KORE1 executive search in the San Francisco Bay Area, as of November 2026
Executive Search Firm in San Francisco Retained and engaged search for C-suite, VP and director hires
CTO, chief AI officer, CFO and VP searches for software platforms, payments and asset-management firms, and South San Francisco biotechs.
KORE1 runs retained and engaged executive search across the San Francisco Bay Area for CTO, CFO, VP and director seats. While a CTO seat is open, a senior contract software engineer bills a median $165 an hour.
Last updated: November 11, 2026
- This page
- Permanent C-suite, VP and director searches for Bay Area employers, the California rules on noncompetes, pay scales and background checks that shape the offer, and what contract cover costs while the search runs.
- Not this page
- A national search, or one outside the Bay Area, starts with KORE1 executive search services.
San Francisco hires its leaders in very different rooms. A founder replaces a CTO before the next raise. A payments company needs a chief compliance officer. A South San Francisco biotech wants a VP of regulatory affairs. All three want someone who already has a good job and no reason to leave, so the best candidates never browse a job board.
Here, the Bay Area means San Francisco, Oakland, South San Francisco, the Peninsula and Silicon Valley. A search can draw from all five. Where a rule belongs to San Francisco alone, the page says so.
So we go to them. Retained when the seat is confidential, engaged when the pool is easier to see. The steps match the ones our executive recruiting firm runs everywhere, including searches in Los Angeles, Seattle and New York, so a board that has watched one of our searches elsewhere will recognize the rhythm. What California adds is a short list of rules that we raise on the very first call.
Which Executive Search Seats Do San Francisco and Peninsula Software Platforms Fill?
Four seats bring us most of the platform work, and a growth-stage company scopes each one differently from a public company, so the first call settles which kind of company the board is.
Platform and product companies
CTO
Owns the roadmap, the architecture and the engineers who build it. A growth-stage board scopes it around building. A public one scopes it around running the platform.
Engineering organizations
VP Engineering
Runs delivery, hiring and the managers in between. It’s often the second search, started once a new CTO has been picked.
AI-heavy products
Chief AI officer
A newer seat without a standard job description. The first call decides whether it reports to the CEO, the CTO or the chief data officer.
Product-led companies
Chief product officer
Owns what gets built and why. The CTO and this seat have to work as a pair, so we meet both finalists’ counterparts early.
The market has a public map. California’s Employment Development Department publishes a Major Employers list for each county. The San Mateo County list includes Meta Platforms, YouTube and Electronic Arts, and the San Francisco County list includes Riverbed Technology and SS&C Advent. Both lists are alphabetical and unranked, and EDD notes that a company may be listed at its headquarters while its employees work throughout the state, so we read them as a map of the market and never as a ranking. A map, not a league table.
Our CTO search and VP Engineering search run the same way in San Francisco as anywhere else. The chief AI officer search and the chief product officer search are the two where the job description is still being written, which is why we start them with the board and not with a candidate list.
Start a confidential Bay Area leadership search
Tell us the seat, the sector, whether the job is onsite, hybrid or remote, the pay scale the posting will show and your target start.
Retained or engaged? Retained fits a seat nobody can know about yet, such as replacing a sitting CTO. Engaged fits a VP or director seat where the pool is easier to see. Our guide on how to choose an executive search firm covers the trade-off, the C-suite hiring guide is the longer read, and our comparison pages on how executive search firms compare and San Francisco staffing agencies compared are the place to weigh options. The engagement letter carries our fee terms, so we don’t quote them on a web page.
What Changes When an Executive Search Is for a South San Francisco Biotech?
The cluster is the whole story. The City of South San Francisco calls itself the birthplace of biotechnology, dating back to the founding of Genentech in 1976, and its Biotech in SSF page counts over 250 biotech companies and 12 million square feet of biotech space. Its About SSF page puts more than 25,000 people at work for those companies.
That density changes who is on the market. A VP of regulatory affairs or a VP of clinical operations may be one lunch away from three competing offers, and a CFO ahead of a financing may be weighing a second role at a company across the street. Genentech and Gilead Sciences both appear on EDD’s San Mateo County list, which tells you how established the names are, and we use them as the market only.
The search itself is the one we run for any company, with a life sciences accent. Our pharmaceutical executive search and biotech staffing pages cover the seats and the sub-sectors in more depth.
Who Recruits the CISO and Chief Compliance Officer at San Francisco Payments and Asset-Management Firms?
A firm that moves money hires differently from one that ships software, since the seats are CISO, chief compliance officer, chief risk officer and CFO, and each one often answers to an audit or risk committee.
