KORE1 executive search in Houston, as of November 2026
Houston Executive Search for Energy, Medical Center and Port Leadership
Retained and engaged searches for the CFOs, engineering VPs and health system leaders Houston runs on.
KORE1 runs retained and engaged executive search for Houston energy, medical center and port employers. Texas physician non-competes signed since September 1, 2025 end within a year and reach five miles at most.
Last updated: November 8, 2026
- This page
- Executive search for Houston leadership seats, the Texas covenant rules a Houston offer has to clear, and who covers the work while the search runs.
- Not this page
- Contract and direct hire roles below the leadership level are on our Houston staffing agency page, and technology hiring is on IT staffing in Houston.
Houston hires its leaders out of three industries that rarely trade candidates. A refinery’s VP of operations, a health system’s chief medical officer and a terminal operator’s head of logistics come from different benches. They answer to different boards. They also carry different paper into the offer. Austin pulls from software, chip plants and state vendors instead, and the same Texas noncompete test applies to an Austin executive offer. Atlanta draws on headquarters, payments and logistics employers instead, and Georgia tests a covenant by who the employee is as well as how long it runs, so an Atlanta executive offer reads differently again. Dallas-Fort Worth is the other large Texas market, and its relocated-headquarters, telecom and airline employers are covered on a Dallas executive search for relocated headquarters.
The search itself runs the way we describe in how KORE1 executive search works, retained or engaged, with the scope in writing before anyone calls a candidate. Houston changes the paperwork around the seat. Texas covenant law, a 2025 rule for physicians, and a gap somebody has to cover until the new leader starts. Each one is below.
Which Houston Executive Searches Come Out of Energy, the Medical Center and the Port?
Four kinds, mostly. Each starts somewhere different.
- Engineering and operations VPs. ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, Halliburton and Baker Hughes all list Houston as headquarters in their annual reports, and ExxonMobil’s principal offices sit on its campus in Spring. A VP of engineering search here draws on people who have run a plant, a fleet or a capital project, and the strongest of them have been through at least one downturn. Ask about it.
- CFOs who have lived through a commodity cycle. A low-price year and a high-price year produce two different finance functions, and a Houston board usually wants the CFO who has run both. Few have. For the team under that seat, see Houston accounting and finance staffing.
- Health system executives. The Texas Medical Center, which calls itself the world’s largest medical complex, counts Houston Methodist, MD Anderson, Memorial Hermann and Texas Children’s Hospital among its members, and each of them hires chief medical officers, nursing executives and service line leaders. Physician seats such as chief medical officer carry a covenant question, which the next section covers.
- Port and logistics leaders, the last group. Port Houston owns and operates the eight public terminals along the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel, and the shippers, terminal operators and distributors around them hire operations and supply chain heads who know that water. It’s a small pool.
None of those employers is named here as a KORE1 client. They’re the companies that set the pay and the expectations a Houston candidate brings to the first call, which is why the search has to start from them. The layer below the VP is a separate search, covered on Houston engineering staffing and, for upstream and midstream seats, oil and gas staffing.
Texas Covenant Law for a Houston Executive Hire, in Brief
Texas allows non-competes, within limits. Under Section 15.50(a) of the Business and Commerce Code, the covenant has to be part of an otherwise enforceable agreement, and its limits on time, geography and the scope of the work have to be reasonable, restraining no more than the employer needs to protect its goodwill or business interest. Most executive offers pass. California goes the other way and voids them, one of several ways how California rules change a Los Angeles offer. Washington joins California on June 30, 2027, when every noncompete there becomes void, so that clause has to come out of a Seattle executive offer early. Florida has its own rule for covered executives, the 2025 CHOICE Act, which allows a noncompete of up to 4 years and shapes a Miami executive offer. Ohio tests a covenant for reasonableness instead, as laid out for Cincinnati executive hires.
Physician contracts are different.
Do Texas physician non-compete limits reach a medical center executive?
Partly. Senate Bill 1318, in effect since September 1, 2025, limits non-competes on the practice of medicine, and it says that managing or directing medical services in an administrative capacity isn’t the practice of medicine.
For the clinical side, a physician non-compete now has to meet four conditions.
- Buyout cap
- The physician can buy out of the covenant for no more than their total annual salary and wages at the time the job ends.
- One year
- It expires no later than one year after the contract or the employment ends.
- Five miles
- It covers no more than a five-mile radius from the place the physician primarily practiced.
- In writing
- Its terms are stated clearly and conspicuously in writing.
