A mis-hire at this level costs momentum, culture, and competitive position. It also usually happens with the best intentions — a brilliant builder hired into a job that was never about building.
Creators and evolvers are different people
One client put the distinction in a single line, and it has governed our leadership searches ever since: “Creators and evolvers are different people.”
His company had made hardware for decades — some of the most respected audio hardware in the world. Then software became half the product, and the software organization was nearly two hundred people with a leadership bench two directors deep. The platform did not need inventing. It needed to be taken from where it was to where it had to go. His test for candidates followed from that: when did you see something that needed to be done differently, and how did you manage to change it?
In 2021 we placed the three directors who rebuilt that bench. In 2022 we placed the vice president of global software delivery above them. Within a year he was our client — his name is on the agreements for the searches that followed, and the 2023 scorecard for his own senior director search was written around his tests for a leader: empathy, patience, a strong sense of ownership, delivery that is never in the red. The relationship is fifteen years old now, and it widened as it went — quality leadership, automotive software leadership, three retained director searches signed on a single day in July 2024.
That is what a leadership search is supposed to produce: not a filled seat, but a bench — and a client who writes the next scorecard with you.
The roles
- Chief Technology Officer
- VP of Engineering
- VP / Head of AI & Machine Learning
- Director of Engineering
- Head of Platform / Infrastructure
- Chief Architect
- Staff and Principal Engineers moving into leadership
How a leadership search runs here
Stakeholder alignment. We meet with the CEO, board, or hiring committee to define not just the role but the strategic context — what the business needs from this leader in the next twelve to thirty-six months.
The leadership profile. We build the success profile with you: technical depth, leadership style, cultural markers, and the specific challenges waiting in the first year. Every search starts from the same question — if this placement is a success a year from now, what will we be pointing to that really worked?
Confidential search. The leaders worth hiring are rarely looking. Ours is a twenty-nine-year network of engineers we placed who became the leaders who hire; they take our calls because we have never wasted their time with an opportunity that wasn't a plausible match on both sides.
Assessment and close. Candidates are evaluated against the profile, not against each other. And before any offer is extended, we put the brakes on: acceptance is verified before anything is put in writing, so offers land instead of expiring in negotiation.
The pattern repeats
At the travel company that became one of the largest platforms in the world, the sequence ran the other way — the first engineer, then the team leader, then a dozen product managers, then directors, then the vice presidents of engineering who came after them. Close to sixty placements over a decade, and the bar was set by hire number one.
Different companies, same lesson: leadership hiring is sequencing. Who you place first decides who you can place next.
Start with the question
Every leadership search we run starts with one question: a year from now, what worked? Tell us where you're headed and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right firm to get you there. If we're not, we'll tell you who is.
Current openings, in this practice and otherwise, live on the jobs page — that is the one place they stay current.