Most senior roles are never posted. Here's how they get filled.

If you are a senior engineer, product lead or operator looking for your next role, job boards will show you only part of what is out there. A lot of senior hiring happens before a role is ever written down, and these unadvertised senior jobs are often the best ones. By the time some roles are posted, there is already a shortlist.

This is not a secret club. It is how these hires work, and once you see how a senior role really starts, you can put yourself in the conversation much earlier.

How a senior role really starts

It usually begins with a problem, not a job description. A founder notices that payments reliability keeps slipping, or that the product team has outgrown its process. They mention it to an investor, a board member or a friend who runs a similar company. Somebody says, "You should talk to this person."

Names come up before anyone has written a role spec. If one of those conversations goes well, the job gets shaped around what that person can do. If none of them do, then the role gets posted, often with a recruiter attached.

So the question for a senior candidate is not only "which roles are open?" It is also "which founders and leaders have a problem I can solve, and do they know I exist?"

Why it works this way

Senior hires are expensive and risky. A bad VP of Engineering can set a company back a year. So founders lean on trust: people they have worked with, or people recommended by someone they trust.

Founders are also busy, and posting a role feels like admitting a gap in public. Many will quietly ask around for a few weeks first.

And the best candidates are rarely browsing job boards. They are employed and fairly happy. The only way to reach them is through a direct conversation, so that is where founders start.

There is research behind the referral part. In 1973 the sociologist Mark Granovetter published The Strength of Weak Ties, which found that people often heard about new jobs through acquaintances rather than close friends. Acquaintances move in different circles, so they hear about different opportunities. That is still a useful way to think about a senior search.

How to find unadvertised senior jobs early

Be known for a specific problem you solve. "Senior product manager" describes thousands of people. "The person who rebuilt onboarding at a digital bank and halved drop-off" is something a founder remembers and repeats.

Keep in touch with people before you need them. Founders, operators, investors and hiring leaders in your space are the people who will mention your name when a problem comes up. A short update every few months about what you are working on keeps you in mind without asking for anything.

Talk to people already doing the thing you are considering. If you want to move from engineering into product, or from a large bank into a startup, have that conversation now. People are generous with half an hour when you ask a specific question.

And at the end of every useful conversation, ask who else you should talk to. Two or three names from each call is how a handful of conversations turns into a network.

Where NextMove fits

This approach works, but it is slow. Researching people, writing good messages, following up and keeping track of it all can take many hours a week on top of a full-time job.

That is why we built NextMove. It is a managed search for the conversations that decide what happens next. We help you define what you are looking for in one sentence, map the people close to it, and draft outreach in your voice. You approve every message and you have the conversations. It is free for candidates, because employers pay, never the people looking.

If you are in Nigerian tech, our Market Maps are a good place to see who leads the teams you might want to join, and our piece on who leads engineering at Nigeria's top fintechs explains how those teams are set up.