Splitting one stretched team into product and pre-sales, across two countries.

The situation

The existing product team structure was limiting the company's ability to scale. One team was carrying both client delivery and the sales cycle, which created unsustainable pressure and delivery friction.

The decision was to split it into two distinct functions, Product and Pre-Sales Engineering, and to hire across both.

The work was to help reorganise the teams, hire specialist talent across two geographies, and leave a hiring structure behind that could support international growth.

The challenge

The approach

1. 01

   Discovery and role creation

   • ·Sat with the Chief People Officer and the leadership team and scoped the restructure before a single role was written.
   • ·Defined what success looked like for each of the four roles, separately.
   • ·Wrote a separate pitch for product candidates and for pre-sales candidates.
2. 02

   Research, sourcing and screening

   • ·Mapped target candidate markets across the UK and the US.
   • ·Identified talent with SaaS, capital markets and client-facing experience.
   • ·Created shortlists for all four roles in parallel.
3. 03

   Interviewing and alignment

   • ·Coordinated structured interview processes across both geographies.
   • ·Debriefed stakeholders and held them to the same evaluation criteria.
   • ·Calibrated the new hires against the people already in post, so the split worked on day one.
4. 04

   Offers, negotiation and closing

   • ·Ran the offers against US and UK compensation benchmarks, with the local differences that go with them.
   • ·Left onboarding plans with the internal teams and handed over.

The result

• All four hires completed within 90 days.
• The restructure landed, with clear responsibilities on each side of the split.
• UK and US coverage established for sales support across time zones.
• The core product team stopped carrying the sales cycle, with pre-sales support separated into its own function.