Hiring a VP of Engineering at a Structural Firm

Before evaluating anything else, confirm a candidate holds, or can readily obtain through reciprocity, a Professional Engineer license valid in every state where your firm stamps drawings. This is a hard filter, not a preference, and it should be the first question asked on either platform, before compensation or culture fit even come up.

Hunt Club's referral network can be useful here if it surfaces candidates already known to hold the right credentials through a peer who's worked with them directly. On Bolster, verify licensure yourself directly against your state board's records rather than relying on a candidate's self-reported status, and get that confirmation in writing before moving the candidate any further through your process.

A permanent VP of Engineering, best sourced through a Hunt Club search, makes sense when the firm needs someone owning technical quality and staff development across projects indefinitely. A narrower need, like standing up a new quality-control process or leading one large project through a specific phase, can often be met with a fractional or interim engagement through Bolster instead.

Don't default to a permanent search just because the role sounds senior. A firm that's really trying to solve a project-specific staffing gap with a full-time hire often ends up with a leader who's overqualified for day-to-day work once that project wraps.

Two figures from SHRM's 2025 benchmarking work are worth writing on the whiteboard before this search starts: $5,475 for a typical nonexecutive hire, and $35,879 for an executive hire, with agency fees, postings, and internal hours all folded into that second number¹. A retained Hunt Club search for a permanent, licensed engineering leader will track toward that executive figure, and licensure requirements can narrow the pool enough to push a search toward the longer end of typical timelines.

SHRM's 2025 data separately found nonexecutive roles taking a median 44 days from requisition to offer accepted²; a specialized, licensed executive search, given how thin the qualified pool can be in some states, often takes meaningfully longer than that median.

If the search is actually for a controller or finance lead rather than an engineering leader, use a different reference point. BLS's May 2025 data put the median national wage for accountants and auditors at $83,680, with the top quartile at $109,810³. A finance lead managing project-based revenue recognition and percentage-of-completion accounting at an engineering firm typically commands toward the higher end of that range given the added complexity.

A license confirms minimum competency, not necessarily strong engineering judgment or leadership ability. Build a technical case discussion into the interview process, on either platform, where the candidate walks through a real design tradeoff they made under schedule or budget pressure, and press on what they'd do differently in hindsight.

Also check references specifically for how the candidate handled a disagreement with a client or a regulatory reviewer, since navigating that tension well is a core part of the role that a resume can't show. A reference who can only describe the candidate's technical output, without any story of a real disagreement handled well, hasn't seen the part of the job that actually predicts leadership success.

Confirm, before a new leader starts, exactly when they become the responsible party of record on active projects, and make sure your professional liability insurer is aware of the leadership transition. This matters more for a permanent Hunt Club hire assuming ongoing responsibility than for a narrowly scoped fractional Bolster engagement, but it's worth confirming either way rather than assuming it's automatic.

Put the handoff date and the specific projects affected in writing, signed by both the outgoing and incoming responsible parties where one exists, so there's no ambiguity if a question ever comes up about who was accountable for a given set of drawings on a given date.

Use this checklist to keep the licensure constraint front and center:

• Confirm a valid Professional Engineer license, or a ready path through reciprocity, in every state where your firm stamps drawings, before discussing anything else.
• Decide whether the seat is permanent technical leadership suited to Hunt Club or a defined project buildout that fractional help can cover.
• Run a technical case discussion in which the candidate walks through a real design tradeoff made under schedule or budget pressure.
• Confirm when the new leader becomes the responsible party of record on active projects, and tell your professional liability insurer about the transition.