Senior Engineering Hire
Two weeks of senior recruiting infrastructure for one critical engineering hire - Staff+ IC or leadership role.
2 weeks
Who this is for
Companies hiring their first Staff+/Principal engineer, first Head of Eng / VPE, replacing a CTO, or staffing a senior bench post-Series B.
When you need it
You're about to hire someone senior and the in-house team does not have a peer-grade interviewer at that seniority. The cost of a bad senior hire - 12–18 months of compensation, displaced morale, lost roadmap quarters - outruns the cost of getting the hiring system right by an order of magnitude.
What's delivered
- Role definition that survives the hire (not the version that gets written for the JD)
- Scorecard - competencies, behavioural indicators, trade-offs, weighted rubric
- Interview architecture - panel design, round structure, technical/behavioural/leadership balance, calibration, anti-bias scaffolding
- Market scan - current senior compensation bands, total-rewards expectations, competitive landscape
- Sourcing strategy - advice on channels, network activation, search-firm-vs-direct trade-off
- Candidate evaluation framework - debrief structure, calibration, written-feedback discipline
- Hiring decision framework - what 'yes', 'stretch yes', 'no' look like; how trade-offs get resolved
- Board / exec brief (for leadership hires)
Why this consultant
Scaled imobiliare.ro engineering from 35 to 300, ran senior-bench hiring through three M&A processes including Bitstamp → Robinhood. Hiring-at-scale lived experience, not a coaching framework.
What this sprint is not
- Executive search (no candidate sourcing or placement fee)
- A coaching engagement (CEO/CTO makes the hire; Consultant builds the system)
Fixed price, fixed scope. Every engagement carries the four guarantees: Sprint 1 Escape Hatch, Board-Ready Quality, Three-Client Cap, Skin-in-the-Game Pledge.