Senior Leadership Hiring in 2026: A Rare Window of Opportunity
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While 93% of finance leaders report difficulty finding qualified senior candidates and executive search costs hit record highs, there’s a counterintuitive dynamic unfolding beneath the surface.
We spoke in detail with Matthew Barker, an experienced CPO in the Career Moves Group network, about what he’s witnessing across the market. With over twenty years leading people, transformation and operational initiatives across Private Equity-backed, founder-led and publicly listed businesses, Matthew has guided organisations through post-merger integrations, large-scale restructures and multi-year transformation programmes. His perspective on the current market is unequivocal: ‘This is a genuinely unusual moment. I haven’t seen this depth of senior leadership capability become available at once since 2009.’
High-calibre, senior leaders who normally never become available (CFOs bound by equity vesting, transformation directors mid-programme, COOs locked into PE-backed portfolio restructures) are entering conversations for the first time in over a decade. ‘These aren’t people looking for work,’ Matthew explains. ‘They’re leaders who were in very particular roles, bound by equity, retention packages, or engaged in multi-year transformations. They’ve only become available due to macro resets or strategic pivots, not performance.’
Put simply, there appears to be a structural correction in the senior leadership market, and the window is finite.
These are operators who’ve led post-merger integrations, rebuilt operating models after activist investor interventions, scaled global functions across multiple geographies and taken businesses through successive funding rounds. They’re not flooding recruiters with CVs or updating LinkedIn profiles. They’re exploring opportunities through trusted relationships, often considering roles that were never formally advertised.
Three specific catalysts are now converging to create this moment:
Transformation cycle completions (multi-year programmes initiated during 2020-2022 funding rounds are concluding, releasing senior leaders who committed to see them through)
PE portfolio rationalisation (private equity firms now account for over 30% of retained search activity, but they’re also conducting operational reviews that have triggered selective restructures)
High-calibre leaders who were in very particular roles have become available due to macro resets or strategic pivots, not performance issues.
These aren’t people looking for work. They’re leaders who have only become available due to macro resets or strategic pivots, not performance.
Matthew Barker, CPO & Board Advisor
Leaders Who Don’t Show Up in Standard Searches
Of course, this isn’t a surge of generalist executives facing career headwinds. 73% of UK organisations underwent significant structural changes throughout 2024-2025, displacing senior leadership capability across functions: HR directors who led people transformation through hybrid work transitions, CFOs who navigated multiple funding rounds and built FP&A capability from scratch, operations leaders who scaled global teams while managing supplier consolidation.
The distinction is important to highlight because these individuals aren’t ‘between jobs’ in the traditional sense. They’re being highly selective, seeking roles with clear mandates, fast time-to-value and genuine Board alignment. Many are financially comfortable enough to wait for the right opportunity rather than take the first offer.
Another difference is that many executives who joined during 2020-2022 had three to five year vesting schedules that are cliffing now. A CFO who joined a Series B company in early 2021 with a four-year cliff just became significantly more mobile in early 2025. Similarly, transformation mandates tied to specific outcomes (complete the ERP migration, integrate the acquisition, restructure the operating model) have reached completion.
That’s why, as Matthew puts it “this isn’t a buyer’s market for cost-cutting, but rather a buyer’s market for senior leadership capability.”
Interim C-level placements now represent one in five executive appointments, up 29% year-over-year. This subtly signals that the market has moved towards speed and access over perfect-fit searches. Organisations are prioritising ‘get the right calibre person in now’ over ‘wait six months for the unicorn candidate.’
Capability That Brings Delivery
Hiring senior leaders can bring clarity when everything feels chaotic. They accelerate decisions, strengthen governance and create delivery discipline, which is exactly what organisations need when executing under pressure.
Think about what actually happens when you parachute experienced senior leaders into a stretched function. The right hire immediately helps to compress timelines, remove ambiguity and avoid costly false starts. They’ve seen the patterns before. They know which battles matter and which are distractions. They can spot a failing project three months earlier than someone learning on the job.
In every major transformation Matthew’s led or supported, senior capability has been the single biggest determinant of speed and outcome. Not technology. Not methodology. Capability.
