Confidential — Engineering Consulting Firm
A specialist engineering firm delivering technical design and project work for industrial and infrastructure clients. Founder-led, growing on reputation, with the founder still owning every critical project.
Services
Psychometric Testing
Confidential Search
Recruitment
Industry
Engineering Services
Company Size
65 Employees
Timeline
Permanent Placement
How a founder-led engineering firm finally promoted itself by hiring the Director of Engineering it had needed for years.
The challenge
The founder was the firm's most senior engineer, lead salesperson, and final reviewer. Growth was capped by the number of hours in his week.
Quality of work had built a strong client roster, but the firm could not take on more without sacrificing the standard. Engineers were promising, but the technical bar lived in the founder's head and there was no second layer of review. Every key proposal, every key signoff still passed through him. They needed a Director of Engineering who could hold the bar at the founder's level, build out a senior team, and free the founder to do client work and growth instead of QA.
The approach
Specialist search inside a narrow technical community. The right person had to be respected by the engineers before the founder could trust them with the bar.
We spent the first phase deep inside the technical work — reading recent project deliverables, sitting in on internal reviews, understanding what "good" actually looked like in this firm. Then we mapped senior engineers and engineering directors across the discipline, focusing on people with both client-facing depth and a track record of building teams. We approached candidates passively, on long timelines, and prioritized chemistry with the founder over availability. The candidate we placed already knew the firm's reputation. He came in respected, and that gave him the runway to lead.
The outcome
The Director of Engineering didn't just take work off the founder's plate, he raised the ceiling on what the firm can take on. The founder is back to growth and clients, and the engineering bar is now owned by someone other than him for the first time.
Director of Engineering hired from a respected peer firm
Now leads a team of 25 engineers and owns technical delivery end-to-end
Founder removed from final review on 90% of projects within the first year
Built a senior layer underneath him to develop the next generation
Backed by our 24-month placement guarantee
Kernel placed a Director who let me step out of project reviews for the first time in years. The team is stronger and so is the business.
Founder & Principal
Engineering Consulting Firm (confidential)
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