At a glance
- Time to delivery
- 1.5 months
- Engagement
- Executive search, no retainer
- Short list
- 10 candidates
- Finalists presented
- 2
- Locations
- Munich · Amsterdam
- Stage
- Seed
The challenge
A founding CTO who could scale a product and still ship code with AI.
Our client was an AI-native start-up at seed stage, splitting presence between Munich and Amsterdam. The founders needed a CTO who could carry two profiles at once: a senior engineer with a track record of building large, scalable software products, and a hands-on builder who could remain the primary technical contributor by leaning heavily on AI and modern coding tools.
Equally important was conviction in the founders and the idea. The brief was as much about cultural fit and long-term commitment as it was about technical depth — a wrong hire at this stage would set the company back by quarters, not weeks.
The engagement
Executive search without a retainer, run on a tight 6-week clock.
We took the mandate on an executive-search basis without a retainer — agreeing tight delivery milestones with the founders and absorbing the upfront search risk in exchange for a focused, time-boxed engagement.
We mapped AI-native CTO and founding-engineer talent across the DACH region and the Benelux, prioritising candidates anchored to Munich, Amsterdam or willing to split time between both. Each candidate was assessed against three lenses: scalable-systems track record, current depth with AI-assisted development, and cultural fit with the founders.
Roles hired
One founding-CTO seat, two profiles in one person.
CTO, AI-native seed start-up
Founding CTO owning architecture, technical hiring and the early engineering culture — while remaining the primary contributor in the codebase, using AI and modern tooling to keep velocity high. Splits time between Munich and Amsterdam alongside the founders.
Candidate landscape
A narrow overlap between scaled-systems experience and AI-native delivery.
Engineering leaders from scaled products
Senior engineers and former heads of engineering who had shipped and scaled significant software products and were ready to drop back into deep IC work for the right founding mission.
AI-native technical founders
Technical founders and ex-founders fluent with modern AI coding tools, agentic workflows and LLM-driven product development — already shipping production work with these stacks.
Munich & Amsterdam anchored builders
Senior technologists based in Munich, Amsterdam or comfortable splitting time between both hubs, with the network depth to hire the first engineers locally.
Mission-driven operators
Candidates whose motivation was the founders and the idea — not title or comp arbitrage. Cultural fit was tested explicitly at every stage.
How we ran it
Six weeks, four phases.
- Week 1
Briefing & calibration
Deep kickoff with the founders on technical bar, AI-tooling expectations, cultural non-negotiables and split-location working model. Calibration profile signed off before outreach started.
- Weeks 2–3
Mapping & outreach
End-to-end mapping of CTO and founding-engineer talent across Munich, Amsterdam and the wider DACH/Benelux corridor. Direct, confidential outreach prioritising AI-native operators with scaled-systems backgrounds.
- Weeks 4–5
Short list of 10 & founder interviews
Short list of 10 prescreened candidates presented to the founders. Structured interview loops focused on architecture, hands-on AI tooling depth and conviction in the mission.
- Week 6
Two finalists & offer
Two finalists progressed to final-round interviews, deep references and cultural-fit conversations with the founders. Offer negotiated and signed inside the 1.5-month window.
The outcome
A founding CTO seated in 6 weeks, fully aligned with the founders.
We delivered a short list of 10 in 1.5 months and presented 2 finalists who both met the technical and cultural bar. The founders had a real choice rather than a forced hire — and signed the chosen CTO inside the 6-week window.
The new CTO is now operating as both architect and primary technical contributor, using modern AI tooling to keep shipping velocity high while building out the founding engineering team across Munich and Amsterdam.
FAQ
AI-native CTO searches at seed stage, answered.
- Can you really run a CTO search in 1.5 months?
- Yes — when the brief is sharp, the founders are decisive and the search is focused on a single hire with a calibrated profile. We commit to time-boxed delivery and treat each week as a milestone with the client.
- Why a non-retainer executive search here?
- The founders wanted executive-search rigour without a retainer model. We agreed clear delivery milestones, absorbed the upfront search risk and were paid on placement — appropriate for a seed-stage company that wanted alignment on outcome.
- How do you assess AI-native engineering depth?
- We test for evidence of real production work with modern AI tooling — agentic workflows, LLM-assisted development, evals — and probe for opinions, trade-offs and failure modes, not just buzzword fluency.
- How do you screen for cultural fit with founders?
- Structured competency and motivation interviews, multi-source references, and explicit founder-candidate conversations focused on the idea, the mission and the working model. Cultural fit is treated as a hard gate, not a tiebreaker.
- Do you cover both Munich and Amsterdam in one search?
- Yes. We regularly run cross-border searches across DACH and the Benelux, and can prioritise candidates anchored to one hub or comfortable splitting time between both.
Related
Service: Executive Search →
Retained and milestone-based executive search for founder, C-suite and country-launch roles.
Roles we hire: Tech →
CTOs, VPs of Engineering, founding engineers and AI-native technical leaders across Europe.
Roles we hire: C-level →
C-suite and country-launch leadership across DACH, Benelux and the wider European market.
Hiring a founding CTO?