VP Software Engineering

The Client

From humble beginnings, FreshBooks has grown to more than 700 employees around the world and become the second largest online accounting platform for north American SMEs. More than 24 million people in 160+ countries have used FreshBooks to make things like invoicing, expenses, payments, and financial reporting easier. In august 2021, FreshBooks announced that it has secured $130m in a series e funding round, officially propelling it to unicorn status. As FreshBooks continues to scale at pace, the Chief Technology Officer needed an additional VP of software engineering to enhance his leadership of a growing global Engineering team.

The Challenge

We were seeking a world-class engineering leader. FreshBooks wanted this person to be based in Mainland Europe to as their first VP level appointment on the continent. Alongside world class engineering skills, based on experience of scaled engineering platforms, the successful candidate would need to enhance an already diverse set of perspectives on the FreshBooks engineering leadership team by bringing their unique life-experience to bear. And above all, the new VP would help enhance and expand the FreshBooks culture within engineering and across the company.

The Solution

The MMK Executive Search team was tasked to find, through our robust executive search process, an inspirational and innovative software engineering leader. We were seeking a unique blend of talent with experience from a global scaled environment combined with evidence of being able to excel in a rapidly scaling, high growth environment. Morgan McKinley spread our net wide across mainland Europe and found an exceptional candidate based in Berlin, Germany.