It’s also void if the physician is discharged without good cause. A new Section 15.501 sets parallel limits for dentists, nurses and physician assistants. The changes reach only covenants entered into or renewed on or after September 1, 2025, so an older agreement still runs under the law in effect when it was signed, and the enrolled text of SB 1318 spells out each piece.
A chief medical officer often does both jobs. The administrative half may sit outside the physician rule while the clinical half sits inside it, so counsel should read the candidate’s current agreement and your draft offer before the offer goes out. Background for that conversation. Not legal advice.
Start a Houston leadership search
Tell us the seat, whether it’s clinical, administrative or both, what covenant the likely candidates carry, and when you need someone in it.
What Engineering, Finance and Health System Leaders Earn in Metro Houston
Federal survey medians for the Houston metro area, May 2025. Wages only.
| Occupation | Employed in metro Houston | Annual median wage |
|---|---|---|
| Chief executives | 1,920 | $275,270 |
| Architectural and engineering managers | 5,330 | $172,020 |
| Financial managers | 18,570 | $166,910 |
| Medical and health services managers | 12,410 | $124,400 |
| General and operations managers | 97,320 | $119,600 |
Read the medians as a floor for the field, not a price for the seat. Half of the 12,410 medical and health services managers across metro Houston earned more than $124,400, but that count runs from clinic managers to system executives, so it says more about the occupation than about any one hire. That’s a wide net.
Engineering is the sharper signal. Architectural and engineering managers earn a median $172,020 here, across 5,330 jobs, and that’s the bench every VP of engineering search in this market starts from, whether the seat sits at a refinery, a fabricator or an oilfield service company.
What Breaks if a Houston Leadership Seat Stays Empty Through a Capital Project?
“What breaks if the company doesn’t spend the money or finish the project?”
Devin asks clients that before almost every search. The Houston answer is short. A project. A capital job, a turnaround or a systems cutover with executive sponsorship doesn’t pause because the VP who sponsored it resigned, and the permanent search for that VP runs on its own clock. Nor should the project wait.
Refineries already have a form for this moment. Before a plant changes a covered process, OSHA’s process safety rule makes it write down five things. We fill in the same five boxes for a leadership seat. Here it is.
Management of change
Leadership seat
- Seat
- VP of engineering
- Site
- Gulf Coast plant
-
(i)
The technical basis for the proposed change
Why is the seat changing?
The VP of engineering resigned with a plant expansion half built.
-
(ii)
Impact of change on safety and health
What breaks if nobody holds it?
Design reviews stall, change approvals queue up and the schedule slips by the week.
-
(iii)
Modifications to operating procedures
Who carries the work meanwhile?
A senior contract mechanical engineer takes the design reviews. The controller keeps project costs closed each month.
-
(iv)
Necessary time period for the change
Temporary or permanent?
Temporary (checked)Permanent (not checked)
Time limit ends on the new VP’s first day. Search opens this week.
-
(v)
Authorization requirements for the proposed change
Who signs?
The CEO and the board chair sign retained or engaged search terms, in writing.
The rule’s own appendix has the line every interim plan should carry. “It is important that a time limit for temporary changes be established and monitored since, without control, these changes may tend to become permanent.”
Same with people. An interim leader with no end date becomes the permanent one by default, often without anyone deciding it, so put the date in box (iv) the week the seat opens. Then hold to it.
Bridge Cover While a Houston Executive Search Runs
The work under an empty seat is where a project actually stalls, because nobody signs off the drawings, closes the month or answers the vendor, and that layer can be covered by the hour while the search runs. These are the three senior Houston cells that usually sit under an engineering, finance or systems leader.
Houston’s senior mechanical or electrical engineer bills a median $127 an hour, against $105 nationally. That $22 gap comes straight from Houston wages.
This is the senior layer under the seat. It isn’t interim officer pricing. The engineer, controller or ERP lead works as a KORE1 W2 employee on contract staffing terms and is paid every Friday.
| Senior seat, Houston | Bill range per hour | Median | 3 months | 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mechanical, electrical or manufacturing engineer Modeled | $112 to $137 | $127 | $65,900 | $131,700 |
| Controller or accounting manager Modeled | $144 to $176 | $163 | $84,800 | $169,600 |
| ERP or NetSuite consultant Modeled | $99 to $117 | $108 | $56,300 | $112,600 |
Speed matters more here. Across 1,997 KORE1 contract starts, the median time from offer to start was 3 days, mostly in Southern California, so read it as a track record and not a promise for a Houston seat.
