Technical & engineering talent — AgPro’s stronghold.
R&D, agronomy, plant, regulatory, and engineering leadership for agri-enterprises. The practice we’ve run the longest and understand the deepest.
Technical hiring in agri is the practice where a generalist recruiter produces the most dangerous shortlists. A chemistry PhD is not the same as a formulation chemist who has shipped a CIBRC-registered product. A plant manager who has run a bottling line is not the same as a plant head who has run a crop-protection formulation facility with environmental-compliance exposure. A regulatory-affairs lead who has cleared an FSSAI import is not the same as one who has built a CIBRC dossier around a disputed molecule. The shortlist looks identical on LinkedIn; the outcomes are worlds apart.
AgPro’s partners have run R&D, production, and regulatory programmes inside multinational agribusinesses. That operating depth flows straight into the Agri-Fit Assessment — particularly Stage 2, where technical vetting is run by someone who has carried the exact role.
Six archetypes.
- Head of R&D Leadership
- R&D leadership for crop-protection, seed, feed, food-science, or mechanisation programmes.
- Agronomy Lead / Field-Extension Head Senior
- Field-level agronomy direction, extension networks, FPO linkages, and grower programmes.
- Plant Head / Works Manager Senior
- Processing, formulation, or assembly-plant leadership — throughput, safety, and capex ownership.
- Regulatory Affairs Lead Senior
- CIBRC / FSSAI / ARAI / ICAT / BIS regulatory leads with cross-authority track records.
- Engineering — Emissions / After-treatment Mid
- TREM-IV / TREM-V, after-treatment systems, homologation engineering specialists.
- Quality Head — FSSAI / HACCP / ISO Mid
- Food-safety, quality-management-system, and audit-readiness leadership for processing firms.
Five-to-seven weeks, function-specific vetting.
- Week 1Phase
Role deconstruction
Role broken into technical components — molecule, line, regulator, trial — beyond the job description.
- Week 2–3Phase
Candidate mapping
Targeted mapping inside specialised networks: ICAR institutes, OEM R&D centres, regulatory-practice alumni, plant-head circles.
- Week 4–5Phase
Technical Agri-Fit
Stage-2 technical vetting by a partner who has held the function. Written technical-depth assessment shared with the client.
- Week 6+Phase
Interview, reference, close
Client interviews, structured four-source references (one commercial counterpart — dealer, supplier, or regulator), offer and onboarding plan.
Technical-depth matters most here.
- Agri Inputs
- Farm Machinery
- Food Processing
- Dairy & Feed
- Seed Industry
- Biologicals
Clear answers before the call.
- R&D heads, agronomy leads, plant heads, regulatory-affairs leads, emissions / after-treatment engineers, quality heads, production managers, and R&D scientists across crop-protection, seed, feed, and food-science. We also place formulation chemists, field-trial managers, and registration specialists.
- Stage 2 of our Agri-Fit Assessment — Technical Vetting — is led by a partner who has operated in the same function. For an R&D head: molecule-level track record, dossier experience, ICAR / CSIR institutional fluency. For a plant head: OEE benchmarks, safety incident history, and capex execution record. For a regulatory lead: CIBRC / FSSAI / ARAI specific close track record.
- Yes — this is a frequent brief. We run it discreetly with no public signal and brief candidates on a sanitised version of the role until they sign a mutual NDA. Typical close times are similar: 6–8 weeks for senior technical roles.
- Both. Mid-senior engineering hires (8–15 years experience) are our most frequent engagement type — emissions engineers for TREM-V transitions, registration specialists for a CIBRC pipeline, plant managers for a capacity expansion. Priced at a lower retainer than leadership search, with faster time-to-close.