Startup Recruitment
The Gold Standard In
Recruitment for Startups
Richard Wheeler Associates is a leading recruiter for early-stage technology startups.
Since 1987, we've partnered with software startups, university spin-outs and (more recently) AI ventures to help founders build teams capable of turning ambitious ideas into successful products.
Whether you're recruiting a Founding Engineer, sole IC, first technical hire or building an engineering team, success depends on finding agile, entrepreneurial people who thrive in fast-moving environments.
We specialise in identifying builders who are comfortable with ambiguity, enjoy greenfield development, and can solve problems from first principles. Technically strong collaborative engineers with drive, energy, flexibility.
If you're looking to hire a Founding Engineer, Senior Developer, AI Engineer or CTO, RWA can help you secure the talent needed to transform your vision into reality.
Startup Careers
We recruit professionals who are genuinely excited by early-stage startups and motivated by the challenges and rewards of building something from the ground up.
We’re proud of our track record of successfully representing exceptional people - people with vision, experts in their field, many with PhD’s - who aren’t in the habit of uploading a CV onto job boards.
These are individuals with strong technical skills, commercial product instincts, the confidence to make decisions, take ownership and move quickly. Many will have experience building prototypes, developing an MVP, defining a tech stack, or moving a product from 0→1.
Candidates are often attracted by the opportunity to work directly with founders, high product ownership, meaningful equity, and fast-track career growth.
RWA recruits for startup jobs based in London, Oxford, Birmingham, the high-tech M3, M4 corridor, as well as fully remote positions in the UK and across different countries and time zones.
RWA are the very antithesis of the bulk CV merchants and instead provided a properly curated set of candidates who actually fitted our requirements. We look forward to using RWA again in the future.
Thank you for your help in this process and the pace in which you worked with us! We appreciated your diligent way of working on this AI Engineer hire, and I particularly liked your screening notes. The selected candidate came with glowing references.
I have really appreciated the professional yet personal attention, time and advice afforded me by Richard Wheeler and the team.
