Building Engineering, Platform, Product, Data & C-Suite teams during Series A + B

The Challenge

Fresh from closing their Series B, Beauty Pie faced the challenge every scaling company knows well: how do you transform ambitious growth plans into actual technical capability?

They needed to transition from outsourced tech to a full in-house operation, with hires across Engineering, Product, Data, and Analytics. The timeline was aggressive, and their entire product roadmap depended on getting this right.

Beauty Pie needed immediate contractor support for critical projects that couldn't wait for permanent hires. They also needed senior leadership who could scale teams while maintaining their culture. With 50% female representation at C-level, maintaining diversity wasn't negotiable, it was core to who they were as a business.

Having previously worked with Head of Talent, Sophie, to build technology teams in multiple organisations, she trusted Burns Sheehan’s candidate network and proven ability to deliver high-quality hires.

The Solution

Burns Sheehan embedded with Beauty Pie's team as their extended technical hiring function. Beauty Pie needed to build technical capability that would support serious growth while preserving the culture that got them to Series B.

Single point of accountability: Instead of managing multiple agencies across different technical disciplines, we handled everything from urgent DevOps contracts to executive searches. One relationship, a consistent approach, and unified quality standards.

Strategic involvement from day one: We joined their weekly planning sessions and maintained daily communication channels on Slack. This meant understanding not just immediate hiring needs, but how each role connected to their longer-term technical architecture and team development goals.

Diversity-focused sourcing: We leveraged our established networks to maintain Beauty Pie's diversity standards without compromising on technical excellence. This meant proactive sourcing from underrepresented groups, not reactive filtering.

Flexible delivery models: Different situations required different approaches. Urgent contractor needs got rapid, targeted searches. Executive hires received dedicated, retained focus. We adapted our process to match their business reality.

The Results

• 40+ successful placements across all technical disciplines, including data, mobile, DevOps, software engineering, product & UX
• 10 contractors placed for immediate project needs
• Chief Data Officer hired
• Female VP Product hired and promoted to Chief Product Officer
• Female VP Data hired
• Average time-to-fill of 25 days, improving from 28 to 21 days as we refined our approach together
  
  

Quality indicators:

• 1.8:1 CV-to-interview ratio
• 81 NPS score across all candidates
• 22% female candidates submitted, 38% from underrepresented backgrounds