How should a non-technical founder hire their first engineers?
Short answer
Start from the business problem, not a job title: decide what the product must do in the next six to twelve months and which technical risks matter most. Hire for that, assess candidates on realistic work rather than puzzles, and have an experienced engineering leader review the role and the final candidates before you commit.
A simple process
- Write down what the product must achieve in the next six to twelve months
- Identify the biggest technical risk, such as data, integrations, scale or AI
- Decide whether you need breadth (a generalist) or depth in that risk
- Assess candidates on a realistic task and a conversation about how they would use AI tools
- Ask an experienced engineering leader to review the role and the final candidates
Generalist or specialist?
Breadth helps when the product is straightforward and the main need is shipping and learning quickly. Depth matters when one technical risk could sink the business, for example data at scale, security or machine learning. Many first teams need one of each.
Read my longer article on hiring engineers as a non-technical founder (opens in new window)
Related questions
Should my first technical hire be a CTO?
Not necessarily. Many startups do better hiring a strong senior engineer first, with a fractional CTO guiding the architecture and hiring.