/answers/should-your-first-engineering-hire-be-senior/index.md · 45 lines
---
title: "Should Your First Engineering Hire Be Senior?"
description: "In most cases the first engineering hire should be senior enough to make architecture decisions, set working practices and own delivery without close supervision, because nobody else in the company can review their work. Junior engineers do best once there is someone to guide them, a codebase with conventions and a clear way of shipping."
url: https://lidvizion.ai/answers/should-your-first-engineering-hire-be-senior/
site: Lid Vizion
index: https://lidvizion.ai/llms.txt
---
[Direct answers](https://lidvizion.ai/answers/)
# Should a company’s first engineering hire be senior or junior?
In most cases the first engineering hire should be senior enough to make architecture decisions, set working practices and own delivery without close supervision, because nobody else in the company can review their work. Junior engineers do best once there is someone to guide them, a codebase with conventions and a clear way of shipping.
## What this means in practice
- Write down the decisions the first engineer will own before hiring.
- Have an experienced technical person help assess candidates.
- Make sure code, accounts and documentation are in the company’s name from day one.
- Add junior engineers once there is a senior owner, conventions and review in place.
## How Lid Vizion approaches it
We start with the business decision and operating context, define ownership and measurable milestones, then use configuration, integrations, automation, or custom software only where each earns its place.
## See it as a workflow
- [Hiring the first engineering team](https://lidvizion.ai/use-cases/hiring-the-first-engineering-team/): Define the roles, interview process and first-quarter plan for a company’s first in-house engineers, so hires start productive and the founder stops being the only technical judge.
## More on Fractional CTO & technology leadership
- [How can a company replace a legacy system without disrupting the business?](https://lidvizion.ai/answers/how-to-migrate-off-a-legacy-system/)
- [How should a company onboard a fractional CTO, Chief AI Officer or product leader so they are useful quickly?](https://lidvizion.ai/answers/how-to-onboard-a-fractional-executive/)
- [How can a growing company reduce its cloud and software costs without slowing the team down?](https://lidvizion.ai/answers/how-to-reduce-cloud-and-software-costs/)
[Compare services](https://lidvizion.ai/services/) · [Use a planning tool](https://lidvizion.ai/tools/) · [Explore workflow use cases](https://lidvizion.ai/use-cases/) · [More direct answers](https://lidvizion.ai/answers/)
Talk it through
## Have a version of this question inside your company?
Bring the decision, the constraints, and what a good outcome looks like.
[Talk through the decision](https://lidvizion.ai/contact/?need=fractional-cto&from=%2Fanswers%2Fshould-your-first-engineering-hire-be-senior%2F#write) · [Book a call](https://calendar.app.google/bB26LdA9e2gmGFp69)