Retained Executive Search for Engineering Leadership

Retained search is the right model when the cost of leaving a role open, or filling it wrongly, is materially larger than the fee. That is almost always true of engineering leadership. A Director of Robotics sets the architecture, the vendor strategy, and the hiring bar for everyone who follows. A Head of AI decides what your organization builds versus buys for the next three years. Those searches need exhaustive coverage of a finite market, and exhaustive coverage requires committed capacity on our side.

What retained actually buys you

A retainer buys priority, exclusivity, and a documented process. We commit partner hours to your search ahead of contingency work, we work the market comprehensively rather than opportunistically, and we accept accountability for coverage, meaning we can tell you at any point exactly how many people in the defined market have been contacted, what they said, and why the ones who declined declined. That last data set is frequently more valuable than the shortlist, because it tells you precisely where your pitch, band, or requirements are losing.

• Named, written market map approved by you before outreach begins
• Partner-conducted technical screen on every candidate presented
• Written assessment covering fit, motivation, compensation and offer risk
• Weekly written progress reporting with coverage statistics
• Compensation benchmarking specific to your region and vertical
• Offer structuring, counteroffer strategy, and close management
• 30/60/90-day retention check-ins after start

Structure and terms

Our retained engagements are structured in three milestone payments: an engagement fee at kickoff, a second installment at shortlist delivery, and the balance on placement. Fees are calculated as a percentage of first-year cash compensation, agreed in writing before the search begins. Engagements are exclusive for a defined period and carry a replacement guarantee. If a placement does not last through the guarantee window, we run the search again without a new fee.

We also cap the number of concurrent retained mandates each partner carries. If taking your search would compromise an existing one, we will tell you and offer a start date rather than accept the retainer and under-serve it. That constraint is the practical meaning of "boutique."

When retained is the wrong choice

We will say so. If you are hiring three mid-level machine learning engineers into a well-supplied market with a competitive band, a retainer is not the efficient instrument: contingency search is. Retained search earns its structure when the market is thin, the role is confidential, the seniority is high, or previous attempts have already failed. Roughly speaking: leadership, cleared, and first-of-kind hires go retained; volume and mid-level individual contributor hiring goes contingency.

Typical retained mandates

VP of Engineering for a scaling robotics platform. Director of Controls Engineering for a multi-site manufacturer. Head of Machine Learning for an enterprise standing up its first production model team. Chief Engineer for a defense autonomy program with clearance requirements. Principal robotics engineer roles where three people in the region can genuinely do the job, and we need to reach all three.

Every engagement runs our four-step search process, applied across our robotics, AI, Aerospace & Defense, and manufacturing practices.