Engineering & Technical Leadership recruitment
Senior technical leadership is a retained search: confidential by default, run on direct approach to people who aren't looking. We've placed CTOs and MDs into growing engineering businesses.
At this level the assessment is team fit and commercial judgement as much as technical depth, and the realistic pool is shaped by what a candidate is leaving behind. Equity, notice period and sometimes a relocation set the timeline far more than they do further down the ladder.
What the market pays
- Briefed max, median
- £80,000
- ONS actual, median
- £52,451
- Days to fill, median
- 54
Middle 50%: £73,800 - £90,000
SOC 2127
2023-2026 data window
Engineering & Technical Leadership briefed maximums, 2023-2026 data window. A briefed maximum is the top of the budget a client set for the role, not the salary transacted. Full Engineering & Technical Leadership breakdown
What this covers
- Engineering management (team leadership)
- Engineering Director / Head of Engineering
- VP Engineering
- CTO / technical co-founder
- Interim technical leadership
- Technical due diligence
Roles we place
Director, VP or CTO-level hire
See how we run executive search
What makes a strong Engineering & Technical Leadership candidate
At Engineering Manager level and above, technical depth alone rarely predicts success, team leadership, the ability to make and defend a roadmap decision under commercial pressure, and credibility with both engineers and the board all matter as much as hands-on ability. We look for candidates who can talk specifically about a team they built or grew, a technical direction they set and the reasoning behind it, and how they've handled disagreement with either engineers below them or stakeholders above. For CTO and VP Engineering searches in particular, prior experience operating at the stage a business is at now, early-stage scrappiness versus scale-up process, is often more predictive of success than raw seniority or company size on a CV.
Where the talent sits
Senior technical leadership searches are the least geographically constrained on this desk - London and the South East pay a clear premium, but a genuinely strong leadership candidate is often willing to relocate or work hybrid for the right role in a way that's less common further down the seniority ladder. Increasingly, these searches also consider candidates based outside the immediate region entirely, since the pool of genuinely strong candidates at this level is thin enough that geography is often the most flexible constraint in a brief.
Typical hiring timeline
Most briefs get a first candidate within days rather than weeks - see real timelines from past searches. Seniority, location and clearance status set the pace from there.
Live Engineering & Technical Leadership roles
Software Engineering Manager
Essex · £80,000 – £90,000 per year
Software Engineering Manager
Berkshire · £80,000 – £90,000 per year
Engineering & Technical Leadership hiring: frequently asked questions
Hiring in Engineering & Technical Leadership?
Tell us what the role needs to do. We'll come back with questions about the work, and an honest read on what the brief will take.