The strongest international networks in technology recruitment come in three shapes. Global integrated firms such as Korn Ferry, Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles, Egon Zehnder and Russell Reynolds Associates hold institutional reach across 30 to 50 countries. Partner networks and alliances such as Odgers, Amrop and Kestria trade central brand weight for local ownership across 40 or more markets. Specialists such as Olofsson & Company and Harnham go narrow and deep, mapping a candidate universe rather than working a relationship list. Which model wins depends on where you actually need to execute.
Office counts are the laziest way to judge a network
Every firm on this list publishes a number. Seventy offices. Fifty countries. Six continents. Those numbers tell you where a firm has signed a lease. They tell you very little about whether it can find you a VP of Engineering in Ho Chi Minh City who has already scaled a platform team through Series C.
We build this list and Olofsson & Company sits on it, so read our entry with that in mind. Here is the standard we apply to ourselves and to everyone else.
Documented footprint. Where does the firm publish offices, and under what ownership? An integrated global partnership behaves very differently from an alliance of independently owned member firms. One moves a mandate internally. The other refers it.
Execution depth in your market. A firm can hold an office in Singapore and still route your search to a consultant in London who has never placed an engineering leader in Southeast Asia. Ask who does the work, on which desk, in which time zone. Then ask for the last three placements that consultant closed in your market.
Speed of candidate mapping. Relationship networks are strong exactly where the relationships already are. They go quiet in markets a firm entered recently, and in functions that barely existed five years ago. Head of AI Platform is one of those functions. So is Chief AI Officer.
Rank the ten firms below against those three tests rather than against their office counts, and the shortlist gets much shorter.
| # | Firm | Network model | Documented footprint | Technology focus | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Olofsson & Company | AI mapping platform plus specialist consultants | Singapore HQ, global reach with APAC depth | AI, deep tech, venture-backed growth leadership | Scaleups, VCs and portfolio companies hiring tech leaders across borders |
| 2 | Korn Ferry | Integrated global consultancy | 11,000+ colleagues serving clients in 50+ countries | Enterprise technology across the C-suite | Large multinationals wanting search plus assessment and reward data |
| 3 | Spencer Stuart | Integrated global partnership | 60+ offices in 30+ countries | Technology, Media & Telecommunications; AI leadership | Board and CEO mandates where the brand opens doors |
| 4 | Heidrick & Struggles | Integrated global consultancy | 63 offices in 30 countries | Digital transformation, AI and data, software | Corporates and later-stage growth companies |
| 5 | Egon Zehnder | One Firm partnership | 71 offices in 37 countries | Technology officers and digital leadership | Clients who want one P&L behind a cross-border search |
| 6 | Russell Reynolds Associates | Integrated global advisory | 47 offices worldwide | High-growth and large-cap technology | Leadership succession alongside a single senior hire |
| 7 | Odgers | Global integrated firm, rebranded 2025 | Clients across six continents | Technology practice and scale-up collective | Mid-market and scale-up mandates in Europe and the Americas |
| 8 | Amrop | Partnership of member firms | More than 50 offices worldwide | Digital leadership, technology and digital sectors | European and mid-market multinationals |
| 9 | Kestria | Member-owned alliance | 40+ countries, 90+ cities, six continents | Country-by-country technology practices | Multi-country hiring where local ownership matters |
| 10 | Harnham | Specialist data and AI staffing | 6 offices across the UK, US, Netherlands and France | Data engineering, ML, computer vision, analytics | Building data and AI teams in the UK, EU and US |
1. Olofsson & Company
Our AI platform scans millions of profiles and builds a full market map within 48 hours.[1] That is the whole argument for a specialist. A relationship network gives you the people a partner already knows. A market map gives you the people who exist.
The numbers we publish are the ones we are judged on: an average time to shortlist of 7 days, a 93% offer acceptance rate, and a 4 to 1 interview to offer ratio.[1] Our specialist recruiters carry 15 or more years of experience each and surface the top 5 to 10 candidates you actually need to meet, rather than a longlist you have to read for a week.[1]
Singapore is our headquarters, which matters more than it sounds for cross-border work. Every APAC hire eventually runs into a work pass rule, and the firms that treat that as someone else's problem cost their clients months. More on that below.
Where we are the wrong answer: a Fortune 500 board directorship, or a CEO search where the client needs a name on the tin that public-market investors recognise. Those mandates belong to the firms at numbers 2 to 6.
