Engineering recruitment · London
Engineering recruitment agency in London.
Founder-led engineering recruitment for London startups and scale-ups. Every candidate is technically screened by us before you see a CV, so your interview time goes on people who can do the job.
Hiring engineers in London
London is the most competitive engineering market in Europe, and the most expensive. Demand concentrates around fintech, AI and platform teams, where strong backend, infrastructure and machine-learning engineers are chased by well-funded scale-ups and the London offices of US companies. Most teams run hybrid, and the best engineers are rarely on the market for long.
We screen every engineer technically before you meet them, so your interview time goes on people who can genuinely do the work rather than on filtering CVs. Whether you are making your first senior hire or building out a platform team, we bring the network and the technical judgement to move quickly. We can also advise on where to draw the line between a senior and a staff-level hire, and how to structure an offer that holds up when counter-offers appear, as they often do in London.
For current pay, see the London tech salary guide. Ready to hire? Tell us the role.
Active desk
Engineering searches we are running in London.
3 live searches right now, each technically screened by us. Hiring something similar? Tell us the role. Looking for a role yourself? Our open roles are all here.
How it works
How we run a engineering search in London.
- 1 Brief
A call with a founder to scope the engineering role: the work, the level, the package and what good looks like in London.
- 2 Search
We approach our network and the passive market. Most strong candidates are not applying anywhere.
- 3 Screen
A founder interviews every candidate technically before you see them, and writes up the evidence.
- 4 Shortlist and close
You interview a short list of people who can do the job. We manage offers, counter-offers and notice periods through to start.
“OpenSource was able to service all of our hiring needs and has left our teams in a really strong place. Their integration into our business was seamless.”
FAQ
Engineering recruitment in London, answered.
What does OpenSource's technical screen cover for engineers in London?
A founder who has written production software interviews every engineer before you meet them: the systems they have built and owned, the trade-offs they made, how they debug, and how they work with product and other engineers. You receive a written summary with the CV, so the first interview starts from evidence rather than a keyword match.
Which engineering roles do you recruit in London?
Backend, frontend, full-stack and mobile engineers from mid to staff and principal level, platform, infrastructure and DevOps engineers, security engineers, and engineering managers. Stack-specific searches, for example Python, TypeScript, Node.js, Go, Java or Rust, run against the same screen.
How quickly can OpenSource deliver a engineering shortlist in London?
For most engineering roles in London we come back with a technically screened shortlist within days of agreeing the brief. We screen every candidate ourselves before you see them, so the time you spend is on interviews, not on filtering CVs.
Do you recruit engineering roles in London on a contingent or retained basis?
Both. Most individual engineering hires in London run contingent, where you pay only on a successful placement. Leadership and business-critical searches run retained, with a committed process and full market mapping. Teams hiring several roles at once often prefer an embedded arrangement, where one of the founders works inside your team for a fixed period.
Where in London is OpenSource based?
Our office is at Aldwych House in Midtown, between the City and the West End. We meet London clients and candidates there in person whenever it helps, and we run hybrid and remote searches for London-headquartered teams hiring across the UK and Europe.