Executive Search for Technology and Digital Leadership
The technology appointment is usually the one your plan turns on. When a business is growing quickly, changing shape, or working a value-creation plan against the clock, the leader you put in charge of technology, product or data will quietly decide whether the strategy lands or stalls.
We are a London executive search and leadership advisory firm. We find and appoint the senior technology leaders who have built the change you are trying to make, for the boards, chief executives and investors who want to get that choice right.
We start with the problem, not the role
Most senior hiring failures we have watched up close did not begin with the wrong candidate. They began with the wrong brief. So before we open a search, we ask one question, and we keep asking it until the answer is honest: what problem are you actually solving by hiring this person?
A scale-up that has outgrown its founding engineering team is solving a different problem from a services business trying to become a product business, which is solving a different problem again from a private-equity-backed company that needs its digital thesis to deliver inside a hold period. Same job title. Three different leaders. Once the problem is named properly, the shape of the person who can solve it tends to become obvious.
We hire for how a leader behaves under pressure, not how they present
A strong CV from a well-known technology business feels like a safe choice in the board pack. It is not the same thing as knowing how someone will lead when the programme slips, the board loses patience, and two of your best engineers resign in the same fortnight.
Every leader operates one way when the room is calm and reaches for something else when it is not. Working with the social psychologist Dr Ian Stewart, we assess both: not just what a leader has done, but the behaviour they will amplify inside your organisation once the pressure is on. That behavioural read is the difference between an appointment that compounds over time and one that quietly comes apart around month twelve.
The best technology leader has often never worked in your sector
We place across sectors on purpose. The pattern recognition that changes an outcome usually travels better from outside an industry than from within it, because the people inside a sector have often arrived at the same answers.
A leader who has already turned a feature factory into a real product organisation, or already run engineering at pace under investor scrutiny, carries that judgement with them whatever industry earned it. We spend as much time understanding the environment that shaped a leader as the names on their CV, because the environment is what predicts how they will handle yours.
The experience behind every appointment
Adastrum brings twenty years of placing senior leaders into complex organisations, a behavioural assessment method developed with the social psychologist Dr Ian Stewart, and our Meta Team programme, which has worked with leadership teams at organisations including Nasdaq, Novartis, HSBC, Unilever and EQT.
Who we do this for
We run retained executive search for senior technology leadership: Chief Technology Officer, Chief Product Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Data Officer, and the technology-literate chief executives, chief financial officers and non-executive directors around them. We work with boards, chief executives, people leaders and private-equity operating partners in businesses facing growth or transformation.
Where you need a permanent appointment, we run a full retained search. Where you cannot wait three to five months, our interim leaders can be in the seat within days.
We are not a contingent agency, and we do not fill high-volume or below-director roles. If that is the brief, we will gladly point you to someone better placed to help.
Talk to us about your leadership team
Before your next senior technology appointment, one question is worth sitting with. Are you about to hire someone who knows what good looks like, or someone who has actually built it?
If that is the conversation you need to have, it is exactly the one we welcome.
Insights to Secure Your Next Tech Leader
Discover our latest articles, expert analysis, and practical advice to help you identify, engage, and appoint top-tier tech-focused executives who will drive growth and transformation within your organisation. Gain invaluable insights on leadership development, executive search, and building a high-performing executive team.
