Technology Retained Recruitment — Frequently Asked Questions

We recruit for software engineers (frontend, backend, full-stack, mobile), data engineers and scientists, cybersecurity engineers and analysts, product managers, cloud and infrastructure engineers, IT operations and management, and IT consultants and implementation specialists. Our focus is individual contributors through director level.

The best technology professionals are almost never actively browsing job boards. They are employed, receiving multiple unsolicited recruiter contacts per week, and highly selective about what conversations they will have. A retained search means one dedicated recruiter conducts personal outreach into genuine passive candidate networks, pre-screens technically and culturally, and presents only candidates who genuinely meet your specific brief. This consistently outperforms job board posting in technology.

Most technology searches are completed within 21 to 35 business days. Roles requiring very rare specialisations — staff-level distributed systems engineers, deep security researchers, or specific cloud certification combinations — may take toward the longer end. We provide a realistic estimate at the start and weekly written progress updates throughout.

Yes. Our technology recruiters work exclusively in this sector and are capable of having credible conversations with engineers and technical specialists about their work. This matters enormously — senior engineers routinely ignore recruiter outreach from people who clearly do not understand the role. A recruiter who cannot articulate what makes your problem technically interesting will not reach the candidates you want.

Technical screening is tailored to the role. For engineering roles, we conduct structured technical conversations covering the candidate's experience with the relevant stack, system design thinking, and how they approach specific problems. We do not conduct coding tests — that is your team's role. Our pre-screening ensures that every candidate presented to you is technically plausible for the role and has been assessed for communication style and cultural indicators.

Yes — real-time market compensation analysis is included in every retained engagement at no additional cost. Technology compensation is volatile and market-specific in ways that most published surveys lag behind. We provide benchmarks before your first candidate conversation so your offer is positioned competitively from the start.

Yes. We place both broadly skilled engineers (full-stack developers, IT generalists) and highly specialised professionals (cloud security architects, data engineers with specific stack depth, MLOps engineers). Specialised searches take longer — we account for this in our timeline estimates at the start of every engagement.

Every permanent retained placement includes a 90-day guarantee. If the placed professional departs or is released within 90 days for reasons covered under our guarantee terms, we conduct a full replacement search at no additional fee. Our 96% one-year retention rate reflects the rigour of our cultural and technical screening — the guarantee is rarely invoked.

Yes — we recruit for all work arrangements. Remote technology roles do increase the active candidate pool significantly but also increase competition, as candidates considering remote roles evaluate multiple opportunities simultaneously. We factor work arrangement into our passive candidate outreach strategy and compensation benchmarking.

Yes. For technology organisations with multiple open roles, we can run concurrent retained searches. Many technology clients engage us across multiple engineering, data, and product roles simultaneously. Contact us during your initial consultation to discuss multi-role arrangements.