Deep tech recruitment
for hard engineering companies.

When there is no standard job title

Deep tech companies often hire for roles that did not exist a few years earlier. The founders came out of a research group, the product is a physical device that has to work reliably, and the first few employees decide whether the company can move from a lab bench to repeatable manufacture. Conventional recruitment struggles here because it depends on matching titles, and there is no title for what the company needs.

Our deep tech recruitment UK work starts from a description of what has to be built and what stands in the way. We then look for adjacent fields where the same skills exist under other names.

A typical search

A university spin-out in Wales had developed a photonic sensor that worked convincingly in the laboratory. Investors had backed it on the condition that a first pre-production batch would be built within the year. The founders were physicists and needed a manufacturing engineer who could turn a delicate process into a documented one. They had advertised for a photonics manufacturing engineer and received almost nothing, because almost nobody holds that title.

We suggested a broader search. Compound semiconductor fabs in South Wales and elsewhere employ process engineers who spend their days controlling deposition and etch steps on sensitive materials, and the discipline transfers well. Joel contacted several of them and was straightforward about the risk. The company was small, the product was unproven and the first year would involve a great deal of improvisation.

One process engineer was eager for exactly that. He had spent years in a large facility where every change took months to approve and he wanted a hand in a whole product. He met the founders at the lab, asked to see their failed samples before the successful ones, and joined shortly afterwards. His first piece of work was a process traveller that the investors could read.

Hiring alongside funding

Start-ups in this field hire in step with funding rounds, and a search that overruns can cost a milestone. We agree a realistic timetable at the outset and tell clients early when a profile does not exist in the market. When that happens we propose alternatives that fit the technology, and we explain what each would give up.