Insight
How to Hire Your First Engineers
Your first engineers set the bar
The first few engineers you hire don’t just write your early code. They define the standard everyone after them is measured against, and they shape the culture of how your team builds. Get them right and hiring compounds in your favour. Get them wrong and you spend the next year unwinding it.
Having sat on both sides of the table, as a software developer and now hiring engineers for a living, here’s the advice we give founders most often.
Hire for trajectory, not just the checklist
Early on, you need people who can operate without scaffolding: own ambiguous problems, ship, and improve the system around them. A pristine tech-stack match matters far less than judgement, ownership and the ability to learn quickly. Screen for how someone thinks, not just what they’ve used.
Run a fast, respectful process
The strongest engineers are rarely on the market for long. A process that drags, or that treats candidates as interchangeable, loses them, usually to a competitor who moved faster. Keep loops short, give feedback quickly, and make sure every candidate hears back from a real person.
Screen technically, properly
A CV and a chat won’t tell you whether someone can do the job. A genuine technical screen, ideally by someone who has done the work, saves enormous downstream cost. (It’s why we screen every candidate ourselves before they reach a client.)
Sell, don’t just assess
Interviews run both ways. Your first engineers are taking a bet on you. Be clear about the mission, the problems, the ownership on offer and the realities of stage. The best candidates are choosing between options. Give them a reason to choose you.
Decide how you’ll hire before you start
Founders often default to whichever route they’ve heard of, rather than the one that fits. If you’re not sure whether to run this in-house, retain a specialist agency, or bring in an embedded recruiter, our comparison of contingent vs retained recruitment sets out when each model earns its fee, and our fuller breakdown of in-house recruiter vs agency vs embedded covers the trade-offs of all three routes side by side. And because a mishire on your first few engineers is expensive well beyond the salary, it’s worth reading how to reduce engineering recruitment costs before you commit to a process.
What comes after your first engineers
Once the team has grown past its first few hires, the next big decision is usually who leads engineering day to day. Our guide to Head of Engineering vs CTO sets out which of those hires fits your stage and how to run that search properly.
Need a hand?
Whether you’re making your first hire or your fiftieth, we can help you run it well. Explore how we work, see how we operate as a tech recruitment agency in London, or talk to us.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
When should a startup hire its first engineer?
As soon as the founders can no longer build fast enough alone and the roadmap depends on shipping more than one person can realistically own. Waiting too long slows growth; hiring too early, before the problem is clear, risks bringing someone in without enough scope to prove themselves.
What should founders look for in their first engineering hires?
Trajectory over a checklist match: judgement, ownership and the ability to learn quickly matter more than a perfect stack match. Early hires need to operate without scaffolding, so screen for how someone thinks, not just what they have used before.
Should a startup use a recruiter for its first engineering hires?
It depends on volume and urgency. A single early hire can often be found through founder networks, but once you are hiring more than one role at once, or a search is dragging, a recruiter who screens technically usually saves far more time than the fee costs. See our guide to contingent vs retained recruitment for which model fits your stage.