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Technology leaders who execute the vision.
TekRecruiter is a technology executive search firm focused solely on technology and engineering leadership at tech and SaaS companies, from CTOs and VPs of Engineering to the leaders of product, data and security. We talk with tech leaders every day, so you meet the ones who can execute your vision and move the business forward. Beyond experience, we look for HEARTThe HEART standardHHigh agencyEExecutionAAccountabilityRResourcefulnessTTransparencyWhat we look for, beyond skills →.
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What is tech executive search?
Tech executive search is a recruiting service for senior technology leadership roles, such as CTO, VP of Engineering or Chief Product Officer. Instead of posting a job, the firm maps the market and approaches leaders directly, most of whom aren’t looking, and often runs the search confidentially. It is priced one of two ways: retained, with part of the fee paid upfront, or contingent, paid only when the leader starts.
- Retained search
- Part of the fee is paid upfront, and a dedicated team is built around your search.
- Contingent search
- You pay only when the leader you hire starts.
- Confidential search
- The company stays anonymous until a candidate is confirmed as a fit. Common for replacements.
What to know before you hire a leader.
Whether or not you work with us, these are the questions worth settling before a leadership search begins.
Where should you start?
With your own vision. Before you look at a single candidate, write down what this leader must accomplish, at a high level. Leaders most often clash with a CEO because their visions never aligned, so casting yours first is how you find someone whose vision fits it. Then use industry conversations and early interviews to hear how others would approach it.
What should you settle before interviews?
Budget and constraints. Even when visions align, the gaps show up after the hire: a leader who spends more or less than you expected, or moves slower than the business needs. Know the budget, the team they inherit and the resources available before the search starts, so you can test for fit on how they will actually execute.
How do you interview a leader?
Be transparent about how you execute today: your approach, tools, resources and constraints, even if you suspect some of it is wrong. Then watch how the leader navigates it. The strong ones may disagree and show you why something should work differently. That is the skill you are hiring for: a good leader gets buy-in, and if they can win yours in an interview, they can win it on the job.
What separates a leader from a strong title?
What they did to take a company from point A to point B, not buzzword accomplishments. A strong leader explains their background end to end, tied to the product, the market and the business, and is never vague about it. They ask sharp questions about the role, and they will tell you when a gap in their experience makes them the wrong fit.
Retained or contingent?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Retained means committing part of the fee upfront, and in return a dedicated team is built around your search, which suits high-profile, confidential or hard-to-fill roles. Contingent means you pay only when the leader starts. Either way, plan for time: leadership searches often take three to six months from first outreach to start date.
How do you keep a leadership search confidential?
Confidentiality runs both ways. Your search partner should anonymize the role, sign an NDA and share company details only with candidates confirmed as a fit. On your side, keep the circle small and hold early interviews off site, over lunch or dinner, because well-known leaders are often recognized the moment they walk into an office.
Most leadership searches reach us after one that stalled.
By the time a CEO or CTO calls us about a leadership role, they have often tried a search firm already. The stories tend to sound alike.
- 01
A retained fee, too few options.
The money was paid upfront, and the slate was thin, slow or off the mark.
- 02
Discretion that slipped.
A search that was meant to be confidential, and wasn’t.
- 03
The wrong kind of leader.
A firm that didn’t understand what a leader in tech actually does.
- 04
No network for the role.
The sense that the firm simply didn’t know the leaders you needed.
We look for leaders who can execute a vision.
A tech leader’s job is to turn someone else’s vision, often a CEO’s or CTO’s, into shipped products and business results. So we spend less time on keywords and titles and more on what a leader actually did to move a company forward. We talk with tech leaders every day, and every one we present meets our HEART standard.
- From point A to point B: what they changed in the business, confirmed by references we lean on harder than in any other search.
- They explain it end to end: their background, tied to the product, the market and the business. Vague or surface-level answers end the conversation.
- The questions they ask: a strong leader interviews the role as hard as we interview them.
- Honest about fit: the best leaders tell you when a gap in their experience makes them the wrong hire.
| A typical executive search firm | TekRecruiter |
|---|---|
| A retained fee and a thin slate | A real slate, contingent or retained |
| Partners who never did the work | Led by a founder who was a software engineer |
| Judges titles and logos | Judges what the leader changed in the business |
| Every function, every industry | Technology and engineering leadership only |
| Discretion that slips | Anonymized outreach, NDAs, nothing leaked |
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.
A VP of Engineering for a Miami fintech.
A fintech company building what had never been built before, in securities, payments and crypto, needed a VP of Engineering to execute its CTO’s vision. Quickly, confidentially, and from a talent pool Miami didn’t have.
The challenge
The role called for deep quantitative and markets experience that the South Florida talent pool simply didn’t hold, so the search had to relocate a leader from the Northeast. The client hoped to fill it in about a month, against the usual three to six. Much of the work was proprietary, so the role had to be pitched without revealing it, and the move had to be priced to win the candidate without overpaying.