Major employers, as EDD lists them
Alphabetical and unranked, with EDD’s own industry label
San Francisco County
- Chime FinancialFunctions related to deposit banking
- Federal Reserve Bank of San FranciscoGovernment offices, federal
- Riverbed TechnologyComputer software publishers
- SS&C AdventSoftware, application and platform publishing
- Visa IncCredit card and other credit plans
San Mateo County
- Electronic ArtsGame designers
- Franklin ResourcesAsset management
- GenentechBiotechnology products and services
- Gilead SciencesBiological products
- Meta PlatformsSocial media and blogs
- Visa InternationalCredit card and other credit plans
- YouTubeOnline services
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Visa Inc sit on the San Francisco County list. Visa International and Franklin Resources sit on San Mateo’s. Between them they show how many kinds of money business a Bay Area search can mean, from card networks to asset managers to a regional central bank.
The security seat has its own page. Our CISO staffing page covers it, and a San Francisco CFO search shares a bench with our accounting and finance work in the city.
With Noncompetes Void in California, How Do You Protect the Company When an Executive Joins From a Rival?
California voids the noncompete, so the risk moves to what the executive carries in their head and on their laptop. Three sections of the Business and Professions Code set the ground rules, and your employment counsel reads them.
Reading sheet, an executive joins from a rival
Business and Professions Code, sections 16600, 16600.1 and 16600.5
Section 16600 Void
Every contract that restrains someone from a lawful profession, trade or business is to that extent void, except as the chapter provides. Subdivision (b)(1) says to read the section broadly, so an employment noncompete is void no matter how narrowly it is drawn, unless an exception in the chapter applies.
Section 16600.5 Unenforceable
A contract that is void under the chapter is unenforceable regardless of where and when it was signed. An employer or former employer shall not attempt to enforce one, even if it was signed and the job was held outside California, and shall not enter into one with an employee or prospective employee. Doing either is a civil violation, and a prevailing employee can recover attorney’s fees.
Section 16600.1 Notice
An employer had to tell current employees, and former employees employed after January 1, 2022, that a noncompete clause was void. The deadline was February 14, 2024, and the notice had to be a written, individualized communication.
What the company does instead Protect
Trade secret protection, confidentiality terms and a clean onboarding plan. Counsel signs off on that plan before the executive starts.
A recruiter’s reading, not legal advice
Here’s how that plays out on a search, since a CTO finalist leaving a rival can’t be held back by a noncompete in California but still carries the rival’s roadmap, customer names and half-remembered code in their head and on their laptop. So we ask what stays behind. No files. No code. No customer lists. Counsel writes the paper.
A clean onboarding plan is plain work. A new laptop and fresh accounts, a first-week checklist the executive signs, and a short written reminder of what belongs to the last employer. Then counsel reads the whole plan before day one.
What Must a San Francisco Executive Posting Disclose, and What Can’t You Ask?
Five rules from California’s pay transparency law matter on every executive search, and they come from section 432.3 of the Labor Code, which SB 642 amended effective January 1, 2026, so counsel should check the current text before a posting goes live.
- Pay scale in every posting
An employer with 15 or more employees includes the pay scale for a position in any job posting.
- A search firm posts it too
An employer with 15 or more employees that engages a third party to post a job gives that party the pay scale, and the third party includes it in the posting.
- What a pay scale is
A good faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage range the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position upon hire.
- Remote seats count
The Labor Commissioner’s Office reads the duty to cover a position that may ever be filled in California, in person or remotely.
- Salary history stays out
An employer can’t seek salary history, orally or in writing, personally or through an agent, and can’t rely on it. Asking a candidate about their salary expectation is allowed.
Read from Labor Code section 432.3 and the Labor Commissioner’s Equal Pay Act FAQ, as of November 2026.
So we don’t ask a finalist what they earn at the rival. We ask about range instead. And before any posting goes live, the board settles the range the company will print.
When Can a San Francisco Employer Run the Executive Background Check?
Later than most boards expect. San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance and California’s Fair Chance Act both hold questions about criminal history until the offer stage, and the order matters more than the check itself.
The posting
San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement says covered employers state in job ads that qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered, and it suggests wording. The ordinance reaches employers with five or more employees, for jobs worked at least eight hours a week in the city.
The interviews
No arrest or conviction questions. The ordinance bars asking until after a conditional offer, and California’s Civil Rights Department describes the state Fair Chance Act as generally barring employers with five or more employees from asking about conviction history before a job offer.
The conditional offer
Now the question is open, and the background check can run. The offer is conditional.
Before saying no
Before a covered employer acts against a candidate over a conviction history or an unresolved arrest, it gives written notice of the proposed action and the items behind it. The candidate then has seven days to show the information is wrong, or to point to rehabilitation or other mitigating factors.
Read from the City and County of San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance page and the California Civil Rights Department’s Fair Chance Act guidance, as of November 2026. San Francisco amended the ordinance effective August 10, 2026. A recruiter’s reading, not legal advice.
