# How to hire software engineers on LinkedIn Last updated 10 November 2026 You write to an engineer about the work, not about a keyword list. HeyLead drafts the note from your brief: the technical detail that made you choose them, the problem the team is solving now, and an honest line about the team's size and pace. Nothing is sent until you press Launch. ## Who is hiring A CTO, an engineering manager or a technical founder hiring for a technical role. The person who reads the note is the engineer. They can tell a keyword search from someone who read their work, and they answer the second one. This page is not the general recruiting note and it is not the search for a founder's first employee. The role here is technical, and the proof you read their work is the whole of the opening. ## What engineers answer Lead with the technical detail that made you write to this person: a post, a project, a system they have already described. Then the problem your team is in right now, in one or two sentences, so they can tell if it is their kind of problem. Then an honest note about how small the team is and how fast it ships. Engineers trust a small true picture more than a grand one. Talk about the work. A stack dumped as a list of tools is a job advert. The detail is one thing they did that matches one thing you need. - The technical detail that made you write to them - The problem the team is solving right now - An honest note about the team's size and pace ## What to leave out of an engineering note Words like rockstar and ninja tell a senior engineer the note was not written for them. A list of every tool in the stack asks them to pattern-match a job post. Asking for a CV in the first message skips the conversation you wanted. - Buzzwords about rockstars or ninjas - A list of every tool in the stack - A request for a CV in the first message ## The brief you type, and why hiring stays a custom brief The message set for hiring is not written yet, so the brief has to carry what you are asking. Campaigns with this goal (Hire people) work with a custom brief: say what you ask of the person. Name the kind of engineer and the work. HeyLead drafts the campaign from that sentence. You read it and press Launch. Nothing is sent before. HeyLead is an AI agent for LinkedIn outreach: it finds the right people, writes to them in the voice of your own LinkedIn posts, follows up, and handles replies. It runs from Claude Code, Cursor, any MCP client or a web dashboard. ``` Hire a senior data engineer who has moved a warehouse to streaming; we are a small team shipping weekly. ``` ## Which signals belong on an engineering search A new post from an engineer already in the campaign. A post that uses a keyword you are watching, such as the system you need. A person who fits the role and joins the comments on an industry thread. Those are reasons to write. A headline that merely says "open to work" is the recruiting page's signal, not this one. HeyLead still warms the invitation up with a profile view, a follow and a comment, and it still answers replies from the campaign's facts. A reply that could mean two things gets one short question back. A question your facts cannot answer waits for you. A candidate who says not now gets a check-in in 30 days. Opening messages, follow-ups and answers to replies go out without review unless you switch review on; then they wait for your approval. Invitations are not held. In review mode, invitations go out without a note. ## Questions people ask ### What makes an engineering note different from a recruiting note? It leads with a technical detail from their own work, the problem the team is in, and an honest line about size and pace. ### What should I leave out? Rockstar and ninja wording, a list of every tool, and a request for a CV in the first message. ### Does hiring have its own message set? Not yet. Hire people works with a custom brief: you say what you ask of the engineer. HeyLead sends from your own LinkedIn account at a human pace: at most 20 invitations a day and 100 a week on a free LinkedIn account (more on Premium or Sales Navigator: a newly connected paid account starts at 20 a day and doubles each week up to its limit), Monday to Friday 08:00 to 22:00 in your time zone, minutes apart. It backs off when LinkedIn pushes back and resumes on its own. You can pause any campaign at any time. HeyLead is not affiliated with LinkedIn. It reaches LinkedIn through Unipile, which is also not affiliated. LinkedIn's own rules are in the Terms: https://heylead.dev/terms Related: [Founder-led sales: LinkedIn for founders who ship](https://heylead.dev/use-cases/founder-led-sales), [How consultants get clients on LinkedIn](https://heylead.dev/use-cases/consultants-winning-clients), [How to recruit candidates on LinkedIn](https://heylead.dev/use-cases/recruiting-candidates), [How to find your first employees as a founder](https://heylead.dev/use-cases/founders-hiring-first-employees), [Use cases: what people run HeyLead for](https://heylead.dev/use-cases), [How to find investors on LinkedIn](https://heylead.dev/use-cases/finding-investors), [How to do account-based outreach on LinkedIn](https://heylead.dev/use-cases/account-based-outreach)