How we ran it
We confirmed the Miami market quickly, then advised starting in Boston and its outskirts: a strong market, less crowded than New York, with the university depth this kind of work draws on. We signed NDAs, anonymized the role, and asked our clients across Boston and New York for referrals. Because we know both the Miami and New York markets, we priced the offer, including stock options and RSUs, to be aggressive without overpaying.
The result
We placed a VP of Engineering who relocated to Miami with four children. We negotiated a package the company was thrilled with, connected the new leader with a Florida attorney to review the equity, and handled the relocation on the company’s behalf, from neighborhoods and realtors to flights and schedules. Nothing leaked, and the hire has been a great fit.
From vision to start date.
We learn the vision and the mandate
What this leader must accomplish, the team they inherit, the budget and constraints, and the profile that has done it before.
We map, approach and assess
We approach leaders directly and confidentially, and assess each one through deep conversations and references.
We close, and handle what comes with it
Compensation and equity, counteroffers, and relocation, from neighborhoods to realtors, handled on your behalf.
Leadership roles we search for.
VP, Head of and C-level leaders in technology and engineering, and the product, data, security and go-to-market leaders who work alongside them.
Commercial leadership
Go-to-market
- Chief Revenue Officer
- VP of Sales & Customer Success
- Head of RevOps & Marketing
Startups
Founding leaders
- First engineering leader
- First product or go-to-market leader
Three leadership searches a year, on us.
Every year we run three leadership searches at no cost for existing clients. Hiring leaders put their reputation on the line every time they recommend us to someone new, and this is how we give back. If you’re already a client, start by talking to us.
- Who qualifies: existing clients we have already worked with. We choose the three searches at our discretion.
- Why leadership: without key leaders in place, companies often can’t hire the teams that report to them.
- What it takes: small talent pools, confidential moves and complex compensation negotiations, often over about six months from first outreach to start date.
What clients say.
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.
We needed to hire a senior IAM engineer with deep SOC 2 knowledge, and the role had been open for more than three months. Within a week of speaking with Ron, his team sent over three very solid profiles, and we finally found the right fit in just two weeks.
Across multiple companies, I’ve hired more than six senior software engineers through TekRecruiter, and every one of them has been an impressive builder.
I got a firsthand look when I needed a software engineer with strong TypeScript skills to join my team. I was happy with the candidates, and I was able to make a hiring decision.
A former colleague referred me to TekRecruiter, and I was very impressed by the caliber of the senior DevOps engineers they presented. I identified two senior DevOps engineers who were exceptional fits for my team.
He said he would share three to four candidates within a week, and that’s exactly what he did. We hired a senior software engineer we’re confident in, and we’ve been thrilled with how well things have worked out.
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.
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.
When our executive search is the right call.
- A startup hiring its first technology leader, who will build the team they run.
- A growth-stage or enterprise company replacing or adding a senior technology leader.
- A confidential search, including a replacement that can’t be posted.
- Leadership outside technology and engineering. CFO, CHRO or general counsel searches belong with a generalist executive firm.
- Board searches. We recruit operating leaders, not directors.
- Roles below the leadership level. Our direct hire service is the right fit.
Retained vs. contingent executive search.
| Retained search | Contingent search | |
|---|---|---|
| When you pay | Part upfront, the rest in stages | Only when the leader starts |
| What you get | A dedicated team built around your search | A search you pay for only on success |
| Best for | High-profile, confidential or hard-to-fill roles | Roles where you want to pay on results |
| At TekRecruiter | Available; we recommend a model before the search starts | Available; we recommend a model before the search starts |
Executive search questions, answered.
Which leadership roles does TekRecruiter search for?
VP, Head of and C-level technology and engineering leaders: CTOs, VPs and Heads of Engineering, infrastructure and security leaders, Heads of Data and AI, and Chief Product Officers, plus the go-to-market leaders who work alongside them and first leaders at venture-backed startups.
Who runs the search?
Searches are led by founder Ron Smith, a Florida International University computer science graduate and former software engineer with more than twelve years in technical recruiting, including leadership roles at two of the largest US IT staffing firms.
Is executive 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.
Do you ever run executive searches at no cost?
Yes. Every year TekRecruiter runs three leadership searches at no cost for existing clients, chosen at our discretion. It is how we thank the hiring leaders who recommend us, and how we help clear the leadership hires that hold up the rest of a company’s hiring.
Which leadership roles has TekRecruiter filled recently?
In 2026 so far: a CTO at a San Francisco marketing technology agency, a Chief Information Security Officer at a top IT infrastructure company in Atlanta, a VP of Quantitative Research at a Miami investment bank, a VP of Data & Analytics at a fintech company, a Director of AI Transformation at a large automotive enterprise in Miami, a Director of Data Science at a Fort Lauderdale health tech company, a Head of Product at a manufacturing and technology company, and Heads of Engineering and Software Engineering at two health tech companies, one Series B and one in Boca Raton.
How do you keep an executive search confidential?
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. The right leaders understand this, usually because they have run confidential searches themselves.
How long does an executive 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.
Do you help with relocation?
Yes. For leaders who relocate, we help with neighborhoods, housing, realtors, travel and scheduling on your behalf, and we can connect the candidate with an attorney to review an equity-heavy package.
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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