16 IoT Recruiters for Hiring Smart Industry Experts
Meet the leading IoT recruiters & headhunters known for their expertise in identifying top talent and matching them with groundbreaking smart industry roles and projects. ↓
IoT hiring is a fragmented specialty. The recruiter who can headhunt a firmware engineer for a connected-car program is rarely the one placing a C-suite leader at an industrial-automation scale-up.
The 16 people below cover that whole spread, from industrial IoT and edge computing to smart devices, connected vehicles, and IoT security, working across the US, UK, Europe, and APAC.
Each entry notes where they sit, what they focus on, and how to reach them.
- Melissa Coleman
- Bill McCabe
- Eric Pollack
- Vanessa Moriel
- Richard Crossman
- Nick Walmisley
- Zara Khan
- Ivan Lion
- Ella Holliday
- Dave Bevington
- Jessica Reesby
- Timothy Noble
- Tanya Rebottini-Gallardo
- Yeshab Giri
- Sophie van Goethem
- Ammaar Wahab
Melissa Coleman
Nationality: American
Melissa runs recruiting at Blue Signal Search, where her beat is what she calls “talent that keeps the lights on”: smart lighting, building IoT, and energy management.
The nickname that stuck is the “Brightest Recruiter in Lighting.” She places hardware and sales people for connected-building and smart-city platforms, and once scaled a smart-lighting startup’s entire engineering team through direct headhunting.
On LinkedIn she’s the type to celebrate every placement publicly and post about where lighting controls are heading.
- Linkedin: Melissa Coleman
Bill McCabe
Nationality: American
I’ve always believed that IoT is not just a technology, it’s a transformation. Connecting top talent with top companies isn’t just about filling roles, it’s about shaping the future of connected industries.
A former CPA who became a headhunter, Bill has spent 20+ years in IT talent acquisition and founded IoTRecruiter.co (part of SoftNet Search Partners).
He works the executive end: leadership for IoT, AI, big data, and Industry 4.0 programs, much of it for Fortune 500 firms.
He’s been named a Top 50 IoT authority on social media, and pitches himself on a record of placing candidates in the top 5% of their field. Today he runs IoTRecruiter as Managing Director.
- Linkedin: Bill McCabe
Eric Pollack
Nationality: American
Eric has spent 25+ years in retained executive search and runs ESP PROSEARCH, which works across disruptive tech including IoT, automation, and cleantech.
His niche is the very top of the org chart: C-level and senior executives for IoT hardware, software, lighting, and controls companies worldwide.
The firm has a 30-year track record behind it, and Eric stays visible by sponsoring industry events and posting on where IoT hiring is going.
- Linkedin: Eric Pollack
- X (Twitter): @ESPProsearch
Vanessa Moriel
Nationality: Mexican
Vanessa co-founded and sits on the board of LIASE Group, an executive search firm built around IoT and the automotive/mobility world. She runs its APAC operations from Asia as MD Asia, recruiting senior leaders for connected-car, smart-mobility, and industrial-IoT companies.
She had started an earlier firm back in 2004 before it merged into LIASE, so her automotive-tech network runs deep. She speaks regularly, on panels and on LinkedIn, about what the “Internet of Everything” means for hiring in emerging markets.
- Linkedin: Vanessa Moriel
Richard Crossman
Nationality: British
Richard founded Aruba Exec in 2009 and still runs its searches as Chief Headhunter.
It’s a boutique outfit by design: C-suite recruitment for IoT, AI, and SaaS, with Richard leading CEO and CTO searches for startups and scale-ups across EMEA and the US from his UK base.
He works high-touch and claims a 99%+ placement success rate off it, through a process the firm brands ETAR (Executive Talent Acquisition & Retention). Between searches he mentors IoT founders on building their first teams.
- Linkedin: Richard Crossman
- X (Twitter): @ArubaExec
Nick Walmisley
Nationality: British
Nick is a UK recruiter whose whole patch is IoT and network technologies: the connectivity, telecom-IoT, and wireless-networking roles. His LinkedIn tagline says it plainly, “IoT Recruiter | Specialising in Talent Across Network Technologies.”
After earlier stints at Huntress and Innovate, he now finds engineers and product leaders for companies in smart infrastructure, IIoT, and 5G/LPWAN, and posts a steady stream on IoT regulation and where the telecom market is moving.
- Linkedin: Nick Walmisley
Zara Khan
Nationality: British
Zara specializes in the security side of IoT: OT security, industrial IoT, and real-time location systems across healthcare and industrial clients.
She works from Nottingham as a US Commercial IoT Security Recruitment Consultant at Rebel Recruiters, drawing on an earlier career as a top-performing tech salesperson.
Her current job is essentially to stand up Rebel’s IoT practice in the US market, and her roughly 5,000 LinkedIn followers get regular reads on things like MSSPs pushing into IoT/OT security.
- Linkedin: Zara Khan
Ivan Lion
Nationality: Singaporean
Branded simply as “IoT Headhunter” to his LinkedIn following, Ivan has 14 years in tech recruitment and works as a Senior Consultant at a global executive search firm.
From Singapore he leads IoT and tech-leadership searches across APAC, placing CTOs, product directors, and solution architects into smart-city, telecom, and industrial-automation companies.
A lot of his value is as a bridge: Western firms that want IoT talent in Southeast Asia tend to find him first.
- Linkedin: Ivan Lion
Ella Holliday
Nationality: British
Ella is a principal consultant at Edison Smart, an award-winning IoT recruitment specialist, and works the APAC and Middle East markets from Dubai.
