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AEY
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01 Sector

Technology,
& Software

Engineering talent for product-led growth and platform scale.

We place engineering, product and platform talent into SaaS, cloud and enterprise-software firms where technical fluency in the brief determines the quality of the shortlist.

What we do here

This is the largest single market we operate in by volume. Our typical engagement is a permanent specialist search at the senior-IC to engineering-manager level - the band where mis-hires are most expensive and where contingent agencies most consistently produce noisy shortlists.

What “great” looks like at intake

We will spend the first call pressure-testing three things: the technical stack, the realistic candidate pool in the city, and the founder or hiring manager’s actual tolerance for variance on seniority. If those three are not aligned in your head before you brief us, our first job is to align them.

Recent engagements in this sector

A confidential staff-level platform search for a scaling SaaS firm; an EM-level appointment into a post-Series-B product company; multiple senior backend hires for a cloud-infrastructure scaleup.

Capabilities we cover

  • Full-stack and product engineering
  • Platform, DevOps and SRE
  • Mobile (iOS / Android)
  • Engineering leadership and Heads of

Typical roles & bands

  • Senior / Staff Software Engineer
    $130k-$190k base
  • Engineering Manager
    $160k-$220k base
  • VP / Head of Engineering
    $200k-$300k total
  • Staff Platform / SRE
    $150k-$210k base
A note on these bands
  • Source. The founder's placement records across 15 years of recruitment practice, continuing into AEY, plus ongoing market benchmarking.
  • Composition. Base salary unless otherwise specified. Total-comp roles include equity / bonus / day-rate where stated.
  • Variance. Actual offers move with stage, location, technical specialism, clearance status and the candidate's alternative options. The bands above are 25th–75th percentile, not floor and ceiling.
  • Currency. All amounts in AUD.
Interactive salary benchmark →

Market notes

The Australian software market has consolidated around a small number of well-funded scaleups and a long tail of post-Series-A product companies. The hiring constraint is no longer headcount budget - it is whether the brief is calibrated for the engineer who can ship in a small team without process scaffolding.

Talent we know
~340 senior engineers, EMs and platform leads

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane - actively maintained pool, refreshed quarterly.

Anonymised, never shared. Maintained as a live working map, not a database.

Hiring in this market?

Let's talk about technology & software.

A 30-minute call is enough for us to know whether we can add value - and whether you should be talking to us, or to someone else.

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