AI-First (Whatever That Means): Hiring Product & Engineering Leaders with Sean Lucq from SPMB

Jim sits down with Sean Lucq (Partner at SPMB Executive Search) to talk about the art of hiring senior engineering and product leaders—especially now that every job description on Earth has "AI" duct-taped to it. We get into why sticking with one great search firm beats "random recruiter roulette," why tech interviewing is tough (spoiler: engineers aren't always born interviewers), and the eternal tension between the two key roles - CTO (big brain science/vision) and VP Engineering (keep the trains running, preferably on the tracks). Then it's on to the AI gold rush: what a normal Head of Engineering should actually be doing with AI (hint: practical stuff like code review, QA, automation), why "Head of AI" is usually a totally separate job, and why "10 years of LLM experience" belongs in the same bin as Web3 buzzword soup. We also cover who's moving jobs right now, why PE can feel like a saner bet than venture (less "moonshot," more "actual exit"), and what candidates must be able to explain: what you did, and how it moved the business—numbers included. Plus: a few recruiting war stories, including the kind you can't make up and the kind that makes you grateful for a boring Tuesday.

You can listen to AI-First (Whatever That Means): Hiring Product & Engineering Leaders with Sean Lucq from SPMB online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

AI-First (Whatever That Means): Hiring Product & Engineering Leaders with Sean Lucq from SPMB is an episode from Private Equity Funcast by Jim Milbery.

This episode is 57:19 long.

This episode was published on Dec 12, 2025.

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