Principal Systems Engineer, NV1
A defence program at the point where the architecture decisions stop being reversible. You've been here before.
Read the roleI'm John Hillard, a specialist technology recruiter. Since 1999, 1,300+ permanent and contract placements, finding the technologists and engineers, project specialists, security-cleared professionals, sales hunters, senior and executive managers that scaling businesses can't reach on their own.
Contact John15 recommendations on LinkedIn, from clients, hiring managers and placed candidates
"Put simply, John is the best recruiter I have ever used within my 12 year sales career. He is a man of very high integrity, both personally and professionally, and takes the time to understand what a client needs, as opposed to simply what they want."Anthony Truong, client, 2013 · LinkedIn recommendationRead all fifteen
I embed with a select number of ambitious, scaling companies (enterprise software and SaaS, engineering and cloud services, professional and managed services, defence and national security technology) and become the person they call. Over time, I learn all aspects of the business: its market differentiators, its leadership style and communication approach, who works well inside its four walls, and why.
I am the information and relationship conduit between the company and the marketplace.
Your product or service is exceptional. You swim upstream when it's right, not because it's trendy. But your value doesn't survive the translation into the people you need to realise it. The board speaks a different language to your technologists. Your sales people operate in the gravity of a separate planet to your business operations. None of this compresses cleanly into a compelling story told person by person, candidate by candidate.
That is the failure I fix. Fluent in Meerkat. Can translate to Dolphin.
The people worth hiring are rarely looking. Senior technologists, top salespeople, security-cleared engineers, consistently successful executive managers who need a trusted intermediary before they'll consider a move. They're not on a job board. Many don't even have a tangible digital profile. They're in a leveraged network built up over nearly three decades, and they take my call.
More than 1,300 placements, permanent and contract, for scaling businesses in enterprise software, cloud, R&D and product development, telco, engineering, defence technology, sales, business operations and executive search. Four such engagements:
Permanent staff for a UK-headquartered global workforce management SaaS vendor, recruited across Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra: software developers, QA and testers, product owners, implementation consultants, project managers, application support, CloudOps, sales managers and professional services managers. Amongst many assignments, I recruited the on-site consulting group that delivered the largest rostering software implementation in the world.
A simple introduction at a Melbourne steak restaurant turned into a decade-long partnership with a boutique Defence services provider: more than eighty contract and permanent Australian security-cleared professionals appointed across Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Nowra, Townsville and Rockingham, spanning military, aerospace, law enforcement, geospatial, cyber security and commercial sectors. I placed the company's first employee and was there to celebrate when, as a 100-plus employee company, the business was sold.
More than forty hard-to-find contract and permanent embedded software, QA, UI, cloud and DevOps and systems engineers, and project managers, for a multinational set-top box solutions provider in Sydney and Melbourne delivering complex product and engineering services to Australia's largest carrier telco, broadband provider and video streaming platform.
A trusted high-ranking ex-ADF defence intelligence officer needed senior Australian intelligence, national security, Federal law enforcement and cybersecurity specialists willing to design and deliver structured training consultancy services for an Emirati audience. These individuals rarely have public or digital profiles. They naturally distrust middlemen. They disclose scant personal or professional information. They scrutinise you as much or more than you scrutinise them, and have the access to information to do so thoroughly. And they know people. Mid-Covid, often moving whole families overseas, I placed around two dozen specialists: rainbow-coloured, left-handed unicorns, every one.
Fifteen recommendations on LinkedIn, written by the people who hired through John or were placed by him. Three of them:
John is one of the best recruiters I have ever worked with. As an employer I really appreciate the detail he provides on candidates and the honesty with his recommendations.
He took the time to understand the role requirements as well as the company culture. His recommendations of candidates were spot on and he provided a rich summary of each candidate and their experience.
He was able to quickly understand the role requirements I had, the team and organisational culture we work in, and recommend only the right people. He would not waste my time with candidates that were not right, and kept me informed.
Two minutes with a client who has hired through J2 since 2014, on what changed when one person owned the whole brief. sample
All fifteen recommendations on LinkedInGeneralists call these briefs impossible and send speculative CVs anyway. These are the ones open now.
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 role