Case Study — Quantum Networking
540 candidates mapped. Three specialist hires. One commercial team built after Series A.
Following its Series A raise, Q*Bird was ready to accelerate commercial growth.
The technology was highly specialised. The markets were difficult to access. And the people taking it to customers needed far more than conventional sales experience.
Recognition One met with Q*Bird's Founder and CEO at their offices in Delft to understand three critical hires:
All three were part of the same customer-facing build.
But they were not the same search.
Each required a different intersection of scientific credibility, technical understanding, commercial ability and market relationships.
We filled all three.
The Brief
Commercial talent for a highly technical market
Building exceptional technology is one challenge.
Taking it into markets where customers are sophisticated, the buying environment is complex and relationships matter is another.
Following its funding round, Q*Bird needed to strengthen the team responsible for doing exactly that.
The two Business Development Leads would develop opportunity across two strategically important but very different markets.
The Sales Engineer would provide the technical bridge between Q*Bird's technology, its commercial team and its customers.
None of the briefs could be reduced to a job title.
For Business Development, the quality and relevance of a candidate's network mattered alongside commercial performance.
For Sales Engineering, technical knowledge was only valuable if it came with the ability to communicate, influence and operate confidently with customers.
On paper, the markets looked reasonably large.
Once the requirements were combined, they became much smaller.
Business Development — Critical Infrastructure
Finding a network candidates rarely advertise
The Critical Infrastructure search presented an unusual sourcing challenge.
Many of the strongest potential candidates did not outwardly describe themselves as selling into critical infrastructure.
Profiles might reference telecommunications, energy, transport, government, defence, infrastructure, strategic accounts or international customers without ever using the terminology Q*Bird was searching for.
A conventional keyword search would therefore only expose part of the real market.
And previous exposure to the sector was not enough.
Q*Bird required somebody with:
A strong, global network across relevant critical infrastructure markets.
Experience operating within a technically complex environment.
A scientific background supporting credibility around advanced technology.
The commercial ability to turn established relationships into new opportunities.
Finding any one of those qualities was relatively straightforward.
Finding all four in one person was not.
So the search had to go beyond titles and keywords.
We mapped relevant companies, technologies, end markets and career histories to understand where the right people were likely to sit, including candidates whose public profiles gave little indication of the networks they had actually built.
Then we used conversations throughout the ecosystem to go further.
The question wasn't:
Who says they sell into Critical Infrastructure?
It was:
Who actually has the global relationships, technical credibility and commercial capability to build this market for Q*Bird?
Business Development — Research Institutes
Knowing research institutions wasn't enough
The Research Institutes brief created a completely different problem.
There are plenty of sales professionals who work with universities, laboratories and research organisations.
Q*Bird needed a much narrower profile.
The strongest candidates required:
Existing relationships within the right research communities.
A strong scientific foundation, ideally including a physics degree.
Experience around sophisticated technical products.
The ability to sell credibly to highly technical stakeholders.
Relevant commercial experience outside a candidate market heavily weighted towards biotech and life sciences.
That last distinction significantly reduced the pool.
Many excellent salespeople had deep relationships across universities and laboratories, but those networks had been developed through pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, life sciences or associated laboratory technologies.
They knew research institutions.
They did not necessarily know Q*Bird's research institutions.
So an impressive customer list wasn't enough.
We needed to understand what sat underneath it.
Which departments had they worked with?
Who were the buyers?
Were their relationships with physicists, engineers and technical researchers?
What kind of technology had they represented?
How strong were those relationships?
Could that network genuinely transfer into quantum networking?
The visible market was broad.
The relevant ecosystem was much narrower.
The Business Development Search
360 people to find two
Across the two Business Development searches:
| Count | Share of stage one | Stage |
|---|---|---|
| 360 | candidates identified and engaged | |
| 67 | phone screened by Recognition One | |
| 13 | shared for interview | |
| 11 | interviewed by Q*Bird | |
| 2 | hired |
Only 19% of the candidates screened by Recognition One were shared with Q*Bird.
In other words, more than four out of every five candidates we spoke with were filtered out before taking up the client's interview time.
That selectivity mattered because much of what determined success could not be established from a CV.
We needed to understand candidates' actual networks, who they had sold to, the technical complexity of their environments, their scientific grounding and whether their relationships genuinely aligned with Q*Bird's target markets.
The 360 candidates at the top of the search weren't there because the brief was broad.
They were there because the brief was narrow enough to require searching the market properly.
Sales Engineering
Technical enough. Commercial enough. At the right career stage.
The Sales Engineer search required another type of hybrid candidate.
Q*Bird needed somebody with relevant networking expertise who remained genuinely technical.
But they couldn't simply be an engineer.
The successful candidate would work with customers, understand technical requirements, support commercial conversations and make sophisticated technology understandable and credible.
They therefore needed:
Strong networking expertise.
Genuine technical depth.
Commercial instinct.
Excellent customer-facing communication.
The ability to operate naturally between engineering and sales.
And there was another constraint.
Q*Bird wanted somebody at a junior-to-mid stage of their career.
That combination was difficult to find.
Some candidates had exactly the right networking knowledge but little evidence they could operate commercially.
Others were established Sales Engineers but had moved too far away from the technical depth Q*Bird required.
