery that has stopped being reliable.
The role
Which engineering leader the team needs
The engineering leader’s job changes completely with the stage of the business. The person who ships the first product with a team of six is rarely the person who runs a function of two hundred, and neither is necessarily the one who inherits a delivery pipeline that has stopped working and makes it predictable. The four below are the versions that come up most often, and each one is the right hire in a different situation.
The Founding Engineer
For an early startup, or a new product unit inside a larger business that needs to move like one. A player-coach still in the code, running a small team at speed with light process. The fit drops once the team needs structure more than it needs another strong engineer.
The Org Builder
For scaleups where the constraint is the size and shape of the team rather than the technology. Judged on hiring, structure and career frameworks, and on a function that keeps delivering as it doubles.
The Platform Leader
For scaleups reaching the limits of what they built quickly, and enterprises where reliability is existential. Architects for resilience and scale, pays down the technical debt slowing the team, and owns reliability and infrastructure.
The Delivery Leader
For PE-backed businesses with a delivery problem, and turnarounds where the team ships late and the board has noticed. Built around predictability and throughput, and comfortable inheriting a legacy platform and a brittle release process and making both better.
Our approach
What we agree before the search goes to market
Hard requirements around a few tools tend to narrow an engineering leadership search away from the people who understand the bigger picture, so we write the brief around the team and the outcome the role owns. Five things get pinned down before we approach anyone:
- Team size and maturity. How many engineers the leader inherits, how they are organised and how much of the team is still to be hired.
- The split with the CTO. Who sets technical direction, who owns delivery, and who the engineering leader reports to.
- Ship, scale or fix. Whether the job is getting a product out, growing the function or repairing delivery.
- Reliability pressure. How much uptime and scale matter to the business today, and how quickly load is growing.
- Time to outcome. The timeline the CTO, the CEO or the board is working to.
We also agree with you how the role will be put to the engineering leaders you most want, and we settle that before any approach goes out.
Assessment
How we assess engineering leaders
We look at the environment someone has led engineering in as closely as at what they built, because a leader from a large enterprise and one who has only worked in early-stage teams have faced very different problems, and a title match says little about fit on its own. What we test is whether the teams they led got faster and more reliable as they grew, how they worked with product and with the CTO, and whether they can carry the delivery conversation with a CEO or a board.
Track record
Engineering leadership appointments
Our engineering leadership appointments include:
- A Head of Engineering for the Australian subsidiary of an NYSE-listed group
- A CTO and Head of Engineering for a founder-led, VC-backed AI platform
We also hire the engineering teams underneath these leaders through our technology recruitment practice.
Support
Frequently asked questions
Do we need a Head of Engineering or a CTO?
The CTO decides what to build and why, and holds the technical vision. The engineering leader decides how it gets built, makes sure it ships and holds the team. A business that hires a Head of Engineering expecting a technical visionary, or a CTO expecting a delivery machine, has misread the role, so we work out with you which half is missing, and we run CTO searches as well.
Should a Head of Engineering be hands-on?
In a small team some hands-on capability usually matters. The risk is hiring for it at the expense of leadership and ending up with someone who can write the code but cannot structure the work so the existing team moves the needle, so we test the leadership harder.
How long does a Head of Engineering search take?
A well-scoped search typically takes 8 to 12 weeks from brief to accepted offer, and the quality of the brief and the speed of decisions once candidates are in front of you are the biggest variables.
Can you place an interim Head of Engineering?
Yes, through our interim and contract practice. An interim Head of Engineering can hold the function through a transition or while a permanent search runs.
