Beacon Talent recruits engineering leaders for growing SaaS companies, from VP of Engineering and Engineering Manager searches through specialized AI/ML and data leadership hires. Every candidate is sourced and vetted directly, not pulled from a job-board pipeline.
See how we source engineering leadersThese are real searches Beacon has run and closed, not hypothetical examples.
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A VP of Engineering owns the engineering organization end to end: hiring and developing the team, setting architecture and delivery standards, and keeping engineering output aligned with company priorities. At earlier-stage companies the role stays hands-on with technical decisions; at scale it shifts toward org design, planning, and leadership alignment. It's a different job than being a great individual contributor, and a different job than being a great people manager, it requires real fluency in both.
Strong engineers don't automatically make strong engineering leaders, and strong people-managers aren't always technically credible enough to earn a senior team's trust. Look for these four things:
Enough real depth that senior engineers respect their calls, not just enough vocabulary to sound credible in an interview.
Have they actually hired, structured, and scaled a team, not just managed one that was handed to them fully formed.
Fluent in how AI is changing engineering velocity and hiring itself, not leading a team as if it's still 2019.
Teams that stay under them. A leader's real track record shows up in who didn't leave, not just what shipped.
A real leader can name the specific tradeoff, who they consulted, and what they'd do differently. A resume-fluent candidate stays vague on the middle step.
Ask for a real example of when they chose to ship fast and pay for it later, and one where they chose to slow down. Both answers should exist.
Every real leader has one. How they noticed it, how long it took, and what they changed afterward tells you more than any success story.
Ask the reference directly whether people stayed under this person, and why. Vague praise is a signal to dig deeper, not a green light.
On Beacon's own recent searches, engineering leadership and specialist compensation has ranged from $140K total comp for a senior individual-contributor specialist up to $300K for VP of Engineering and Engineering Manager hires. AI/ML and data leadership roles have landed around $185K and are commanding a real premium as demand for AI-native engineering leadership grows. Don't lowball a leader who can genuinely operate at the intersection of engineering and AI, they have options right now.
An Engineering Manager typically owns one or two teams: their delivery, their growth, their day-to-day execution. A VP of Engineering owns the whole engineering organization, including the Engineering Managers themselves, and is accountable for org-wide architecture, hiring strategy, and how engineering shows up in company-level planning. If you're hiring your first engineering leader and the team is still small, you may only need an Engineering Manager. Once you have multiple teams and multiple managers, you need a VP.
This is a genuinely scarce hire, and a job posting alone rarely surfaces the right person, since the candidates who fit are usually employed and not actively looking. We recruit for the full range: engineering leadership, AI/ML and data specialists, and the senior individual contributors who anchor a team, and we test for real depth rather than taking a resume at face value.
Owns the engineering organization end to end: hiring and developing the team, setting architecture and delivery standards, and aligning engineering output with company priorities.
It requires real technical depth, a track record of building and retaining teams, and judgment on when to be hands-on versus when to delegate, a rare combination that a job posting rarely surfaces on its own.
On Beacon's own recent searches, comp has ranged from $140K for a senior specialist IC up to $300K for VP of Engineering and Engineering Manager hires, with AI/ML and data leadership commanding a premium.
An Engineering Manager owns one or two teams. A VP of Engineering owns the whole organization, including the Engineering Managers, and is accountable for org-wide architecture and hiring strategy.
Yes. Recent searches include AI/ML and data leadership hires alongside core software engineering and specialist roles like privacy engineering.
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