Screened for the decisions that are expensive to get wrong.
Why STACK IT
Most agencies optimize for volume. We optimize for the one hire who’s right, vetted by people who understand the work.
We screen for how a candidate reasons about tradeoffs, scale, and the decisions that are expensive to reverse, not how many patterns they can name. No one reaches you without two of our recruiters signing off.
Fake profiles, proxy interviews, and AI-assisted answers are everywhere in tech hiring. We meet each candidate face-to-face on video and screen for AI patterns, so who you interview is who shows up.
An architect’s value is the context they hold about your system. We align trajectory, growth, and total comp so your hire stays and that context compounds.
Success-based and non-exclusive, no upfront fees, no retainers. We invoice on your hire’s first day, not before.
The payoff
Hiring well costs less than you think, and a strong hire changes far more than the work in front of them.
A system that’s easy to extend.
Sound architecture makes the next change cheap.
Built to scale before it has to.
An architect designs for the load that’s coming.
Decisions made on purpose, and documented.
Deliberate tradeoffs beat whatever the last PR did.
Consistency across the codebase.
Shared standards and patterns reduce the chaos.
Architecture the whole team understands.
A good architect raises everyone, not just the code.
How we screen
We screen for how software architects actually think. Every shortlist is judged against the same five criteria that predict whether someone delivers in your codebase.
Designs systems that meet today’s needs without painting tomorrow into a corner, and can defend every major tradeoff.
Architects for the load, failure modes, and uptime the business actually needs, not a whiteboard ideal.
Makes the expensive-to-reverse calls deliberately, and knows when boring technology is the right answer.
Comfortable from data and APIs to infrastructure and front end, enough to see how the whole thing fits.
Raises the engineering level of the whole team and gets buy-in without relying on a title.
Proof it works
Discover what changed once the right hire joined our clients’ team.
A SaaS product was hitting scaling walls every few months. The architect we placed redesigned the core around clear service boundaries and caching, letting the platform absorb 10x the traffic with no emergency rewrite.
Re-architected a fintech’s tangled monolith into well-bounded services, cutting production incidents by 60%.
Untangled a healthcare platform’s architecture and standards so a typical feature shipped in two weeks instead of six.
Real technical screening, a calibrated shortlist in days, and candidates vetted for fit, not just resumes. Let’s start your search.
Specializations
Whatever your team runs on, we screen for the people who do the work right.
Boundaries and structure that make the system easy to extend.
Designed for the load and failure modes that are coming.
The expensive-to-reverse calls made deliberately and documented.
Systems that talk cleanly, with contracts that survive change.
Patterns, reviews, and guardrails that keep teams building the same way.
Threat modeling and failover designed in from the first diagram.
The cost of waiting
An empty seat doesn’t delay work, it redistributes it. The longer the search drags, the more it costs.
Every week a role stays open, the cost lands on the team you already have.
Speed isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between a gap and a setback.
Time to fill this role
How you hire
Two models, one standard of quality. Bring on the software architects you need the way that fits your timeline and budget.
Permanent
Best when you’re building the team for the long term.
Contract
Best when you need delivery capacity now, without adding headcount.
Not sure which fits? Compare permanent vs. contract
FAQ
The questions teams usually ask before starting a search with us.
Recruiter-led and scenario-based. We work through real design problems and past decisions to see how a candidate reasons about tradeoffs and scale, not just which patterns they can name. Every candidate is met face-to-face over video, the same practice behind our AI hiring fraud protection, and no one reaches your inbox until a second reviewer has signed off. We use AI to support our screening, never to make the decision.
You’ll typically see your first qualified candidate within 24–48 hours, and a calibrated shortlist of three to five within about five business days. Most permanent roles close in two to three weeks; contract placements often start within 5–10 business days.
For permanent hires it’s success-based: you pay only when a candidate starts, with no upfront fee or retainer. Contract placements run on a transparent hourly rate that already covers payroll, compliance, and onboarding. There’s no cost to simply engage us.
Permanent placements are backed by our 90-day replacement guarantee: if it doesn’t work out within the first 90 days, we replace them at no charge. It’s part of how we stay accountable long after the placement. For contract roles, our backfill guarantee means we replace a contractor quickly and at no extra cost if they exit early.
No. We work non-exclusively by default, so you can keep your internal sourcing running or use other firms alongside us. We’d rather earn repeat business through results than lock you into an agreement. We just work best when feedback is quick and expectations are clear.
Still have a question? Talk to a recruiter
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Start a search
Share the role and we’ll reply within one business day with a calibrated shortlist of three to five software architects, screened for your stack and your team.
