The 20 Most Sought-After FinTech Recruiters
Meet the top recruiters & headhunters in the FinTech industry, each known for their exceptional ability to connect companies with the highest-caliber professionals in the financial sector. ↓
FinTech hiring is its own world. The executives and engineers who build payments rails, trading systems, and crypto platforms are recruited by a fairly small group of specialists, many of whom focus on a single slice: payments, compliance, Web3, or C-suite search.
The 20 FinTech recruiters below are among the most influential in that group, the people who place the talent behind some of finance’s biggest names, from engineers to executives. Here’s who they are and the corner of fintech each one owns.
- Neil Dundon
- Jason Van Voorhis
- Dean Nacey
- Deepali Vyas
- Dave Mullarkey
- Jonathan Pomeranz
- Nadia Edwards-Dashti
- James Brown
- Simon Eglise
- Marc Badalucco
- Rob Paone
- Jim Urquhart
- Jordan Lawrence
- Jackson Baker
- Smriti Vicari
- Adrianna Oliva
- Maurice Gilbert
- Chris Leek
- Shawn Rutter
- Justin Cerilli
Neil Dundon
Reshaping Web3 & Blockchain Technology.
Nationality: Australian
Neil got into Web3 recruitment before it had a name, founding Crypto Recruit in early 2017, reportedly the first agency anywhere built solely around blockchain jobs.
Working from Sydney with 20+ years in recruitment behind him, he’s grown it into what bills itself as the “world’s leading Web3 recruiting firm,” placing hundreds of developers, CTOs, and compliance hires at crypto exchanges, NFT platforms, and metaverse startups.
- Linkedin: Neil Dundon
Jason Van Voorhis
Nationality: American
Jason ran tech recruiting at Snap before founding V3, where he helps fast-growing fintech startups handle high-volume hiring. His edge is the VC network, Index, Lightspeed, Sequoia, which lets him scale a team fast once a company clears the seed stage.
V3 has stood up entire engineering and product orgs for emerging fintech players.
- Linkedin: Jason Van Voorhis
Dean Nacey
Nationality: American
Dean co-heads the fintech practice at SPMB from the West Coast, concentrating on CEO, board, and HR-leadership searches.
The client list spans consumer and enterprise fintech alike, NerdWallet, Juniper Square, Robinhood, Credit Karma, and Affirm among them, which is the kind of network that gets you the next board seat to fill.
- Linkedin: Dean Nacey
Deepali Vyas
Nationality: American
Deepali is Global Head of Data & AI at ZRG, a move that followed running Korn Ferry’s global data, AI, and fintech practice.
Out of New York she’s led C-level and board searches for Coinbase, Stripe, PayPal, and Gemini, and pairs the search work with advisory on how to actually structure those org charts.
An earlier stint leading hedge-fund recruiting at Heidrick rounds out a profile that’s placed CEOs and directors at fintech unicorns.
- Linkedin: Deepali Vyas
Dave Mullarkey
Nationality: American
In fintech, it’s not just about hiring executives with experience; it’s about finding visionaries who can lead companies through rapid transformation and disruption in the financial services space.
Dave co-leads SPMB‘s fintech practice alongside Dean Nacey, with a focus on CEO and COO searches.
His track record sits heavily in payments and lending, he led the C-suite searches at BlueVine and other fintech lenders, where he’s placed executives at companies in their fastest-growth phases.
- Linkedin: Dave Mullarkey
Jonathan Pomeranz
Nationality: American
Jonathan heads the fintech, banking, and payments practice at True Search in the US, where recent placements include the CEO of Green Dot Bank and the CMO of Acorns.
A prior run in Korn Ferry’s financial-services practice gives him a foot in both worlds, the startup side (eToro, Albert, CircleUp) and traditional finance, which is exactly the bridge those companies need when hiring senior.
- Linkedin: Jonathan Pomeranz
- X (Twitter): @jonpomeranz
Nadia Edwards-Dashti
Nationality: British
Nadia co-founded Harrington Starr and has spent close to 20 years placing technologists and sales leaders across fintech worldwide.
She’s also one of the sector’s loudest voices on inclusion, hosting the “FinTech’s DEI Discussions” podcast and writing FinTech Women Walk the Talk, alongside Forbes columns and a busy speaking schedule.
- Linkedin: Nadia Edwards-Dashti
James Brown
Nationality: British
James left a Managing Director role at Phaidon International (Selby Jennings’ parent) to launch Storm2 in 2019 as a fintech-only recruiter, seeded with £1M.
Inside a few years he’d expanded it across Europe, the US, and Asia, helping staff a long list of high-growth fintech startups, and even recruited Phaidon’s founder as Chairman. Hyper-growth hiring is the house specialty.
- Linkedin: James Brown
- X (Twitter): @ALGOSJ
Simon Eglise
Nationality: British
Simon co-founded EC1 Partners in London in 2008 and now runs its Asia-Pacific business from Singapore.
EC1 recruits across fintech sales, tech, and executive roles from offices in London, New York, Miami, and Singapore, and Simon’s 15+ years in the space (especially payments and trading tech across EMEA and APAC) make him a regular voice in the press on where fintech hiring is heading.
- Linkedin: Simon Eglise
Marc Badalucco
Nationality: American
Marc has recruited in payments since 2000 and leads the team at IMPACT, helping processors, card networks, and fintech startups fill product, sales, risk, and tech roles.
He’s a frequent guest on industry podcasts like PayPod, and IMPACT bills itself as the most trusted recruiting partner in payments and digital banking. Marc himself stays on the senior sales and strategy end.