And many of those who combined both had already progressed beyond the career level of the role.
Again, the title was only the starting point.
The Sales Engineer Search
| Count | Share of stage one | Stage |
|---|---|---|
| 180 | candidates sourced | |
| 37 | phone screened by Recognition One | |
| 11 | shared for interview | |
| 9 | interviewed by Q*Bird | |
| 1 | hired |
Recognition One shared fewer than one in three of the candidates we screened.
The requirement was not for the strongest engineer or the strongest salesperson.
It was for someone who could genuinely sit between the two.
Why the Ecosystem Matters
The right candidate isn't always searchable
In a specialist market like quantum, knowing the ecosystem changes the search.
The strongest candidate may work for a company that isn't an obvious competitor.
Their title may not accurately describe what they do.
The customers they know may never appear on their LinkedIn profile.
And some of the most valuable information in a search comes from people rather than databases.
Recognition One has spent years building and maintaining relationships across quantum computing and the specialist markets surrounding it, including hardware, software, networking and customer-facing commercial talent.
But knowing the ecosystem isn't simply having a large candidate database.
It means understanding:
Which companies produce exceptional people.
Which adjacent markets contain transferable talent.
Which technical backgrounds genuinely matter.
Who the respected high performers are.
Where relevant customer networks exist, even when they aren't publicly visible.
And who trusted people in the market recommend when you ask who is genuinely good.
That matters because strong networks compound.
A conversation with one high performer can identify another.
A candidate can reveal an adjacent company producing exactly the right talent.
Someone who has worked with a person can tell us far more about them than a profile ever will.
And a trusted relationship can provide a route to someone who might not respond to conventional recruitment outreach at all.
Knowing where talent should exist gets a search started.
Knowing the ecosystem is how you uncover the people everyone else misses.
The Search
Search broadly. Network deeply. Introduce selectively.
Across the three assignments:
540
Candidates sourced
104
Phone screened by Recognition One
20
Unique candidates introduced to Q*Bird
20
Candidate interviews conducted by Q*Bird across the searches
3
Positions filled
The numbers tell an important part of the story.
Recognition One worked through a market of more than 500 potential candidates to build the three teams Q*Bird needed.
But Q*Bird did not have to work through that market themselves.
Our role was to understand the requirement, find where relevant talent actually existed, engage the ecosystem, test the evidence behind the CV and determine who warranted the client's attention.
That is particularly important in DeepTech.
The harder the brief becomes, the less useful raw candidate volume is.
Access matters. Judgement matters more.
The Outcome
Three hires for the next phase of growth
Recognition One successfully filled all three positions at Q*Bird in Delft:
Business Development Lead, Critical Infrastructure
Business Development Lead, Research Institutes
Sales Engineer
The Critical Infrastructure hire brought the relationships, scientific background and experience in complex technology needed to develop a strategically important global market.
The Research Institutes hire brought relevant scientific credibility and the network required to engage the right research communities.
And the Sales Engineer added the technical and customer-facing capability to connect Q*Bird's technology with the organisations evaluating it.
Three appointments.
Three distinct candidate markets.
One stronger commercial organisation following Series A.
Recognition One's placement records confirm hires across Critical Infrastructure business development, Research Institutions business development and Technical Sales Engineering at Q*Bird.
Search Details
Company
Q*Bird
Sector
Quantum Networking
Location
Delft, Netherlands
Stage
Post-Series A
Roles filled
Business Development Lead, Critical Infrastructure
Business Development Lead, Research Institutes
Sales Engineer
Candidates sourced
540
Phone screened by Recognition One
104
Unique candidates introduced
20
Positions filled
3
What Made the Difference
Knowing the ecosystem
We understood the companies, technologies, scientific communities and adjacent markets surrounding Q*Bird, allowing us to look beyond obvious competitors and conventional candidate pools.
Networking with trusted high performers
The right candidates could not all be found through keywords. Conversations with people we trusted in the sector helped us identify high performers, explore adjacent markets and uncover networks that were not publicly visible.
Finding the hidden Critical Infrastructure market
The global relationships Q*Bird required were rarely stated explicitly on candidates' profiles. We had to understand companies, sectors, customers and career histories to work out who genuinely possessed them.
Qualifying the Research Institutes network
Selling into universities wasn't enough. We needed to establish which scientific communities candidates knew and whether their relationships were relevant to physics and advanced technology rather than predominantly biotech and life sciences.
Finding hybrid Sales Engineering talent
Technical credibility, networking knowledge, commercial ability, customer presence and the right level of seniority all had to exist in the same candidate.
Search at scale. Shortlist with precision.
540 candidates sourced.
104 screened.
20 introduced.
Three roles filled.
The size of the search reflects how specific the requirements were.
The size of the shortlist reflects how selective we were.
The Recognition One Principle
Fits, not fillers.
In DeepTech, the right person often sits between categories.
Scientific and commercial.
Technical and customer-facing.
Connected to an ecosystem, but capable of creating new opportunity within it.
Those combinations rarely fit neatly into a job title.
So we understand the market first.
We map broadly.
We network with the people who know where the strongest talent is.
We qualify beyond the CV.
And we introduce the people who genuinely fit the technology, the market and the stage of the company.
Search broadly. Network deeply. Screen rigorously.
