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The talent partner

you ought to have

Bespoke talent solutions for tech and venture teams

Adaptable services

Collaboration models that tailor to your evolving needs

  • You are headhunting for a leader who inspires confidence

    When you’re making high-trust hires, we work alongside you to create and execute a plan to find the most suitable leader for your team. Beginning with a review of your objectives, we draft a market analysis, craft your messaging, and engage a curated cohort of executives in confidential, exploratory conversations. We tackle executive searches with an agile approach; emphasizing iteration, adaptation, and transparency with a commitment to quality until you’ve found the candidate who leaves no room for doubt.

  • You are scaling operations and want to plug in an experienced talent team

    Whether you need a complete talent attraction strategy or just some help with a sticky search, we become part of your team. We onboard into your workspace, get to know your culture, and absorb your talent challenges from start to finish. Our approach is flexible: we work with your existing processes or help set up new ones. Depending on our availability and your unique needs, you can collaborate with our talent partners on either a full-time or part-time basis.

  • You have established hiring processes and variable needs

    Similar to the traditional search agency model, we offer you the option to only pay for successful placements. This is often the best option when you have established hiring processes, and/or want to work with a handful of search groups simultaneously. We establish a flat fee that reflects your target salary range and is consistent with industry rates. Choose between a 3-month full-credit guarantee or pay-as-you-go based on the employee’s tenure.

  • You have ambitious hiring goals and are looking for sustainable unit economics

    This model involves a monthly retainer that’s complemented by reduced success fees and is most suitable for clients with ambitious hiring goals and those looking for continued support following a fully embedded engagement. Our level of integration with your team, workspace, and processes is tailored to align with your preferences and policy constraints. The result is a reduction in cost-per-hire and consistent support that accommodates fluid hiring goals.

Diverse capability

Building enduring teams across your business

Execs
R&D
GTM
Ops

Executives

Headhunting for high-trust roles comes with risk and requires the care to match. Our lived experiences with nuanced executive hiring processes and their consequences equip us to position your business and navigate the tough questions executives ask. When making such pivotal decisions you ought to have a talent partner who can represent you competently and, when needed, confidentially.

CEO CTO CRO COO CPO CMO CFO CISO CHRO VP Operations VP Engineering VP Sales VP Customer Success VP Marketing VP People General Manager

Research & Development

Our practice and careers began with technical recruitment. We have worked alongside engineering, product, and design teams, immersed ourselves in their world and we speak their language. We don’t rely on keywords. The relationships we’ve built have taught us how to empathize with the humans behind the skillset. When building your technical teams you ought to have a partner capable of understanding the problems you are solving and what matters to the people you’re going to solve them with.

Staff Engineer AI Engineer Forward Deployed Engineer Voice Agent Engineer Product Engineer Platform Architect Senior Software Engineer Engineering Manager Site Reliability Engineer DevOps Engineer Data Scientist Data Engineer Software Engineer in Test Product Manager Director of Product Senior Product Designer UX Designer User Researcher Security Engineer Security Architect IT Operations Embedded Software Engineer Hardware Engineer Solutions Architect Systems Engineer

Go-To-Market

We understand the difficulty in separating good from great in go-to-market talent pools. Our experiences have shown us how to design revealing and predictive hiring processes that spot the outliers early. Our relationships have revealed where great talent is minted and why they move on. When searching for the skills that monetize innovation, you ought to have a partner who can help you dig into your candidates’ style, market alignment, and previous results.

Account Executive Account Manager Director of Sales Product Marketing Manager Demand Marketing Manager Customer Marketing Manager Director of Marketing Channel Sales Manager Customer Success Manager Customer Success Lead Director of Customer Support Technical Support Analysts Sales Engineer

Operations

We are operators and our practice has been shaped in close collaboration with venture operations teams. With burgeoning networks in the finance, legal, facilities, and people operations talent pools, we bring you the even-keeled professionals that businesses need to go the distance. When operations are done well, it looks easy. Your search for operations talent ought to look easy too.

Director of Finance Senior FP&A Analyst People Operations Manager Head of Talent Senior Recruiter Accounting Manager Controller Accounting Manager Office Manager Counsel Executive Assistant Revenue Operations Manager

The recruiters you’ve been looking for

  • Lutra combines lessons learned from leading talent for a venture-funded scale-up and decades of tech sector headhunting to help our clients build world-class teams. We have experienced the talent market and the challenges of team building like few others.

  • From pre-revenue to cash-flow positivity, and from SDR to CTO, we’ve done it. We deploy the strategy that works for the role being filled. We bring the tactics and communication habits that delight hiring managers and candidates. Save yourself the uncertainty; partner with a team that’s been there before.

