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Engineering leaders whose teams ship.
TekRecruiter runs VP and Head of Engineering executive search for tech and SaaS companies, focused solely on technology and engineering leadership. We walk through how a candidate’s teams planned, shipped and recovered from incidents, so you hire a leader who turns the roadmap into releases your customers see. Beyond experience, we look for HEARTThe HEART standardHHigh agencyEExecutionAAccountabilityRResourcefulnessTTransparencyWhat we look for, beyond skills →.
Trusted by teams at
What companies hire an engineering leader to do.
Deliver predictably
Turn the roadmap into shipped product, with planning and release practices sized to the stage, not borrowed from a bigger company.
Hire and grow the team
Set the hiring bar, add engineering managers and staff engineers, and keep the people the codebase depends on.
Raise engineering quality
Code review, test coverage, on-call and technical debt, so shipping faster does not mean more incidents.
Partner with product
One plan with product and design, and straight answers about scope, dates and what gets cut.
Why engineering leadership searches go wrong.
The VP of Engineering is the hire most likely to look right on paper and wrong by the second quarter. The usual reasons:
- 01
A manager the engineers stopped trusting.
Strong on process, too far from the code to make the hard technical calls.
- 02
A VP at 300 hired to run 30.
Or the reverse: the scope of the last job never matched this one.
- 03
Not aligned with the CTO.
The leader hired to execute the CTO’s vision had a different one.
- 04
Delivery nobody defined.
No agreed measure of what shipping well means, so every missed date became an argument.
We ask how the team actually shipped.
A VP of Engineering executes someone else’s vision, usually the CTO’s or the CEO’s, through other people. So we walk through what their teams delivered, how they hired, and what they did when a release or an estimate went wrong. The engineering leaders on our slate also meet our HEART standard.
- What the team shipped: the product, the release cadence, the incidents, and the leader’s own part in each.
- How they hire: their bar, their interview loop, and the managers they developed who now lead teams of their own.
- Technical credibility: enough depth on architecture and code to earn senior engineers’ trust and make sound calls.
- Buy-in: how they won the CTO, product and their engineers over on a hard trade-off, and what they gave up to get it.
| A generalist executive search firm | TekRecruiter |
|---|---|
| Screens on titles and team size | Walks through what the team shipped |
| Cannot test technical depth | Led by a founder who was a software engineer |
| Treats Head, Director and VP as one role | Matches scope: 30 engineers or 300 |
| Treats references as a formality | Weighs references heavily on delivery and people |
| Judges the interview polish | Judges how they get buy-in on a hard call |
The HEART standard
What we look for beyond skills and experience, in every candidate we present.
- High agencyPeople who see what needs to be done and act without waiting to be told.
- ExecutionPeople who turn ideas into results.
- AccountabilityPeople who own the outcome, not just their piece of the work.
- ResourcefulnessPeople who figure things out when the answer isn’t obvious.
- TransparencyPeople who communicate clearly, honestly, and early.
When an engineering leadership search is the right call.
- Startups hiring their first engineering leader above the founders.
- Growing teams moving from one team to several, with managers reporting to one leader.
- Companies replacing a leader confidentially, without posting the role.
- Pure people managers who have not been hands-on recently, if your team needs a technical leader.
- Project or program management roles. We search for leaders who own engineering outcomes.
- Engineering managers of a single team. We fill those through direct hire, not executive search.
From the vision to the start date.
Define the mandate
Where the business is now, where this leader must take it in the first year, the team and systems they inherit, and the budget they will work within.
Map and approach
We approach leaders directly, most of whom are not looking, with an anonymized brief that makes the role clear without naming the company.
Assess, present, close
Deep conversations and references on every finalist, then compensation, equity, counteroffers and relocation handled through the start date.
Customer stories.
TekRecruiter filled more than 12 software engineering roles at eMed.
The few times I’ve hired over the last five years, I’ve always been vendor neutral, and TekRecruiter has been the staffing partner that filled every one of those open engineering roles.
The hiring team needed someone who could build a Java automation framework from scratch, and we had worked the search for six straight months with at least 12 or 13 vendors. TekRecruiter sent one candidate, and he got the job.
After eMed’s senior IAM role had been open for more than three months, TekRecruiter found the right candidate in less than a week.
In less than three days, TekRecruiter found Carewell the perfect senior software engineer with strong TypeScript and Playwright skills.
Qualio hired two senior DevOps engineers for its cloud engineering team from the candidates TekRecruiter presented.
SM2 Dev hired a senior software engineer after TekRecruiter shared three to four candidates within a week, as committed.
Their ability to quickly supply highly skilled software and DevOps engineers who blend in well with our existing teams continues to amaze me. They are highly technical at the account management level and transparently propose different solutions, whether staff augmentation or nearshore outsourcing.
Engineering leadership questions, answered.
What does a VP of Engineering do?
A VP of Engineering runs the engineering organization: delivery against the roadmap, engineering process and quality, hiring, and developing managers. They are accountable for how well the team executes, while the CTO usually owns technology direction.
What is the difference between a Head of Engineering and a VP of Engineering?
Often scope and stage. Head of Engineering is common at startups for the first leader of the team; VP of Engineering usually means a larger organization with managers reporting to them. Director of Engineering typically runs a group of teams under a VP.
Should our first engineering leader be hands-on?
At most startups, yes. A first engineering leader who can still review architecture and code earns the team’s trust and makes better calls. As the team passes several managers, the role shifts toward hiring, process and planning.
How should we measure an engineering leader?
Agree on it before the hire. Most teams combine delivery against roadmap commitments with the four DORA metrics: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate and time to restore service. Add retention of strong engineers, because a leader who ships by burning out the team has not solved the problem.
Has TekRecruiter placed engineering leaders recently?
Yes. In 2026 we placed a Head of Engineering at a Series B health tech company and a Head of Software Engineering at a health tech company in Boca Raton. Our executive search page tells the story of a VP of Engineering we relocated from the Northeast to a Miami fintech.
Is the search retained or contingent?
Both. There is no one-size-fits-all approach: many of our executive searches are retained and some are contingent, depending on the client, the role and the market. We recommend a model before the search starts.
How long does a leadership search take?
From first outreach to the leader’s start date, our leadership searches average about six months. That includes the search, interviews, compensation negotiation and the notice period at the leader’s current company.
Can the search stay confidential?
Yes. We sign NDAs, describe the role in detail but anonymize the company in first conversations, and share company details only with candidates we know we will present. Replacements for sitting leaders are never posted.
What is the HEART standard?
HEART is the standard we screen every candidate against, beyond skills: high agency, execution, accountability, resourcefulness and transparency. It describes people who take ownership, turn ideas into results and move the business forward. See the standard.
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