What we hire for
Every role we place sits at the intersection of product, sales, and engineering. Client-facing and deeply technical — the hardest profiles to hire for, and the only ones we work on.
The FDE is embedded in customer environments. They ship code, solve real problems, and build the kind of trust that keeps enterprise accounts for years. They're not consultants — they're engineers who happen to be extraordinary with customers. Finding them requires knowing the difference.
What good looks like
Why it's hard to hire
The pool of people who are genuinely both technical and commercially fluent is tiny. Most engineers don't want to be customer-facing. Most customer-facing people aren't technical enough. The overlap is rare.
The SE owns the technical side of the deal. They run demos, scope POCs, field the hardest questions on a live call, and write the technical sections of proposals. A great SE is the difference between winning and losing the technical validation. A bad one is invisible until deals start dying.
What good looks like
Why it's hard to hire
SEs at SaaS companies are often hired from inside — people who know the product. Hiring from outside at Seed or Series A means finding someone who can get up to speed fast, doesn't need hand-holding, and is already commercially switched on.
The SC bridges product and sales. They translate complex technical capability into language the buyer cares about — outcomes, risk reduction, ROI. In many companies this overlaps with the SE; in others it's a distinct motion. Either way, the profile is the same: technical enough to be credible, commercial enough to be useful.
What good looks like
Why it's hard to hire
The 'pre-sales' title means different things at different companies. Scoping the role properly is half the battle. Getting the right person for the specific motion — not just the generic profile — is where most searches go wrong.
The Deployment Strategist owns how the product actually lands in an enterprise. Not just whether it gets installed — whether it gets used. They map stakeholders, design rollout plans, manage change, and do whatever it takes to turn a signed contract into a working, adopted deployment. Part engineer, part programme manager, entirely accountable.
What good looks like
Why it's hard to hire
This role lives at the intersection of technical depth and organisational fluency — and most people are good at one, not both. Someone who can configure your product and convince a VP to change their workflow is genuinely rare. Most companies don't realise they need this person until deployments start stalling.
The CSE is the technical anchor of the post-sale relationship. They drive adoption, handle integrations, field the hard product questions, and make sure the customer is getting real value — not just renewing out of inertia. The best CSEs are proactive: flagging risks before they become churn, and spotting expansion opportunities before the AE does.
What good looks like
Why it's hard to hire
The CSE title gets used for everything from glorified support to near-SE work. Finding someone who's genuinely technical, commercially aware, and motivated by long-term customer outcomes — rather than ticket closure rates — is the challenge. Most searches settle for less.
The Implementation Engineer gets the product live. They manage onboarding, configuration, data migration, and the handoff to the customer's day-to-day team. Speed and organisation matter as much as technical skill — a slow implementation is a churn risk from day one.
What good looks like
Why it's hard to hire
Implementation is often treated as a junior role. It shouldn't be. A bad implementation sets the relationship up to fail — and the cost shows up in churn, not immediately. Hiring someone who's fast, organised, and technically credible requires treating the role seriously from the start.
Tell us what you're looking for. We'll be honest about what's achievable and what it'll cost you.
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