Practice Group

architecture, design & construction Executive Search

Leadership search where design expertise, technical specification, and project execution converge..

Hiring senior leadership talent in Architecture, Design & Construction is not a single challenge — it is several overlapping ones. Currently, the commercially relevant searches are rarely for general construction management: they are for the rare executives who combine design judgment, technical specification authority, and revenue accountability in premium B2B product companies, fit-out contractors, and design-driven manufacturers. Most of them are not actively looking.

Start a confidential search Read FAQs

FOCUS AREAS

Senior profiles at the intersection of design, technical specification, and B2B project sales

DACH and CEE market coverage, including Austria as a DACH–CEE bridge market

Direct outreach into passive candidates — specification leadership is not found on job boards

Market context

What makes senior talent in premium B2B building products so difficult to surface?

The commercial segments driving senior leadership demand in Architecture, Design & Construction are not necessarily involving residential construction. Architectural lighting is growing approximately 7–8% annually on a global basis (Fortune Business Insights); office fit-out, hospitality refurbishment, retail repositioning, and premium acoustic, façade, and flooring products are driven by ESG requirements, energy efficiency investments, and the premiumisation of commercial interiors. Germany’s residential sector is under structural pressure — completions have recently fallen to their lowest level in 13 years (DIW Berlin) — but this compresses the talent pool in traditional roles, not in the specification-intensive B2B segments where the most of our searches sit. Austria presents a more stable environment: infrastructure, energy, and transport investment is currently supporting market growth (FIEC), with Vienna, Graz, and Linz functioning as access points for DACH, CEE, and northern Italian talent markets.

What makes hiring structurally difficult across all sub-segments is the specificity of the profiles: senior candidates who combine design credibility, specification sales relationships with architects and planners, and commercial accountability for a P&L are scarce in every market cycle.

Ertler approach

What does Ertler Executive Search bring to an Architecture, Design & Construction mandate?

Ertler Executive Search has run retained mandates across design-intensive B2B sectors for many years, drawing on a proprietary candidate network of 65,000+ contacts across DACH and Europe. For Architecture, Design & Construction searches, the value of this network lies in its reach into passive candidates: the Head of Specification Sales managing architect relationships across DACH, the Design Director who has built hospitality fit-out portfolios at scale, or the BIM Lead who sits at the boundary of parametric design and construction technology. These candidates are in roles — selectively evaluating what they would move for. With offices in Graz, Düsseldorf, New York, and Hong Kong, we cover the full DACH geography, including Austria as a natural bridge into CEE and adjacent markets.

Where searches in this sector typically fail is at the briefing stage: role specifications written before ESG mandates reshaped building products procurement, or before BIM transformed design-side leadership, frequently no longer reflect what the business actually needs. We review requirements against current market realities before any search begins. First qualified profiles are delivered within 14 days of a confirmed mandate briefing.

TYPICAL POSITIONS

Senior leadership mandates we support

Head of Specification Sales / VP Architecture & Design Sales

Managing Director — Premium Construction Products (DACH)

Design Director — Hospitality & Retail Fit-Out

BIM & Parametric Design Lead / Head of Digital Design

Head of Sustainability / ESG Director — Construction & Building Materials

Regional Director — Contract & Commercial Interiors

Start the conversation

Do you have a leadership gap in Architecture, Design & Construction?

We know the candidate landscape in detail. Contact us — confidentially.

OTHER PRACTICE GROUPS

Defense & Cybersecurity · → CFO & Financial Services · → Industrial, Manufacturing & Automotive ·
→

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

The profiles that perform in specification sales or senior design leadership — candidates with architect networks built over years, or those who can navigate BIM, ESG, and key account management simultaneously — are not actively applying to anything. They are currently employed, selectively reachable, and would never surface through a job board. What you are seeing is the active market, which is a small fraction of the relevant pool. The only reliable access is direct outreach via a network built inside the sector.

This is one of the most common briefs we see in premium B2B building products right now. The role — often a Head of Specification Sales, Architecture Sales Director, or Design Liaison — sits at the boundary of commercial accountability and design credibility. It requires someone who can hold a conversation with an architect about materiality and aesthetics, then manage a pipeline and a P&L. We review the brief before the search begins and map it against candidates who have actually operated at this intersection, not those who approximate it on paper.

Austria is a genuine market for this sector, not a second-best option. Vienna, Graz, and Linz each have senior talent in architectural specification, premium interiors, and construction technology. Where the domestic pool is too narrow for a specific role, we extend into southern Germany, Switzerland, northern Italy, and CEE as a single combined territory — without treating it as a separate mandate. Austria is currently also a more stable market than Germany: fewer involuntary job changes means passive candidates need a compelling reason to move, and the search has to make that case.

Meaningfully. Across the mandates we run in building materials, facades, and fit-out, the brief has shifted: sustainability is no longer a compliance add-on but a commercial positioning tool, and architects and planners are specifying increasingly based on EPDs and lifecycle assessments. The candidates who can translate this into revenue — who can hold a technical ESG conversation with a specifier and then manage a P&L — are not standard sustainability managers. They typically have a technical or design background with a commercial layer on top. That combination is consistently the hardest profile to source in this sector.

First qualified profiles within 14 days of mandate briefing is standard across all our searches. A full shortlist with long-form candidate dossiers typically follows within 6-8 weeks. Eight weeks from briefing to shortlist is achievable — the constraint is usually the number of client interview rounds, not candidate availability. We set the timeline at the briefing stage and flag any factors that could extend it before the search begins, not after.