Hiring your first engineers is one of the few early decisions that is hard to undo. The first two or three people write the code everyone after them inherits, set the standard for what “done” means and become the interviewers for the next round. A rushed hire can cost a year. This guide covers which roles to hire first, in what order, and an interview process that works even if you are not technical yourself.
Before hiring your first engineers, decide what you are hiring for
Write one paragraph describing what the product must do in the next twelve months and what the team must be able to ship. Say a Chennai startup is building a booking app for home tutors. Its year-one needs are a customer mobile app, a tutor app, a web admin panel, payments and notifications. That list points to people comfortable across the stack, not specialists in one narrow area.
Also decide what you will not build in-house. Design might come from a freelancer, and infrastructure from a managed platform. Every task you hand to a partner or a service is one less skill your first hires must have.
Which roles to hire first, and in what order
First: a senior generalist
Your first engineer should have shipped and maintained a production product before, ideally at a small company. They need to work across front end and back end, make sensible architecture choices on their own and say no when a request will cause trouble later. Here seniority means judgement, which years on a CV do not prove. If you do not have a technical co-founder, this person, or a part-time technical leader alongside them, will make most of the early technical decisions.
Second: a builder who complements the first
Look at what your first hire is weakest at. If they are strongest on the server side, hire someone strong on the front end or mobile. Two people with identical skills leave the same gaps twice.
Third: depends on the product
For a mobile-first consumer product, a dedicated mobile developer. For a data-heavy B2B product, someone strong on databases and integrations. For a product with frequent releases and many customers, someone who enjoys testing and release automation.
Roles to hold off on
- A full-time engineering manager. With three engineers, the senior engineer or a fractional CTO can handle coordination.
- A dedicated DevOps engineer. Managed hosting covers most early needs.
- Large numbers of juniors. They need time from senior people that a small team does not have yet.
Write a job description people want to read
Good candidates read many listings. Make yours specific:
- What the product does and who uses it, in two sentences.
- What the person will build in their first three months.
- The current stack, and how much freedom they will have to change it.
- How the team works: office, remote or hybrid, hours, how decisions get made.
- Pay range and any equity. A stated range saves time for both sides.
Leave out long lists of every tool you have heard of. Six “must-haves” filters out good people who could learn the seventh in a week.
A simple interview process
Keep it to four steps and finish within two weeks. Strong candidates have other offers.
- Screening call, 30 minutes. Talk about a project they are proud of. Ask what they built themselves, what went wrong and what they would change. Vague answers about “we” with no “I” are a warning sign.
- Practical exercise, two to four hours, paid if it runs longer. Make it close to your real work, such as adding a small feature to a sample app. Avoid puzzles that test memory rather than building.
- Review conversation, 60 minutes. Walk through their exercise together. Ask why they made each choice and what they would do with another day. This is where judgement shows.
- Founder conversation and references. Discuss how they like to work, what they expect from you and what would make them leave. Speak to at least one former manager or colleague.
If you are not technical, bring in someone who is for steps two and three: an advisor, a trusted engineer friend or a part-time CTO. Our technology advice service includes this kind of interview support.
Score candidates the same way
Agree a scorecard before you meet anyone. Rate each candidate from 1 to 4 on:
- Building ability: can they ship working, readable code?
- Judgement: do they make sensible trade-offs and explain them?
- Communication: can a non-technical founder follow their reasoning?
- Ownership: do they talk about outcomes, or only about tasks they were given?
- Fit for your stage: are they comfortable with ambiguity and few processes?
Write the scores down straight after each interview, before discussing with anyone. It reduces the pull of whoever spoke last.
Mistakes to avoid
- Hiring a friend without running the same process as everyone else.
- Hiring juniors first to save money, then paying for it in rework.
- Letting a single brilliant engineer keep everything in their head. Ask for documentation and code review from the first week.
- Leaving code, cloud and domain accounts in an employee’s personal name. Company accounts, always.
Hiring takes time. If you need to ship before the team is in place, a development partner can build the first version and hand it over cleanly, which is how our app development projects end. Talk to us if you want help planning the order.
Frequently asked questions
Should my first engineering hire be a CTO?
Not necessarily. Many startups hire a strong senior engineer first and give them a lead title, then decide on a CTO once the company and team have grown. Giving the CTO title too early can make it awkward to bring in a more experienced leader later. Be clear about responsibilities and equity rather than relying on the title.
Should I hire freelancers or full-time engineers first?
Freelancers suit well-defined, short pieces of work, such as a design or a specific integration. Your core product benefits from people who stay, learn the codebase and care about its long-term health. A common approach is one or two full-time engineers for the core, with freelancers or a partner filling specific gaps.
How do I test engineers if I am not technical?
Use a practical exercise based on your real work and get a trusted technical person to review it and sit in on the follow-up conversation. You can still judge communication, ownership and how clearly they explain their choices. Reference calls with former managers are also valuable and need no technical knowledge.