Her placements run through IoT product development, connectivity, and smart devices, including senior telecom roles, and she has been a big part of opening up Edison’s presence in the Gulf’s newer IoT markets.
Internally she’s been flagged for record-breaking numbers; externally she’s easy to spot on LinkedIn under the usual #IoT #APAC #hiring tags.
- Linkedin: Ella Holliday
Dave Bevington
Nationality: American
Dave leads the Automation & Industrial Technology practice at Direct Recruiters Inc. (DRI) in Ohio, where his team fills IIoT, automation, and controls roles for manufacturers.
The placements are deep in the industrial stack: SCADA, sensors, industrial-IoT software, the senior engineers and product managers behind Industry 4.0 projects.
He’s a fixture at automation trade shows and writes candidly on LinkedIn about how hard IIoT hiring actually is as OT and IT keep converging.
- Linkedin: Dave Bevington
Jessica Reesby
Nationality: Australian
Jessica founded and runs Reesby, an Australian tech-recruitment agency and job platform with IoT at its center.
She started it to close the local gap in emerging-tech skills, and has since organized the Engineering and IT Jobs Expos and the IoT Australia Meetup community, plus IoT and AI events with partners like Microsoft and EY.
She posts like a futurist, lots of forward-looking takes on AI, robotics, and how the IoT workforce is shifting, and leans hard on a data-driven, diversity-minded approach to matching candidates.
- Linkedin: Jessica Reesby
- X (Twitter): @JESSTHESEQUEL
Timothy Noble
Nationality: American
Tim is Managing Partner at The Avery Point Group, a US search firm known specifically for Industry 4.0 leadership. He co-leads retained searches for IIoT and smart-manufacturing executives, the people who run digital factories, additive manufacturing, and AI/IoT rollouts.
His own angle is unusual: he writes about pairing IoT data with Lean and Six Sigma, and the firm’s work on that intersection has shown up in trade books and articles.
Twenty-plus years in Fortune 500 manufacturing is what he brings to finding the rare candidate who can do both.
- Linkedin: Tim Noble
Tanya Rebottini-Gallardo
Nationality: American
Tanya is CEO of JRG Partners, a Florida executive-search firm with dedicated practices in medical devices and emerging tech. Her focus is Connected Medical Devices (IoMT): the executives behind wearables, remote patient monitoring, and healthcare-IoT security.
With 20+ years in executive recruiting, she’s positioned JRG among the names that come up in medtech and IoT talent, sits on digital-health panels, and uses her LinkedIn to push women in tech and spotlight the IoT leaders she has placed in healthcare.
- Linkedin: Tanya Rebottini-Gallardo
Yeshab Giri
Nationality: Indian
Yeshab sits higher up than most on this list: he’s Chief Commercial Officer for Staffing & Operational Talent Solutions at Randstad India, overseeing the IoT and embedded-technology staffing teams rather than running searches himself.
He writes and speaks on Industry 4.0 workforce questions, how the spread of IoT devices is rewriting skill requirements in manufacturing, and has been quoted in industry press on upskilling for automation roles.
Under him, Randstad India launched dedicated IoT recruitment services and tied up with universities to train the next batch of IoT engineers.
- Linkedin: Yeshab Giri
Sophie van Goethem
Nationality: Belgian
Sophie recruits for European IoT and digital-transformation roles at the Polyglot Group, an HR consultancy whose whole thing is cross-cultural placement.
That fits her: she works in English, French, and Dutch, and helps international companies hire multilingual IoT experts across product management, data analytics, and cloud.
She first drew attention reporting from the HR Summit at DES2018 (the Digital Enterprise Show) in Spain, and tends to focus on cultural fit and how IoT and AI are changing the skills teams need, much of it on smart-utilities and energy-IoT work.
- Linkedin: Sophie van Goethem
Ammaar Wahab
Nationality: British
Ammaar is a Principal Recruitment Consultant at Platform Recruitment, working the electronics and embedded-software end of connected devices. His roles sit close to the hardware: firmware, embedded Linux, board bring-up, the low-level debugging and reliability work that real production IoT depends on.
He shares a lot of live market signal on where embedded demand is heating up, especially where device software meets the cloud.
- Linkedin: Ammaar Wahab
Wrap Up
Between them, the recruiters above cover almost every corner of IoT hiring, from firmware up to the C-suite, and across four continents. The catch is access: the best of them are usually booked solid or priced at a premium.
If you’d rather move faster, partnering with EchoGlobal is the other route. We work in IoT and run a worldwide talent network, so we can connect you with the right people to staff your smart-industry initiatives.
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 essential for sourcing talent in the connected devices, smart infrastructure, and industrial automation sectors. IoT recruiters understand the blend of hardware, software, and networking skills required in this industry. They help employers locate specialized engineers and executives who can build and scale IoT ecosystems effectively.
Leading professionals and firms include Blue Signal Search, IoTRecruiter.co (SoftNet Search Partners), ESP PROSEARCH, LIASE Group, EchoGlobal and Aruba Exec.
IoT recruiters typically charge 20% to 30% of the candidate’s first-year salary. Executive searches often operate on a retained model, with fees divided across project milestones. Contract or interim staffing may use margin-based pricing depending on project duration and complexity.
Look for recruiters with demonstrated experience in connected systems, embedded technologies, or industrial IoT. Their client list and public activity on professional platforms can reveal industry depth. A strong recruiter combines technical literacy with an understanding of business transformation in the IoT space.
They advise organizations on IoT workforce planning, digital transformation, and technology integration. Consultants may also design hiring strategies or help scale teams for smart manufacturing, connected vehicles, or AI-enabled devices. Their guidance supports innovation, operational efficiency, and market competitiveness.