Sometimes the bridge turns out to be the hire. After 1,040 hours on assignment you can hire a KORE1 contractor with no KORE1 conversion fee, which is 26 weeks at 40 hours. If the empty seat is the CFO itself, that’s a different engagement, covered on interim CFO services.
Price a senior engineer or controller for the gap
Name the seat, the Houston site and the weeks you need covered, and we’ll send a bill rate quote.
Retained or Engaged Search for a Houston Plant or Health System Seat
Two ways to run the search. The terms go in writing before it starts.
Retained search
- Fits
- A confidential replacement, or a seat with a small pool, such as a refinery manager or a chief medical officer.
- Paid
- In stages, from signing through the start date.
- You get
- Our senior bench on your search, with a slate you can compare side by side.
Engaged search
- Fits
- An important seat that needs priority but isn’t confidential, like a plant controller or a director of operations.
- Paid
- A commitment up front and the balance when the hire starts.
- You get
- Priority over open contingency work, short of a full retainer.
Either way the hire itself is a direct hire, employed by you from day one. We don’t post fees here. Ask us. They depend on the seat, how small the pool is and how quietly the search has to run, and they go into the written terms that your CEO or board chair signs before we make a single call. If you’re still deciding between models, our comparison of retained and contingency search lays out the trade, and a retained search week by week shows what you’re paying for. Other cities differ. New York runs on different rules again, covered on our New York executive search page. For engineers, IT staff and finance professionals below the executive layer, see direct-hire recruiting in Houston.
$127
median hourly bill rate, senior contract mechanical or electrical engineer in Houston, modeled
$172,020
median wage, architectural and engineering managers in metro Houston, BLS May 2025
12,410
medical and health services managers employed across metro Houston, BLS May 2025
3 days
median from offer to start for KORE1 contractors (n=1,997)
Rates from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4. Wages from BLS OEWS, May 2025. Placement figure from KORE1 W2 contract records, mostly Southern California. Track record, not a commitment.
What Keeps a Houston Executive Hire in the Seat
No search firm can promise a leader stays. Devin said as much on a planning call this fall, in fewer words than most contracts use. Whether a hire stays depends on how the manager treats them after the start, and no firm can sign that away. What we can do is help you write the first 90 days down before the leader shows up.
Before the offer
Read both agreements
Your lawyer lines up the candidate’s current covenant against your draft a week ahead, not the night before.
Week one
Three numbers, named
Which three numbers will the board judge this person on in a year, and has anyone told them?
Day 30
One decision they own
Let them make one real call alone by day 30. Back it where the team can see.
Day 90
A review with the chair
The chair asks what’s still in the way, then clears it. HR can sit this one out.
Where these searches run
- Houston
- The Woodlands
- Spring
- Sugar Land
- Pasadena and the ship channel
- Candidates relocating into the metro
Common Questions
Do the Texas physician non-compete limits cover a chief medical officer’s administrative role?
Not the administrative part, as the statute is written. SB 1318 says managing or directing medical services in an administrative capacity isn’t the practice of medicine, so a chief medical officer’s administrative duties and any clinical practice may fall under different rules. Counsel should read both agreements before the offer.
What does a senior contract mechanical or electrical engineer cost per hour in Houston?
$127 an hour at the median, in a $112 to $137 range, in the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4. That cell is modeled from BLS Houston wages, a 24% burden and KORE1 bill bands. Three months runs about $65,900 and six about $131,700.
What do engineering managers earn in metro Houston?
BLS put the median at $172,020 a year for architectural and engineering managers in the Houston metro area in May 2025, across 5,330 jobs. That figure is wages only. A VP of engineering package usually adds incentive pay on top.
Retained or engaged, which suits a Houston plant or refinery leadership search?
Retained, usually, when the seat is confidential or the candidate pool is small, which is common for refinery and plant leadership. Engaged fits an important seat that needs priority but isn’t confidential. Either way, the terms go in writing before the search starts.
Can we hire the contract engineer who covered the gap?
Yes. After 1,040 hours on assignment, you can hire a KORE1 contractor with no KORE1 fee. That’s 26 weeks at 40 hours a week.
Set Your Houston Search Terms in Writing
Send us five things and we’ll come back with retained or engaged terms for the seat, in writing.
- SeatThe title, who it reports to and the site.
- ScopeClinical, administrative or both.
- CovenantsWhat the likely candidates are bound by today, if you know.
- StartWhen you need the leader in the seat.
- CoverWhether the work under the seat needs a contract engineer, controller or ERP lead until then.
Pricing the gap first? Get a bill rate quote, or call 949-706-6990.
