Technology Specialists

Roles like Applied Scientist, AI Engineer and Principal Engineer are some of the hardest in technology to fill well.

This is because so few people can genuinely do the work at the level required, and fewer of them are looking to move. A job ad and a keyword search rarely reach the right person, because the right person usually isn't checking job ads. Finding them takes knowing the field well enough to recognise real depth when you see it, and a network that reaches the people worth calling.

These also aren't appointments a business makes often, and they're rarely peripheral when it does. Getting the brief right before the search starts matters as much as it does at CIO or CTO level, maybe more, since a general recruitment process often can't tell a strong candidate from one who just interviews well on paper.

This is the kind of search Spark is known for: not the roles with a hundred qualified applicants, but the ones where there might only be a handful of genuinely capable people in the country, and most of them aren't looking to move.

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How do common titles vary from organisation to organisation?

• AI Engineer: at one company, this means shipping and maintaining production systems. At another, it's closer to the research-driven work usually labelled Applied Scientist.

• Applied Scientist: research work pushing what's possible with a model, though in a smaller team this might sit inside a role titled AI Engineer instead.

• Head of AI: sometimes a strategic role setting direction and building a team, sometimes the most senior hands-on technical person in a business whose AI function hasn't scaled yet.

• Principal Engineer: sometimes recognition of deep individual technical expertise, sometimes genuine technical leadership without the formal title to match.

• Senior security and infrastructure lead: might be a hands-on engineer securing infrastructure day to day, or a strategic risk and governance role closer to leadership, depending on how mature the security function is.

What they share is scarcity and specificity: senior enough to be hard to replace, specific enough that a generic senior-hire process usually misses what actually matters for the role. We will partner with you to make sure the brief is tight and the search is strong.

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Why engage Spark for a specialist technical search?

Spark works with organisations from Australian scale-ups to large global VC-funded companies, recently filling roles include: AI Engineer, Head of AI, Applied Scientist, Principal Engineer, Head of Engineering, and Principal Architect. In some cases the roles had been open for months before Spark was appointed to help.

Every one of these roles has been filled through our own network. None were advertised, and many of the people placed weren't looking to move until we approached them.

Placement doesn't end at the offer. Luke also supports onboarding, so the transition is set up to succeed, not just to get signed.

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Contact us today

​Download our Software Engineering Executive Search capability statement here