Strong executives stabilise teams that have been covering for absent leadership, raise standards across the function through modelling and expectation-setting and create execution momentum that lifts entire departments. For leadership teams wrestling with under-resourced functions and aggressive delivery schedules, that multiplier effect becomes invaluable.
From a Board or investor perspective, one experienced senior hire can materially de-risk delivery and outperform multiple junior additions when execution really matters. And when does it not? Would you rather have three mid-level hires learning as they go, or one hire who’s already made the mistakes elsewhere and knows how to handle complex issues head-on?
This is the difference between a finance transformation that takes eighteen months versus thirty-six, between an integration that preserves revenue versus one that leaks customers, between an operating model redesign that works versus one that reverts to old patterns within a quarter.
The Exceptions Worth Noting
Having said all this, availability doesn’t extend across all senior roles, and acknowledging the boundaries is an important part of understanding the whole picture.
If you need a CFO who’s already built an AI-driven forecasting engine at scale, you’re still competing in a tight market. If you need a CHRO who’s genuinely led large-scale workforce analytics implementation (not just talked about it), that’s still a difficult search.
The opportunity lies elsewhere. Proven operators who can build the infrastructure that develops specialists, establish governance for emerging technologies without pretending to be technologists themselves, and create the organisational maturity that scaling businesses desperately need. While sector-specific technologists remain scarce, the generalist operators with deep transformation experience are suddenly accessible.
It’s worth distinguishing between shortage of specialists and availability of operators. Both can be true simultaneously, and understanding which you actually need changes the conversation entirely.
Why Hesitation Increases Risk
The strongest candidates are coming off the market fast, often into roles that were never advertised. Decisive CEOs and Boards are moving discreetly, sometimes creating roles that didn’t exist in the org chart because the capability became available.
Companies holding out for the ‘perfect moment’ are already missing exceptional leaders while competitors hire behind the scenes. The irony is that hesitation in the name of risk management usually increases risk: it stretches under-resourced teams further, slows delivery when pace matters most, and loses momentum at exactly the wrong time.
When growth returns (as it always does), this level of senior capability will be locked back behind long notice periods, retention packages and scarcity. The real risk is clearly hiring too late.
Labour market data from January 2026 already shows we’re at that point. Economic indicators suggest growth will return in H2, which means this window has months, not years. Private equity firms are already positioning portfolio companies for growth; the question is whether they have the leadership capacity to execute when conditions improve. Matthew’s observation support this entirely: ‘I’m seeing the strongest candidates come off the market fast, often into roles that were never advertised. Decisive CEOs and Boards are moving quickly and discreetly.’
There’s a pattern worth noting here. The organisations moving now aren’t typically the ones in crisis; they’re the ones thinking two moves ahead. They’re recognising that when your competitors are cutting, and exceptional senior leadership capability is accessible, you build advantage by strengthening your operating core.
Senior Leadership hiring Moving Forward
For organisations facing large transformations, stretched leadership capacity or evaluating growth readiness, three actions warrant consideration:
Conduct an honest capability gap assessment against strategic priorities (not current headcount)
Explore whether interim or fractional senior support could de-risk delivery while permanent searches progress
Speak with specialists who maintain networks beyond advertised roles
The conversation today isn’t ‘do we need another head?’ It’s ‘do we have the capability to execute what we’ve committed to deliver?’
Senior leadership hiring requires precision, discretion and deep market insight.
At Career Moves Group, our Executive Search capability goes beyond filling roles. We offer confidential consultations to help you identify critical leadership gaps, benchmark your current capability against evolving market standards, and assess the availability of high-calibre senior talent across your sector.
Whether you’re strengthening your executive team, planning succession, or responding to growth or transformation, our specialist consultants bring data, network intelligence and strategic perspective to support confident decision-making.
Matthew is a Global Chief People Officer and Board Advisor with over 25 years’ experience supporting high-growth, PE-backed and global organisations through scale, transformation and M&A. He has held executive People leadership roles at companies including Rakuten Advertising, Astound Commerce, Readdle and Tullow Oil, partnering with founders, CEOs and Boards to align workforce strategy with commercial performance across EMEA, North America, APAC and LATAM.
