Northstack was founded in 2020 by Alex Park as a deliberately small alternative to the high-volume, low-discipline tech recruitment firms that dominate the UK market. Six years in, we are still six consultants, still in one office, and still doing the work that way.
Alex spent eight years inside the larger tech recruitment firms before founding Northstack in 2020. The pattern across those firms was consistent: senior briefs were taken on as a courtesy and handed to whichever junior consultant had capacity that week. Shortlists were thrown together from a database. Offer-accept rates were below 70%. The work was, in every measurable sense, mediocre — and the market had got used to it.
The thesis behind Northstack was simple. There is a real market — small but not tiny — for tech recruitment done well. The senior engineers and engineering leaders who get hired by the strongest UK tech businesses do not get there through bulk-list email campaigns. They are reached through relationships, considered briefing work, and the patient work of long-form conversation.
Six years in, we are six partners and senior consultants. We complete 60–80 placements a year, almost all at Staff level and above. Our offer-accept rate is 92%. We have one office, in Shoreditch, and no plans to open another.
— Alex Park, Founder
Every search we run is led by a partner who has personal expertise in the area. No SDR-to-consultant handoff. No outsourced research team. The partner who takes the brief is the partner who runs the search.
We do not send long lists. Every candidate on a Northstack shortlist has been spoken to at length, briefed honestly on the role, and is genuinely interested. Three to five candidates, each ready to interview, each worth your time.
We turn down briefs where we don't think we can do the work better than the alternative. Sometimes we will name a firm that's a better fit. We do this often enough that clients have come to expect it.
We share our underlying placement data — anonymised — with serious clients before they brief. The conversation often changes the brief. Sometimes it concludes that the firm doesn't actually need to hire the role described.
Every consultant at Northstack has spent their career in a specific discipline. We don't rotate people between practices. The person who runs your search has spent five-plus years doing exactly that kind of work.
Founded Northstack in 2020 after eight years at Hired and a previous life as a backend engineer. Leads Product Engineering — staff, principal, and engineering leadership hires across consumer fintech, marketplaces, and developer tools.
On the desk: Rust, slow coffee, picking apart engineering org charts.
Heads up Platform & Infra hiring at Northstack. Previously at Hays Technology and, briefly, as an SRE at a payments business. Twelve years between the two — a useful pairing for finding the right platform engineers.
On the desk: Kubernetes (begrudgingly), running, terrible coffee.
Leads AI & ML at Northstack. PhD in computational neuroscience that he occasionally pretends is relevant. Joined Northstack from Selby Jennings in 2022, and runs the busiest practice in the firm by some margin.
On the desk: Foundation model weeklies, climbing, opinionated takes on benchmark results.
Heads design and senior product hiring at Northstack. Previously at Aquent and, before that, ran their own product design studio out of Manchester. The rare recruiter who can have an opinion on the Figma file as well as the candidate.
On the desk: Variable fonts, vinyl, refusing to use the word 'creative'.
Senior Product Engineering consultant, with a particular concentration in consumer-facing scale-ups and developer tools. Joined Northstack from Hired in 2023. Quiet, careful, exceptional at the candidate conversation.
On the desk: Long walks, Go (the language and the board game), reading the change-log.
Joined Northstack in 2024. Focuses on senior product manager and Head of Product appointments, particularly in developer tools, fintech, and AI-first businesses. Holds Stanford MBA and worked briefly as a product manager at a Series B fintech.
On the desk: Long-form product writing, espresso, organising things into spreadsheets.
We respond to every brief within one working day. No obligation, no pressure, no follow-up unless we hear from you.