- Linkedin: Marc Badalucco
- X (Twitter): @PaymentsBaddy
Rob Paone
Nationality: American
Better known online as “Crypto Bobby,” Rob founded Proof of Talent in 2019 as one of the first crypto-only recruiting firms. From New York he and his team staff engineers, product managers, and executives at blockchain and Web3 startups, exchanges, DeFi platforms, and crypto funds.
The firm was acquired by Anthony Pompliano’s recruiting group in 2022, and Rob leans on an ex-AirSwap BD background and a sizable social following (plus features in Business Insider and CoinDesk) to reach talent.
- Linkedin: Rob Paone
Jim Urquhart
Nationality: American
Jim runs the fintech practice at the Bowdoin Group, where 15+ years in have him recruiting C-suite and go-to-market leaders across payments, insurtech, digital lending, and AI/ML.
Placements at SoFi, Bento for Business, and Dealogic show the range, which spans product, sales, HR, and finance leadership on both sides of the Atlantic.
- Linkedin: Jim Urquhart
Jordan Lawrence
Nationality: British
Jordan founded the payments-recruitment brand PCN in 2009 and spent 12 years building it out of Amsterdam into a first call for payments, e-commerce, and fintech hiring before selling it in 2021. Few people know the cards-and-payments talent market as deeply.
He’s a serial entrepreneur now, involved in ventures like Volt.io, but still carries weight in recruiting circles.
- Linkedin: Jordan Lawrence
Jackson Baker
Nationality: American
Jackson leads compliance and legal recruitment at Rutherford, a boutique that pitches itself as having the best headhunters in fintech compliance, risk, cyber, and legal.
From New York he finds the hard-to-source roles, Chief Compliance Officers, Risk Directors, Regulatory Counsel, for challenger banks, fintech startups, and crypto firms, backed by a decade-plus database of regulatory professionals.
- Linkedin: Jackson Baker
Smriti Vicari
Nationality: American
Smriti leads the North American FinTech practice at Egon Zehnder, working across its financial-services and CFO practices too.
From New York she advises both fintech startups and established institutions on landing C-level digital talent, and her cross-industry read, plus a focus on diversity, makes her a frequent choice for boards and executive roles that need to blend finance and tech.
- Linkedin: Smriti Vicari
Adrianna Oliva
Nationality: American
Adrianna co-leads Heidrick‘s FinTech efforts in the Americas, sitting across its Financial Services and Technology practices in New York.
She places digital-product and technology executives into both fintech companies and the financial institutions trying to reinvent themselves, and is valued for reading startup culture and big-enterprise constraints equally well, useful for digital-banking and innovation-leadership searches.
- Linkedin: Adrianna Oliva
Maurice Gilbert
Nationality: American
Maurice has been in compliance search since 2001, and his firm Conselium fills Chief Compliance Officer and regulatory roles across fintech and financial services.
He’s a genuine authority on the hard regulatory hires, BSA/AML, consumer-finance compliance, with recent searches including a compliance executive for a global fintech at roughly $550K total comp. He writes regularly for compliance journals.
- Linkedin: Maurice Gilbert
Chris Leek
Nationality: British
Chris runs FinTech Recruitment Ltd from the UK, handling C-level and senior search across fintech, regtech, and insurtech in Europe, Asia, and North America.
With 20+ years in recruitment (he also runs XB Consultants on the broader financial-services side), he’s built a name for matching senior candidates to early-stage fintech quickly.
- Linkedin: Chris Leek
Shawn Rutter
Nationality: British
Shawn founded Excelsior Search in London in 1999, early enough to be one of the first specialists in capital-markets fintech.
His focus is unusual and deliberate: he works only for fintech vendors, the trading-technology, investment-analytics, and market-data firms, placing their sales, marketing, product, and executive talent worldwide. Clients describe those hires as critical to their growth.
- Linkedin: Shawn Rutter
Justin Cerilli
Nationality: American
Justin is a senior leader at Russell Reynolds Associates, advising on CEO, board, and senior technology, operations, digital, and data hires across financial services and fintech.
His recent work includes CEO-succession assignments for a high-growth fintech and a string of data and analytics leadership placements, the kind of roles where a company needs someone who can scale product and platform without losing operating discipline.
- Linkedin: Justin Cerilli
Sum Up
Between them, the recruiters above have sourced a large share of fintech’s senior talent, across payments, compliance, crypto, and the C-suite. The catch is the usual one: the best are in heavy demand and rarely cheap.
If you’d rather move quickly, partner with EchoGlobal, where our industry network can connect you with the right fintech people without the wait.
Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top professionals. However, if you believe a correction or addition is needed, feel free to reach out. We’ll gladly review and update the page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, they are valuable partners for startups and financial institutions competing for scarce digital finance talent. FinTech recruiters understand niche areas such as payments, lending, blockchain, and wealth tech. They also help companies hire senior executives and technologists who can navigate both financial regulation and product innovation.
Prominent firms and networks include SPMB, Korn Ferry, True Search, Harrington Starr, Storm2, Crypto Recruit, EchoGlobal Tech and V3 Talent. These agencies have built global reputations for sourcing executives, engineers, and product leaders across the FinTech ecosystem.
Most FinTech recruiters charge 20% to 30% of the candidate’s first-year salary, while executive search firms often operate on retained models. Senior placements, like C-suite roles, typically involve milestone-based payments. Fees vary depending on specialization, seniority, and geographic scope.
Look for agencies with proven experience in your FinTech niche (payments, DeFi, or neobanking, for example). Review client placements and recruiter profiles to confirm sector expertise. The best recruiters understand both finance and technology, ensuring candidates fit your business model and growth stage.
They advise on leadership hiring, organizational design, and digital transformation strategies for financial companies. Consultants may also assess talent pipelines and workforce readiness for scaling. Their insights help firms remain agile in an evolving regulatory and technological environment.
