Find the Most Optimal Executive or AI / Technical Leader
Perpetuate's Executive and Technical Leadership practice places senior technical leaders for DeepTech, HardTech, and AI companies, headhunting passive, in-demand talent who aren't applying anywhere else. Led by Stephen Tung, we never use job ads: 2 to 3 shortlisted candidates in 5-10 days.
Which Technical or Executive Leadership roles does Perpetuate place?
The Technical Leadership practice covers the full spectrum of senior engineering leadership: from a company's first technical hire to scaling a 200-person engineering organisation. Stephen Tung leads every search personally.
Executive
Chief Technology Officer
First technical hire through board-level CTO. Off-market headhunting for venture-backed DeepTech, SaaS and AI-Enabled / AI-Native Companies
Customer Context
Customer/Field Engineering and Senior Forward Deployed Engineering
Elite Engineers/Scientists/Physicists and Mathematicians who can ingest and translate high-context Customer Needs and then Build accordingly
Specialist Leadership
Director of AI
Technical Directors leading Applied ML, LLM infrastructure, or Frontier AI Product Development. HardTech and Real World/Physical AI/Science companies.
Senior IC + Head
VP / Head of Engineering
Heads of Engineering, Technical Directors, and Principal Engineers where technical depth is the primary differentiator and IC-to-leadership pipeline matters.
Executive
Chief Science Officer
Research and applied-science leadership for DeepTech and HardTech companies commercialising IP-heavy technology. Off-market headhunting for scientific leaders who are still embedded in active research.
Executive
Chief Operating Officer
Operational leadership to scale engineering-led organisations without diluting technical focus. We place COOs who can run the operating engine while founders stay close to product and technology.
Specialist Leadership
Chief Data Officer / Chief Data Science Officer
Data and Core Data Science Leadership for companies where data infrastructure and applied data science are core to the product. Off-market headhunting for leaders who own data strategy end-to-end.
Senior Leadership
SVP / VP of Engineering & AI
Senior and executive-adjacent engineering and AI leaders who own delivery, hiring, and architecture across growing technical organisations spanning traditional software and applied AI teams.
Senior IC
Staff, Lead & Principal Engineers
High-leverage individual-contributor hiring for Staff, Lead, and Principal Engineers: technical experts who set architecture and mentor senior teams without moving into people management.
What does a technical leadership search actually look like
in practice?
A CTO search through Perpetuate Talent requires ~30 mins of a founder's time. In that half hour, we build the brief, craft the pitch, and begin outreach to passive candidates. Most founders describe the process as "the opposite of what I expected from a recruiter."
20 mins to 1 hr
founder brief
5-10
days to shortlist
2-3
pre-vetted candidates
Day 1
~30 min brief with Key Decision Maker (CEO/Founder/CxO)
One focused session. We learn the company, the domain, the hard problems, and what kind of technical leader would find this genuinely compelling.
Days 2-5
Off-market outreach
Proactive, personalised outreach to passive candidates identified through the Talent System. No job boards. No advertised roles. Each pitch is bespoke.
Days 5-10
2-3 qualified candidates
A curated shortlist, not a pile of CVs. Every candidate has been assessed for technical depth, leadership track record, and cultural fit for your specific company.
Through offer
Dual-side diligence
We manage both sides. The candidate stays informed and engaged. You stay focused on running the business. We carry the process through to signed offer.
How do we find CTOs who aren't actively looking?
The best CTOs are already running engineering teams somewhere else. They're not updating their LinkedIn profile or replying to generic recruiter messages. Every search we run starts with a simple premise: the person you need has never heard of your company.
Concentric circle signal recognition
We map the technical leadership landscape around your company's specific domain, then work outward through degrees of separation. Who built the thing you're trying to build, but somewhere else? Who trained under the people who did? That's where the search begins.
Pattern matching, not keyword matching
A CTO who scaled a B2B SaaS platform from 12 to 120 engineers looks nothing like one who shipped frontier hardware at a defence contractor. We read for the right signals: technical depth, team leadership under constraint, and domain adjacency to your problem.
An artisan pitch, not a job description
We spend one hour with you. We learn what the company is actually building, what hard problems remain unsolved, and why a genuinely excellent engineer would find this the most interesting thing they could work on. That story becomes the outreach. Most candidates we approach have never heard a pitch like it.
A shortlist in 5–10 days, not 5–10 weeks
Most founders who've hired through traditional agencies describe the process as two months of noise followed by a final candidate they could have found themselves. A Perpetuate Technical Leadership search delivers 2–3 candidates within 10 days, each one personally reviewed by Stephen Tung before introduction.
What founders say about working with Stephen
"Perpetuate, under Stephen's guidance, has consistently matched and delivered talent exceptionally. Almost every candidate seems to bring unique value to the team, fitting more into a 'yes' or 'not yet' rather than a 'no', indicating a deep understanding of our specific requirements."
Jess Flanagan, Co-Founder @ Deckard
(ex-Qualcomm, Engineering Lead), Series A
Which companies is the Technical Leadership practice built for?
Perpetuate Talent's Technical Leadership practice works exclusively with Founders and CEOs who are themselves technical: companies where the engineering problem is the product, and a generalist or title-driven hire would slow things down rather than accelerate them.
Founding-stage companies hiring their first technical co-leader. Series A and B scaleups replacing a VP Engineering who has hit their ceiling. Deep-tech ventures where the engineering challenge is genuinely unsolved.
In every case, the brief starts from first principles: what does this company actually need to build, and who has already done something close to it?
✓ DeepTech and HardTech
✓ Venture-backed Scaleups
✓ Verticalised B2B SaaS
✓ Ex-Elite Scientific/Engineering founders
Your next CTO is already employed somewhere else.
Perpetuate Talent's Technical Leadership practice sources and delivers 2-3 off-market, pre-vetted shortlisted candidates within 5-10 days. One hour of your time to brief us. That's it.
Brief Stephen on your search