Biotech Executive Search.

Rados Recruiting is a boutique executive search firm for biotech, based in Munich. I founded it in 2020, after nine years as a biotech headhunter, and I run every mandate myself. The seats: CEO, CFO, CMO, CSO, CBO, COO, CTO and board, permanent, interim or fractional, for venture-backed and listed biotech from Seed to Public, in Europe and the US.

Permanent C-level placements close in under 30 days, interim placements in three. Permanent placements carry a 12-month guarantee: if the person leaves within a year, I run the search again at no additional fee. Every search runs through the Rados Method, two fits in fixed order: stage fit, then need fit.

The Rados Method is the framework I use to judge a biotech leadership hire. It has two fits, always in this order. Stage fit is the company side: which capabilities the seat demands at the company's stage, and which needs the seat can feed. Need fit is the person side: whether the seat keeps feeding the two of six human needs that drive the person, so they stay and do their best work.

The method starts before the usual basics. My briefing begins with the company, not with the job description. Skill, experience, location, contract type, availability and languages I check on every candidate anyway, the way every serious HR team or agency does. Most searches stop there. The full method is on the Rados Method page.

Large firms sell process. A partner pitches the role, an associate runs the search, a researcher builds the longlist, and three months later you receive a shortlist.

I sell judgement. Every mandate runs through the Rados Method, a structured assessment on two fits, in fixed order: stage and need. The method starts before the usual basics: with the company, its stage, and what the seat has to feed. Skill, experience, location, contract, availability and languages I check on every candidate anyway, the way every serious HR team or agency does. Most searches stop there: people get hired for their skills and let go for their personality, and nobody checked the two fits. Not gut feeling, not introducing two people I happen to know, not random LinkedIn outreach. One person owns every mandate from the first conversation to the placement.

Fifteen years of biotech network, research I run with AI, and a structured method: that is why shortlists arrive in days, not weeks. Permanent C-level placements close in under 30 days. Interim placements in three.

C-level and senior leadership for venture-backed and listed biotech across Europe and the US. CEO, CFO, CMO, CSO, CBO, CCO, COO, CTO, Independent Directors and Chairpersons. Permanent, interim, and fractional.

Most mandates are at Seed through Series C companies, most of them clinical-stage, with one or two clinical assets in or approaching Phase 1b or 2.

Geographies include Munich, Vienna, Basel, Berlin, Copenhagen, Ghent, Oxford, Cambridge UK, Boston, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Permanent placements are long-term C-level hires, usually employed by the company, meant to build and lead a function over time. Interim executives are full-time temporary leaders for defined periods, typically three to twelve months, during clinical readouts, restructurings, or leadership gaps. Fractional executives are part-time senior leaders, from two days a month to a few days a week, on an ongoing or retainer basis.

I place all three. Interim C-level placements in three days. Typical mandates include Interim CMO during a clinical readout, Fractional CFO before Series A, and Interim CEO between cycles.

Each engagement model has its own implications for legal structure, statutory officer responsibility, and time commitment. For a full guide on engagement models and statutory officer responsibility, see the complete guide.

Permanent C-level placements close in under 30 days from briefing to signed offer. Interim placements close in three days. Compared to the four to six months typical of global search firms, the difference is structural, not a side effect.

Fast is the time to a shortlist, not a shortcut on diligence. Candidates surface in days because I built the network years ago and keep it warm, not because I compress the evaluation. The referencing, the assessment of capability and human needs, and the chemistry calls still happen in full.

A boutique model with one person owning the mandate removes the organisational drag. Speed comes from knowing the people, not from skipping the work.

Yes. Independent Directors, Chairpersons, and strategic advisors for biotech companies and biotech funds. Board mandates run as quiet, slow, deliberate searches, different from executive search in tempo but built on the same principle: one person owns the mandate.

The companies that retain me for board work want directors with real operational depth in clinical development, regulatory affairs, business development and licensing, or commercial launch. Not names for the deck. Directors who open doors, sharpen the strategy and give the next investor a reason to trust the company.

Permanent executive search: a retainer of 30 percent of first-year compensation. Startups at Seed stage or under five people: special rates, on request. Interim and fractional: hourly rates, day rates or a monthly retainer, agreed per mandate.

I go through the investment and the contract structure in the first conversation. Nothing hidden.

Most early-stage biotechs do not need a CFO. They need a financial manager who builds a clean monthly close, manages the cap table, and supports the next financing. Jan De Kerpel said this directly on Willing to Win: "In early stage companies, the CFO role is not a CFO role. It is actually a financial manager role. It is only when companies mature that it becomes truly a strategic CFO role."

The strategic CFO becomes necessary when financing decisions move from supporting the CEO to co-leading with the CEO. That moment typically arrives between Series B and Series C, when the company is building real financial scenarios for commercial readiness, structuring institutional rounds, and beginning serious IPO or M&A conversations.

Hiring a strategic CFO three years too early means paying twice for the role and watching the person leave out of frustration. Hiring one a year too late means the CEO carries the financing burden alone and operating decisions get worse.

Not when the asset is three years from first-in-human. At that stage the company needs a Medical Advisor or a fractional CMO, two days a month.

The full-time CMO becomes necessary around 12 to 18 months before the first clinical readout that will define the value of the asset, typically late Phase 1b or early Phase 2. From that point on, the CMO is running the trial design, the regulatory strategy, the KOL relationships, and the clinical narrative for the next financing.

The CMO who designs Phase 2 is almost never the CMO who runs Phase 3 in seven markets. Companies that delay the CMO hire pay for it in trial momentum and regulatory missteps. Companies that hire too early end up with an underemployed senior executive looking for a different job within twelve months.

Almost every founder-CEO faces this question eventually, and most face it later than they should. The founding CEO and the commercial CEO are different jobs, not two stages of the same job.

The skills that built the company are conviction, hands-on operation, fundraising from the science, and founder compatibility with a small board. They are not the skills that run a commercial organisation of 200 people through an FDA approval and a market launch.

The signals that a transition is due include: the board having repeated private conversations about CEO readiness, the founder's own time consumed by operational decisions they were never meant to make, financing conversations stalling because investors want to see institutional leadership, or the next round structurally requiring it.

The founder-CEOs who are honest with themselves recognise the moment. The others wait for the board to force it, which usually happens a year too late and at a higher cost. I judge this transition on both fits, with the weight on need fit.