I'm John Hillard, a specialist technology recruiter: 27 years and 200+ permanent and contract placements finding the engineers, cleared specialists and executives that scaling companies can't reach on their own.
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I embed with a small number of scaling companies in enterprise software, SaaS, engineering services and defence-aligned technology, and become the person they call when a hire matters: permanent or contract, individual contributor to C-suite. Over time I learn the business, its market, its leadership and what it actually takes to hire well into it.
The board can't hear what the engineers are saying, and the engineers can't hear the board. That is the failure I'm usually called in to fix. I can speak Meerkat, and translate to Dolphin.
The people worth hiring are rarely looking. Security-cleared specialists, senior engineers, executives who need a trusted intermediary before they'll consider a move. They're not on a job board. They're in a network built over 27 years, and they take my call.
More than 200 placements, permanent and contract, for scaling businesses in enterprise software, cloud, defence, EdTech and consumer electronics; three of the engagements:
Placements for a workforce management software company, including nine in ten of the people who delivered the largest rostering deployment in the Southern Hemisphere.
Eighty-plus contract and permanent placements that grew a defence services company from nothing to more than a hundred cleared professionals.
Embedded software, QA and systems engineers for a global group, including the people who built its second-largest test lab worldwide.
Generalists call these briefs impossible and send speculative CVs anyway. If you think the person you need is a rainbow-coloured, left-handed unicorn, you're probably right, and those are the briefs I take.
A defence program at the point where the architecture decisions stop being reversible. You've been here before.
Read the roleThree enterprise go-lives in the next eighteen months and a delivery function that needs an owner, not a manager.
Read the roleFirmware for a product that ships in volume. The engineers are good; the lead left. You'll know within a week whether it's for you.
Read the roleIf you have a hire a generalist will fail to solve, I'd rather talk it through than read a submission. Email first and I'll call you back the same day I can.