Your first engineering hires are the most consequential decisions you'll make. Don't guess.
I run the entire technical hiring loop role definition, sourcing, interviews, and onboarding so you build a founding team that sets the right DNA from day one.
The first 3–5 engineers set the architecture, the coding standards, the review culture, and the velocity baseline for everything that comes after. One bad hire creates technical debt, cultural dysfunction, and months of lost momentum.
As a non-technical founder, you're evaluating candidates in a domain you can't fully assess, under time pressure from investors who want to see team growth. Most founders default to one of three failing strategies:
Hire whoever the recruitment agency sends first. You pay 15–25% of annual salary (€10–20K+) for candidates pre-screened for keywords, not judgment.
Hire the candidate who "sounds most technical" in the interview. This selects for confidence and jargon fluency not competence or ownership.
Hire someone from your personal network regardless of skill fit. Loyalty is great, but your university friend may not be the right lead engineer.
I own the entire process from role definition to onboarding. You retain final hiring authority but you make that decision with full information and a clear recommendation.
Exact responsibilities, required vs. nice-to-have skills, seniority calibration, salary benchmarking, and a weighted hiring scorecard. Everyone aligns on what "good" looks like before seeing a single CV.
Written in the language engineers respond to: clear tech stack, real problems they'll solve, culture signals, and transparent compensation. Optimised for the channels where your target candidates look.
Multi-channel: LinkedIn Recruiter, Stack Overflow, remote-specific boards, direct outreach to passive candidates, and referral activation. For hardware roles: EE Times, Embedded.com, and electronics meetups.
CV review against the scorecard. 20-minute screening calls. Technical pre-screen exercise. Deliver a shortlist of 3–5 strong candidates with written assessments before you invest any time.
Structured around three pillars: technical judgment, ownership mindset, and collaborative problem-solving. Real-world scenarios from your product. No whiteboard hazing. No gotcha puzzles.
I facilitate the final interview between you and the top candidate(s). Brief you beforehand, debrief after. Written hiring recommendation with full scorecard results and risk assessment.
Competitive compensation packaging (salary, equity, benefits benchmarked). Offer structuring. Negotiation support. First-week onboarding plan: codebase orientation, access provisioning, first meaningful task, and 30-60-90 day expectations.
Not algorithm trivia. Not whiteboard performance. Three qualities that determine whether an engineer will thrive in your environment.
Given an ambiguous problem with multiple valid approaches, can this person reason through trade-offs and arrive at a defensible decision?
Tested through: Real-world system design discussions using scenarios from your actual product challenges. No textbook answers only reasoning.
Does this person take end-to-end responsibility for outcomes or wait for someone to define the spec, make the decision, and fix the bug?
Tested through: Behavioural questions and reference checks focused on past examples of initiative, accountability, and going beyond the ticket.
Can this person think out loud, receive feedback gracefully, change course with new information, and elevate the thinking of people around them?
Tested through: A live pairing exercise where we work through a problem together. We're evaluating process, not just output.
Role definition workshop (90 min). Scorecard finalised. Job description live. Direct sourcing begins.
Applications reviewed daily. Screening calls. Take-home exercises. Direct outreach to passive candidates. Weekly pipeline update to you.
Technical interviews (3–5 candidates). Written assessments. Shortlist of 2–3 finalists with detailed scorecards and recommendation.
Founder-candidate final interviews facilitated. Debrief and recommendation. Offer structured. Negotiation support.
Onboarding plan delivered. First-week check-in with new hire. 30-day review call with you to assess fit and address early concerns.
At €4,000–6,000 per hire versus a typical recruiter fee of 15–25% of annual salary (€10,000–20,000+), the value proposition is immediate.
Full hiring loop for one engineering role
Parallel or sequential hiring
Team-building at scale
Per electronics/firmware role
Founders who use the Hiring Engine almost always need ongoing support to manage the team they've just built. The natural next step is a Fractional Retainer Advisory or Operator to keep your new engineers productive, aligned, and growing.
Let's start with a conversation about the roles you need to fill. I'll tell you honestly whether the Hiring Engine is right or if there's a better path.
Book a free hiring consultationOr email directly: [email protected]