Engineering recruiting
Engineering recruiting for VC-backed startups
Refery recruits engineers for early-stage companies where scope and ownership matter more than a familiar job title. Specialist independent recruiters create market reach; founders, CTOs, operators, and investors add first-hand referral signal.
An illustration of how a Refery search is presented. The names and grades are examples, not real candidates.
Our clients are backed by investors including:
When this search fits
The roles Refery is built for.
Use Refery for critical engineering hires where a generic sourced list creates work instead of clarity. The search begins with what the engineer must build, the decisions they will own, and the environment in which they need to succeed.
- Founding engineers
- Senior and staff software engineers
- Product and growth engineers
- Infrastructure, platform, and security engineers
- Data and machine learning engineers
- Engineering leaders
How Refery runs the search
From brief to a reasoned shortlist.
Write the ownership brief
Define the first six months, technical constraints, team shape, and decisions this person can make.
The brief- Must own
- The first product milestone and the decisions after it
- Stage
- VC-backed, Seed to Series B
- Still open
- Location, band, and the first milestone
Scope and fee agreed before the search15%Search adjacent evidence
Look beyond exact titles to comparable products, systems, users, and operating environments.
The shortlist, with the reasoningEthan ChoCo-founder intro · work reviewedA+Ines CarvalhoSpecialist search · screenedA−Lena BrandtScout intro · screenedACalibrate quickly
Use specific feedback on the first briefs to tighten the search without rebuilding it.
What comes back- Evidence
- What they owned, and how we know
- Confirmed
- Interest, location, notice, comp expectation
- To test
- The one thing the interview should settle
An illustration of how a Refery search is presented. The names and grades are examples, not real candidates.
What the shortlist should prove
Evidence, not title matching.
- What the candidate personally built
- Tradeoffs made under real constraints
- Product and customer judgment
- Ability to operate at the company’s current stage
Commercial terms
- Placement fee
- 15% to 25%of first-year base salary, paid only when you hire
- Retainer and exclusivity
- Nonerun Refery alongside your own channels
- Guarantee
- 90 daysunder the client agreement
The exact scope and fee are agreed before the search starts. See fees and terms →
From a real search
When the brief itself needs engineering
In one Refery engagement, a recruiting partner flagged that a full-stack brief bundled product engineering with deeper specialist work that overlapped another open seat. The combination was narrowing the search.
Refery took the concern to the founder, asked whether the product role could stand on its own, and got agreement that a more conventional full-stack profile could work. The answer went back to the partner. This was a change to the agreed requirements, not a claim that a new headcount was created.
The useful lesson
Before asking for more candidates, check whether you are asking one hire to solve two different jobs.
Read the anonymized search story →Go deeper
Related searches and guides
Start a search
Tell us what this person needs to own.
Share the role, the outcome, and the constraints. Refery replies with how the search would run and what the shortlist should prove.