The short answer
Look at what is breaking, not the org chart. More work than hands means a senior engineer or lead. Engineers pulling the roadmap apart means a lead or manager. A team growing faster than anyone is looking after it means a manager. You as the bottleneck on every technical decision means a fractional CTO.
“I need to hire a senior engineer.” It is one of the most common briefs I get, and it is one of the least reliable. Not because founders do not know their own teams, but because the word senior is carrying four or five different jobs at once, and the difference between them decides whether the search takes three weeks or six months. If you are about to open a senior role, the most valuable thing you can do is work out which hire you are actually making before you write a line of the spec.
What Does Senior Actually Mean Here?
When a founder says senior engineer, they usually mean one of a few very different things. Sometimes they mean a strong individual contributor who can build hard things without hand holding. Sometimes they mean a lead who owns delivery for a slice of the product and takes work off the founder. Sometimes they mean a first engineering manager, because the team has grown past the point where one person can build and run it. And sometimes what they need sits above all of that: someone to set technical direction and make the architecture calls, which is a fractional or full time CTO conversation, not an engineer one.
These are not points on a single ladder where more seniority is always better. They are different jobs. A brilliant principal engineer can be the wrong hire for a team that needs a manager, and a superb manager can be the wrong hire for a team that just needs someone to build.
How Do You Tell Which One You Need?
The quickest way to find the real level is to stop looking at the org chart and look at what is actually breaking.
If the problem is throughput, you have more work than hands, and the work is well understood, you probably need a senior engineer or a lead. If the problem is that capable engineers keep pulling the roadmap in different directions, you need someone with the authority to decide, which points to a lead or a manager. If the problem is that you, the founder, are the bottleneck on every technical decision and you cannot hire your way out with more builders, you need direction, and that is the CTO conversation. And if the problem is that the team is growing faster than anyone is looking after the people in it, you need a manager, whatever the job title ends up saying.
One honest conversation usually settles it. What is the team missing right now, not in a year. Who does this person need to make better. What breaks if you do not hire them. The answers name the level far more accurately than any template job spec.
Why Does the Fractional CTO Option Get Missed?
The hire founders most often overlook is the fractional CTO, because it is the least familiar. The instinct is to reach for another engineer, since that is the hire you know how to make. But when the real problem is direction rather than capacity, adding engineers makes it worse. You are putting more people into a system that has no one steering it.
A fractional CTO is a senior technical leader for a few days a month. They set the architecture and the technical strategy, they hire the permanent team underneath them, and they hand over when the business is ready to bring the role in house. For a lot of early stage teams it is the highest leverage engineering spend available, and it is far cheaper than the wrong full time hire you spend six months unwinding.
Why Does Getting the Level Right Save the Search?
Almost every engineering search that drags on for months was mis scoped at the start, not under sourced. The seat stays empty because the team is interviewing senior engineers for a job that needs a leader, or courting leaders with a spec that reads like a hands on coding role. Fix the level and the rest of the search tends to fall into place, because now you are looking for a person who actually exists, doing the job you actually need done. The engineering leadership search I ran at Henry Schein One is a written-up example.
This is the part of hiring that happens before the CV ever lands, and it is the part that decides whether the whole thing works. It costs one conversation and it saves months. If you would rather start with your existing process, the free hiring process review does the same job on paper.
Questions this search answers
How do I know if I need a senior engineer or an engineering manager?
Look at what is breaking. If you have more work than hands and the work is well understood, that is a senior engineer or a lead. If the team is growing faster than anyone is looking after the people in it, that is a manager, whatever the job title ends up saying.
What is a fractional CTO and when do you need one?
A senior technical leader for a few days a month who sets the architecture and technical strategy, hires the permanent team underneath them, and hands over when the business is ready to bring the role in house. You need one when the problem is direction rather than capacity.
Is a fractional CTO cheaper than a full time hire?
For a lot of early stage teams it is the highest leverage engineering spend available, and far cheaper than the wrong full time hire you then spend six months unwinding. It is also the hire founders most often overlook, because it is the least familiar one to make.
Why do engineering searches drag on for months?
Almost always because the level was mis scoped at the start, not because the search was under sourced. The seat stays empty while the team interviews senior engineers for a job that needs a leader, or courts leaders with a spec that reads like a hands-on coding role.
What questions settle the level before writing the spec?
Three. What is the team missing right now, not in a year. Who does this person need to make better. What breaks if you do not hire them. The answers name the level far more accurately than any template job spec will.
If you are weighing up your next engineering hire and you are not certain whether you need a senior engineer, a lead, a first manager or a fractional CTO, that is exactly the conversation I enjoy having, and the best time to have it is before the spec goes out.
Arjun Gillard
Founder, AG Talent
agtalent.co.uk
