The Founders

Jake Rose

Jake partners with investors, boards and CEOs on critical technology leadership hires and the organisational decisions that sit around them.

He built and scaled one of Sydney's leading technology search practices from scratch, delivering C-suite appointments across private equity, ASX-listed and high-growth businesses on their most critical technology appointments.

His work spans CIO, CTO, CDO and Chief Product and Technology Officer searches, as well as the leadership teams that sit underneath them. That experience across infrastructure, cloud, data, AI and product means he advises clients on how technology organisations should be structured, sequenced and built for performance.

Jake works most closely with organisations navigating transformation, platform modernisation, AI adoption and product-led growth, where leadership quality directly affects execution and commercial outcomes.

Recent work includes executive hires and leadership builds across national retailers, SaaS platforms, fintech businesses and industrial services groups, with an increasing focus on AI executive search and the organisational design decisions that sit around AI leadership.

• CIO, CTO, CDO and CPO appointments
• Technology leadership succession and capability build
• Org design and hire sequencing
• Technology leadership for transformation and value creation

Marie Higgins

Marie specialises in software engineering and product hiring across high-growth, PE-backed and listed businesses, with over twelve years of experience in the Sydney and broader Australian technology market.

She has the strongest track record in Australia when it comes to building genuinely gender-diverse technology teams. That is backed by placement data and repeat engagement from organisations that measure diversity outcomes seriously and hold their hiring partners to that standard.

Marie hosts a community of over 1,000 women in technology, giving her direct access to candidate networks that most firms do not reach. That community is not a mailing list. It is an active network of senior engineers, product leaders and technical operators who trust Marie because she has placed and supported them throughout their careers.

Her work spans engineering leadership, product management and technical team builds across SaaS platforms, fintechs, retailers and enterprise technology businesses. She partners with CTOs and Heads of Engineering to scope roles properly, assess candidates on capability and culture fit, and build teams that actually deliver.

• Engineering and product leadership hiring
• Full-stack software team builds across all levels
• Gender diversity outcomes backed by data
• Active community of 1,000+ women in technology

Lewis Heeks

Lewis has spent eight years in the Australian recruitment market focused on data, AI and platform hiring. He was building data teams and placing data leaders well before the recent AI boom, which means his network and market knowledge run deeper than the current wave of interest.

He is recognised as one of the leading data and AI executive search specialists in Australia, with an established track record built across some of the country's most recognised recruitment firms before co-founding Innova.

Lewis builds data organisations that create real operating leverage. He works across the full data and AI function, from Chief Data Officer and Head of AI appointments through to the platform engineers, ML engineers and data scientists who deliver the capability. That end-to-end coverage means he understands how data organisations should be structured, sequenced and built for performance.

His executive network in data and AI is one of the strongest in the Australian market. He works closely with PE-backed businesses, ASX-listed companies and scaling technology firms where data is core to the investment thesis or transformation agenda.

• Chief Data Officer and Head of AI appointments
• Data platform and engineering team builds
• ML, AI and analytics capability across all levels
• Data strategy and org design advisory