2. Korn Ferry
The broadest commercial footprint on this list. Korn Ferry reports more than 11,000 colleagues serving clients in over 50 countries, with Asia-Pacific offices from Auckland and Sydney through Singapore, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul and Tokyo, plus five locations across Greater China and four across India.[2] Full-year FY26 fee revenue came in at $2.9 billion, up 7% year on year.[3]
Buy Korn Ferry when the hire is one part of a larger question. Their reward benchmarking and assessment data make them useful when you are setting a compensation band for a new market at the same time as filling the seat. Search alone, on a single niche AI role, is not where the model earns its keep.
3. Spencer Stuart
More than 60 offices in over 30 countries, with a Technology, Media & Telecommunications practice and a dedicated AI leadership capability.[4] One of the five firms known in the industry as SHREK, the shorthand for Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles, Russell Reynolds, Egon Zehnder and Korn Ferry, which between them dominate Fortune 500 executive recruitment.[5]
Spencer Stuart's Asia-Pacific presence runs through Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and three Indian cities.[4] Strong for board and CEO work, where the brand itself gets calls returned. A different tool from the one you want for a VP-level engineering hire on a two-month clock.
4. Heidrick & Struggles
Founded in Chicago in 1953 and still headquartered there, Heidrick has worked with more than 70% of Fortune 1000 companies.[6] Its most recent annual filing puts the network at 63 offices in 30 countries, with 215 consultants in the Americas, 124 in Europe and 79 in Asia-Pacific.[7]
Read that consultant split carefully, because it is the most honest disclosure any firm on this list makes. Asia-Pacific holds under a fifth of the consultant base. The same filing names the largest Asia-Pacific countries by net revenue as Australia, the United Arab Emirates and China including Hong Kong.[7] Southeast Asia does not appear.
So if your mandate sits in Singapore or Jakarta, you are drawing on a thinner bench than the office count implies. That is not a criticism of Heidrick. It is the shape of nearly every global firm, and Heidrick is one of the few that publishes the numbers at all. Ask the others for the same breakdown and watch what happens.
5. Egon Zehnder
71 offices in 37 countries, run on a One Firm model where consultants operate as a single collaborative team rather than as separately incentivised offices.[8] For a genuinely cross-border mandate, that structure is the differentiator worth paying for. Nobody is negotiating an internal fee split before your search starts.
Best for clients who want a leadership assessment alongside the appointment, and who are hiring into a market where the firm has been present for decades.
6. Russell Reynolds Associates
47 offices worldwide, with Asia-Pacific coverage across Beijing, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Mumbai, New Delhi, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.[9] The technology practice works with both large-cap and rapidly scaling companies.
Their strength is succession. If the CTO hire you are making is really the first move in a two-year leadership rebuild, this is the firm that will say so out loud.
7. Odgers
Odgers Berndtson became Odgers in June 2025, describing itself as a global, integrated executive search and leadership advisory firm serving clients across six continents.[10] The technology practice and its scale-up offering have been built out steadily over the past several years.
Useful in the European mid-market and for scale-ups that want a senior search process without a Big 5 engagement. As with any firm here, ask where the consultant running your mandate actually sits before you assume the six-continent figure covers your market.
8. Amrop
A partnership operating more than 50 offices worldwide, with a Digital Leadership service line sitting alongside its Technology & Digital sector practice.[11] The partnership structure means local firms hold real ownership of client relationships, which tends to produce better market knowledge and slower multi-country coordination. That trade is worth making in some markets and not in others.
9. Kestria
An alliance rather than a firm. Kestria connects independently owned member firms across more than 40 countries and 90 cities on six continents, and has operated in this form since 1993.[12]
The alliance model earns its place when you are hiring in three countries at once and you want a partner who genuinely lives in each of them. A Helsinki member can coordinate directly with a Singapore or Jakarta member, and you get local candidate pools without a global overhead line in the fee. The cost of that model is consistency. Each member sets its own bar, so ask which specific member firm will run your search before you sign anything.
10. Harnham
The specialist counterweight. Harnham recruits across data engineering, machine learning and AI, computer vision, digital and risk analytics, life sciences data and data governance, from six offices covering the UK, United States, the Netherlands and France.[13]
Very good at what it does. Read the geography closely, though. The published coverage runs across the UK, Germany, France, the United States and the Netherlands.[13] That is deep transatlantic reach. For an AI team being built in Singapore, Bengaluru or Tokyo, you will need a second partner.
The test most roundups skip: can your hire actually start?