For us that means one practical rule. We run the executive search, the board runs the check, and nobody asks the question early.
Who Ships the Roadmap While the San Francisco CTO Search Is Open?
Bay Area engineering, data and finance cover, as of October 16, 2026. All three rows are modeled cells in the KORE1 Contract Rate Index, billed by the hour, and none of them is executive pay.
| Cover seat | Covers | Bill range | Median | 3 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software engineer, senior | Technical lead while the CTO seat is open | $153 to $178 | $165 | $85,800 |
| Data engineer, senior | The data pipelines the roadmap depends on | $145 to $171 | $158 | $82,200 |
| Controller, senior | The close before a raise, until a CFO lands | $206 to $264 | $245 | $127,200 |
Read the table for what it is. The index has no CTO or VP cell, so these rows price the work under the empty seat. They say nothing about what a search costs. Cover, not salary. A senior contract software engineer acting as technical lead bills a median $165 an hour, about $85,800 for three months, and the roadmap keeps moving while the board meets finalists.
Our contract cover is employed by KORE1 on W2, so you onboard a contractor and not a vendor’s subcontractor. Devin Hornick, a Partner at KORE1, opens that conversation with one question.
“What technology initiatives are already funded that you can’t push into 2027?”
The answer sets the order. The full table, every level of every IT role we price in the metro, lives on Bay Area IT contractor rates, and our interim CTO services page covers the case where the cover is the CTO.
Keep shipping while you search
Tell us the seat that’s empty, the work that can’t wait and your start date. We’ll price each contract seat.
Can the Bay Area Contract Lead Stay On After the New CTO Starts?
Often, yes. The contractor who carried the roadmap knows where every dependency lives. A new CTO notices.
Here’s how that works with us. After 1,040 hours on assignment, 26 weeks at 40 hours, a KORE1 contractor can move to your payroll with no conversion fee. They start fast too, since across 1,997 contract placements our median from offer to start was 3 days.
“…you can get them quick… flexible… to scale up, to scale down as needed.”
If the seat takes a quarter to fill, that’s a quarter of product work that kept moving instead of waiting politely in a backlog for somebody new to arrive.
$165
median hourly bill rate, senior contract software engineer in the Bay Area, modeled
Over 250
biotech companies in South San Francisco, per the City of South San Francisco
3 days
median from offer to start for KORE1 contractors (n=1,997)
1,040 hours
on assignment before a KORE1 contractor can convert with no fee
Rates from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026. Biotech count from the City of South San Francisco’s Biotech in SSF page. Placement figures from KORE1 W2 contract records, all roles. Track record, not a commitment.
Common Questions
What Bay Area founders and boards ask about a leadership search.
Does a San Francisco executive search cover Oakland, South San Francisco and Silicon Valley?
Yes. A KORE1 search covers San Francisco, Oakland, South San Francisco, the Peninsula and Silicon Valley, and it can draw candidates from all five. Where a rule belongs to San Francisco alone, such as its Fair Chance Ordinance, we say so up front, because a seat in Oakland or on the Peninsula may not be covered by it.
Can a California company be held to a noncompete its new CTO signed in another state?
No, not under California law. Section 16600 voids an employee noncompete, and since January 1, 2024, section 16600.5 makes a void contract unenforceable regardless of where and when it was signed. What another state does is a question for counsel.
Does a San Francisco posting for a VP role have to show a pay scale, even when a search firm posts it?
Yes. At 15 or more employees, Labor Code section 432.3 has the employer give the pay scale to the third party, and the third party must include it in the posting. The pay scale is a good faith estimate of the range the employer expects to pay upon hire.
How much does a senior contract software engineer bill in the Bay Area while the CTO seat is empty?
A senior contract software engineer in the Bay Area bills $153 to $178 an hour, median $165, about $85,800 for three months at 520 hours. That’s a modeled cell in the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, a contract bill rate and not executive pay.
When can a San Francisco employer run the executive background check?
After a conditional offer. San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance bars covered employers from asking about arrest or conviction records until then, and it sets notice steps before an offer is withdrawn. Counsel confirms whether a given employer is covered.
Which seats does a South San Francisco biotech search usually cover?
Typical seats are VP of regulatory affairs, VP of clinical operations and a CFO ahead of a financing. The city counts over 250 biotech companies, so those candidates often have several options, and we scope the offer with that in mind.
Start a San Francisco Executive Search
Send us five things. A recruiter will come back with how we’d run the search.
- The seatCTO, chief AI officer, CFO, a VP or a director seat.
- The sectorSoftware, payments or biotech.
- The location policyOnsite, hybrid or remote.
- The pay scaleThe range the posting will show.
- The startWhen the new leader has to be in the seat.
Want to see the process first? Read how KORE1 runs a retained search. Need cover now? Price contract cover, or call 949-706-6990.
