The executive search market opened 2026 the way it has closed each of the last two quarters: quietly defying the narrative that AI could thin the demand for senior talent.

Opened searches rose 6% quarter-over-quarter and 19% year-over-year in Q1—marking the third straight quarter of double-digit YoY growth.

Private Equity and Venture Capital are leading the way, especially early-stage VC. Seed/Series A demand jumped nearly 50% QoQ while PE posted a more traditional 2% QoQ growth rate.

And if there was a sector of the market that seems to be listening to the “AI narrative,” it is the public company market. Searches fell 12% QoQ and remained relatively flat (3%) on a YoY basis.

Zooming out, Q1 did less to change the arc of the market than to clarify where it is concentrating. Demand for director & below talent is continuing to erode, with the share of placements now sitting at less than 13% of all filled roles.

This has been a multi-year trend that we first observed in late 2023.

And, against that backdrop, demand is centering on early-stage companies building core teams and PE companies continuing to invest in finance and operational excellence.

The function mix within early-stage VC tells the story clearly: Engineering searches at Seed/Series A doubled quarter-over-quarter. Product searches rose 67%. The demand spike at early stages coincides with continued momentum in AI-driven investments, and founders appear to be investing in executive-level talent earlier in the company lifecycle.

Finance was the cross-cutting functional story of Q1. Searches for finance leadership rose sharply across multiple asset classes—up nearly 30% QoQ in PE, 53% QoQ at Series B/C, and in double-digit territory at several other stages. Compensation followed. Finance OTE rose 54% year-over-year at Series B/C, 32% at Series D+, and 27% at public companies. The breadth of that move—across ownership structures and company stages—signals something more durable than a single-quarter shift: companies approaching inflection points, whether that means a liquidity event, a credit structure reset, or a new growth phase, are treating financial leadership as foundational.

The asset class breakdown reinforces how differently the three major segments of the market are positioned at the start of 2026:

• Private equity deal value came in at $218.8 billion in Q1 — softer than the prior two quarters, as widening credit spreads and uncertainty around software portfolios gave buyers reason to pause. PE opened searches declined 3% quarter-over-quarter but remained up 8% year-over-year, with demand skewing toward Finance and operational oversight rather than commercial build-outs. Median compensation was flat quarter-over-quarter and down 4% year-over-year — the second consecutive decline — consistent with sponsors that are focused on managing existing portfolios rather than expanding them. With exit activity still constrained and hold periods stretching, the talent priority appears to be stabilization over growth.
• Q1 venture capital deal value came in at $267.2 billion — more than any full year on record except 2021 and 2025. Strip out the five largest transactions and the figure falls by nearly three-quarters. Concentration has defined VC for several years now, but Q1 marked a new extreme, and executive search followed the same pattern. Seed/Series A opened searches surged 47% quarter-over-quarter and 38% year-over-year — the largest jump of any stage — while Series D+ searches declined 8% year-over-year and the time to close after a candidate was identified stretched to 109 days. Capital and hiring demand are piling into the same narrow end of the market, and the rest is waiting.
• Opened searches for public companies declined 15% quarter-over-quarter and were flat year-over-year, consistent with five straight quarters of rangebound demand. What shifted in Q1 was compensation: median public company OTE for newly hired execs rose 18% quarter-over-quarter and 8% year-over-year, the sharpest quarterly increase of any asset class. The search close window told a different story about decisiveness — time from candidate identification to placement stretched to 100 days, up from 56 in Q4. Companies are moving faster to identify candidates than they are to commit to them.

Meanwhile, compensation rebounded across nearly every asset class in Q1, but the structure of that rebound shows a continued desire to pay for performance. 

In past quarters, we’ve noted that median compensation growth was largely tied to median bonus growth. And, again this quarter, median bonus figures grew more than median base figures. It is worth noting, however, that median base figures grew meaningfully to $325K (up from $300K for much of 2025.

Part of this is likely explained by the mix of placements in our dataset for Q1, as we noted above about the continued concentration by the executive search market on more senior executive leadership. 

Even still, when digging deeper into the compensation data, roles outside of the C-suite have seen richer OTE offers at both the base and bonus levels, with Head Of-SVP roles seeing a 9% jump in OTE QoQ.

On balance, Q1 2026 is a quarter that rewards close reading more than headline watching. The 21% year-over-year gain in opened searches is real and meaningful—it marks the strongest YoY growth rate the market has posted since the post-COVID boom. But the concentration of that growth in one asset class, one stage, and a handful of functions tells a more tempered story about the market’s actual posture.

AI hasn’t had a chilling effect on demand yet. Instead, it’s accelerated demand in specific pockets.

About the Report

This report was developed to provide executive recruiters and talent leaders with data-backed insights to help them both gain a better understanding of the industry, market, and environment they operate in and make more informed decisions.

We anonymized and aggregated our data from more than 31,000 compensation and search records to construct the benchmarks, statistics, and trends you will see in this report. We also cross-referenced relevant industry analysis and sources to understand how leadership recruiting is being impacted by rapidly evolving macro and socioeconomic events, in addition to recent extreme volatility in growth markets.

Our data and combined research uncovers leading indicators for executive hiring, how public and private market fluctuations impact demand for leadership hiring, why VCs have been impacted more than others, what the forecast is for leadership hiring over the next few quarters, as well as trends with executive compensation benchmarks.