  • Our experience has taught us that candidates are not just potential hires but key brand advocates or detractors. We operate with reverence of this responsibility, taking great care in how we handle outreach, interviews, offers and rejections alike. We help turn candidates into brand evangelists.

  • We understand the opportunity cost of interviews - for both parties. Leaning on our industry fluency and experience facilitating thousands of interviews, we are selective in the candidates we engage and advance. This means refined shortlists, streamlined searches, and time left for you to think big.

  • Lutra quickly aligned with our highly specialized technical needs, demonstrating a deep understanding of both our industry and the high bar we set for talent. They combined independent research with an in-depth technical deep dive alongside our team, resulting in an exceptionally fast and precise hiring process. Every candidate they presented was top-tier, and within 50 days, we successfully built our founding team of four. Their expertise and efficiency made all the difference.

    Guillermo Schwartz, CTO @ Skyward Wildfire Technologies

  • "Jackson makes recruiting problems disappear. He’s experienced, communicative, and technical enough to be dangerous. This is what working with a recruiter should feel like."

    Sabino Marquez, Chief Trust Officer @ Pantheon Platform

  • "I’ve worked with Alex over the last decade recruiting a spectrum of roles, and he rocks! We’ve hired some amazing people thanks to Alex. He genuinely cares about his craft."

    Peter Kieltyka, Co-Founder & CEO @ Sequence

  • Lutra went beyond just sourcing; they offered insights into branding, marketing, and job descriptions, bringing a holistic approach to talent acquisition. Their ability to refine our hiring strategy and help us think differently about candidate evaluation was invaluable. Rather than flooding us with candidates, they focused on delivering fewer, high-quality individuals who aligned with our needs. They understandood that we wouldn’t compromise on talent. The experience with Lutra has reshaped my expectations of what a great agency partnership looks like. They’ve set the benchmark for how talent acquisition should be done.

    Michael Laccetti, Head of Engineering @ Shakepay

  • "Jackson was my most reliable and effective ally in building the team at Street Context. He fills challenging leadership, engineering roles with a sincere dedication to understanding and meeting stakeholder needs. Both successful and unsuccessful candidates raved to me about their exceptional experiences with Jackson."

    Mike Pettypiece, Head of Engineering @ Starling Innovations

  • "Alex has been a vital resource for a number of our trickier senior level product management and engineering searches."

    Brandi Parson, Head of Recruitment & Employee Relations Partner @ Kindred.ai

  • Lutra's expertise was instrumental in hiring our Head of Engineering. Their thorough screening process and insightful candidate analysis ensured we only met with top-tier talent perfectly aligned with our needs. The seamless collaboration, thanks to their user-friendly approach, made the entire process feel like a white-glove service. Lutra's impact on the quality of our engineering leadership hire was significant, and I'm eager to work with them again.

    Jonathan Internicola, COO @ Fleet

  • "Jackson helped Cognota by working with our management team to map out some strategic hires to improve execution. He is a great partner to roll up his sleeves and jump in with your team and demonstrates success."

    Ryan Austin, CEO @ Cognota

  • "I have had the pleasure of working with Alex several times over the past 14 years. He has always taken great care to understand the evolution of my priorities and skills, and matched me with opportunities that have advanced my career. On top of that, he even took the time to help my wife with advice when she was starting up her business. Alex is a tremendous resource for anyone growing their career or team!"

    Ahmad Kabani, Software Engineer @ Hackmad Inc.

  • Lutra is amazing! We’ve partnered with a few firms, and Lutra’s understanding of our needs, communication, and commitment to quality are unparalleled. We move forward with significantly more of their candidates than any other source.

    Ben Gigone, CTO @ Chexy

  • "Alex has now placed me in leadership roles at 2 great startups. Both presented interesting challenges and career growth, and both have been successfully acquired. Alex is patient, professional, and has a great handle on the tech career/talent market in Toronto. I’d definitely recommend him if you’re considering an executive search!"

    Nael El Shawwa, VP Engineering @ Perpetua

  • "I want to thank Jackson for his great help with my job search when I came to Toronto from Ukraine. He helped me make a good resume and showed me how to improve my social media for job hunting. His advices were very useful. Because of his help, I found a good job that I like. Jackson understands what companies are looking for. He is very good at his job and I recommend him to others who are looking for work. Thank you, Jackson!"

    Vitalii Zaretskyi, Systems Engineer @ Retalon

  • "Alex has helped me fill a number of tricky roles over the years. He takes the time to understand the nuances of our searches and our business, providing quality candidates who match. Highly recommend!"

    Joyce Wallace, Managing Partner & VP, HR @ Uncharted Software

Up for an exploratory chat?

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Lutra was created to balance the scales for leaders and teams creating tomorrow’s possibilities, and those who recognize the duty of care owed to future generations.

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