An international network that cannot get your candidate a work pass is a very expensive introduction service. In Singapore, where a large share of APAC technology leadership hiring lands, two rules decide the outcome.
The Employment Pass qualifying salary now runs from S$5,600 for candidates aged 23 or under to S$10,700 at age 45 and above, with financial services set higher at S$6,200 to S$11,800. From 1 January 2027 those bands rise again, to S$6,000 to S$11,500 in general sectors and S$6,600 to S$12,700 in financial services.[14]
Clearing the salary floor is only half of it. Candidates must also score 40 points on COMPASS, which awards up to 20 points each on four foundational criteria: salary against sector benchmarks, qualifications, nationality diversity within your firm, and your share of local PMET employment. Two bonus criteria add more, with 10 to 20 points for skills on the Shortage Occupation List and 10 points for work in strategic economic priorities.[14]
Read criterion C4 again. Your existing local hiring record affects whether your next foreign hire is approved. A search partner who raises that in week one is worth more than one with an extra thirty offices.
How to choose in one page
Hiring a board director or a CEO whose name must carry weight with public-market investors. Go to a SHREK firm. The institutional brand is the product.[5]
Hiring across three or more countries at once. An alliance or partnership model gives you local ownership in each market. Confirm which member firm runs each search.
Hiring AI or engineering leadership on a live commercial deadline. Use a specialist with a mapping platform. When the constraint is time, a 48-hour market map and a 7-day shortlist change what is possible.[1]
Hiring into a market your firm has never operated in. Weight compliance and local employment rules above everything else on this page.
Most mandates have one dominant constraint. Name it before you take the first call, and the choice of firm usually makes itself.
Frequently asked questions
Which technology recruitment firm has the largest international network?
By published footprint, Korn Ferry serves clients in more than 50 countries with over 11,000 colleagues.[2] Egon Zehnder publishes 71 offices in 37 countries, and Kestria's alliance spans more than 40 countries and 90 cities.[8][12] Largest and best are different questions, and the second one depends on where you are hiring.
Do boutique firms have real international reach?
Some do. A boutique with an AI mapping platform can identify candidates in any market, because the mapping is not limited by who a partner already knows. What a boutique cannot fake is local execution, so ask where its consultants sit and which markets they have closed in.
How much of a search fee is paying for the office network?
Global firms carry the cost of that footprint in their pricing. Fee structures vary widely across the market, so ask any firm to explain what its fee covers and which parts of the work happen in your time zone.
What should I ask a firm to prove its international network?
Three questions. Which consultant runs the search and where do they sit? What are the last three placements that person closed in my market and at my level? Who handles work pass and compliance, and at what point in the process?
Sources
- olofsson.ai: Olofsson & Company's proprietary AI platform, 48-hour full market map, 7-day average time to shortlist, 93% offer acceptance rate, 4 to 1 interview to offer ratio, and 15+ years of specialist recruiter experience.
- kornferry.com: Korn Ferry global office network, 11,000+ colleagues serving clients in more than 50 countries, and Asia-Pacific office locations.
- kornferry.com: Korn Ferry full year FY'26 fee revenue of $2.9 billion, a year-over-year increase of 7%.
- spencerstuart.com: Spencer Stuart's more than 60 offices in over 30 countries and its Asia-Pacific office locations.
- prlinternational.com: Definition of the Big 5 SHREK firms and their position in Fortune 500 executive search.
- heidrick.com: Heidrick & Struggles founded in Chicago in 1953, headquartered in Chicago, and work with more than 70% of Fortune 1000 companies.
- sec.gov: Heidrick & Struggles annual report on Form 10-K, 63 offices in 30 countries and consultant headcount by region.
- egonzehnder.com: Egon Zehnder's 71 offices in 37 countries and its One Firm operating model.
- russellreynolds.com: Russell Reynolds Associates' 47 offices worldwide and Asia-Pacific office cities.
- odgers.com: The June 2025 rebrand from Odgers Berndtson to Odgers and the firm's description of its global reach across six continents.
- amrop.com: Amrop's partnership structure, more than 50 offices worldwide, and Digital Leadership service line.
- kestria.com: Kestria's alliance of member firms across 40+ countries and 90+ cities on six continents, established in 1993.
- harnham.com: Harnham's data and AI recruitment disciplines, office locations, and published country coverage.
- mom.gov.sg: Singapore Employment Pass qualifying salary thresholds, the 2027 increases, and the COMPASS 40-point framework including foundational criteria C1 to C4 and bonus criteria C5 and C6.