Hiring Your First Senior Engineer

Signs you are ready

• The founders are the bottleneck on every technical decision.
• Releases slip because nobody owns quality or delivery.
• You can describe the next 12 months of product work.
• You can afford a senior salary for at least 18 months.

What the role should own

• Delivery: shipping on a predictable rhythm.
• Quality: tests, reviews and a release process.
• Architecture: decisions written down with their reasons.
• Hiring: help shape the next two or three hires.

An interview loop that works

1. Intro call (30 min): motivation, scope they have owned, how they explain trade-offs.
2. Paid take-home or pairing (2 to 3 h): a small, real slice of your product. Respect their time.
3. System design (60 min): design something you actually need; listen for the questions they ask.
4. Founder fit (45 min): how they disagree, how they handle ambiguity.
5. References: ask what they were like in a bad week, not a good one.

Red flags

• Cannot explain a past decision they would now reverse.
• Wants to rewrite everything before understanding it.
• Talks only about tools, never about users or trade-offs.
• No interest in mentoring or documentation.

Their first 90 days

• Days 1 to 30: ship something small, map the system, list the risks.
• Days 31 to 60: fix the top delivery or quality bottleneck.
• Days 61 to 90: agree a written technical roadmap with the founders.