Your first engineering hire will shape hiring, architecture, and culture for years. This is not a role you fill quickly.
Look for range, not specialty
The first engineer will do frontend, backend, DevOps, and product. Deep specialists come later.
Interview with real work
Replace whiteboarding with a paid one-week trial on a real problem. You learn ten times more, and they learn about you too.
Optimize for judgment
Early-stage code decisions are cheap; product and architecture decisions compound. Hire the engineer with the best judgment, not the fastest fingers.
