How Consortia recruits engineering leaders
Engineering generally has two routes into leadership. Some engineers move into management as tech leads, engineering managers and heads of engineering. Others stay close to the code as principal and staff engineers, setting technical standards without running a team.
We recruit for both types of engineering leaders across the UK, Europe, the US and the UAE, through Permanent Recruitment and Contract Recruitment. For senior technical leadership a few days a week, see Fractional CTO and Engineering Leadership, or read how we placed a fractional Head of Information Security at Nokkel. For CTO and VP appointments, we run Engineering Executive Search.
Before anyone is approached, Consortia will agree with the hiring manager how much of the role is code, how much is architecture and how much is people as the answer will vary widely.
One Head of Engineering role we recruited for involved no coding. The brief covered around eight direct reports and a new European team of 40 and regular work within the executive team. However another engineering leadership role was for a SaaS client who needed a Software Engineering Manager with more direct technical involvement, leading 23 people across software, QA and infrastructure through a move to Azure.
For senior technical roles, we look closely at the systems candidates have helped design. We ask which decisions they made and how those systems performed over time. Relevant industry experience can matter too. One global enterprise needed a Director of Software Architecture for its fraud prevention systems. Fraud detection experience was a requirement for that search.
Strong engineering leaders are often already in permanent roles, so we approach them directly and discreetly. Some already know us: many of the engineers we have placed over the last 15 years have since moved up into leadership, from engineering managers to CTOs. Salary, office days, notice period and, where it applies, equity are settled before anyone is introduced.
