Ben Sedler studied law at university. By his own admission, the social and sporting side of student life received considerably more attention than the academic side. What followed was nearly two decades of technology recruitment across London, Singapore and Sydney, built on relationships, hard-won market knowledge, and a stint co-founding his own business in Asia.
He joins Allura Partners as a Principal Consultant focused on Software Engineering and Architecture, bringing with him one of the deepest technical networks in the market.
Ben's entry into recruitment came through a grad scheme in London, competitive from day one, with most of the cohort gone within three months. A year in, his manager took a role in Singapore and invited him along.
"I didn't even know where Singapore was on the map. But that job turned out to be the foundation of everything that followed," Ben says.
After two years building his market there, Ben and his manager co-founded Iban Asia, a specialist headhunting consultancy covering financial services, technology, and Professional Services across the Asia-Pacific region, with strategic backing from two key clients who signed on as investors.
In 2018, Ben relocated to Sydney, joining his key client, Synpulse, as it established its Australian operation. He went on to lead their global talent acquisition, managing a team of 27 consultants across 18 countries and overseeing executive hiring from Director level upwards. When the consulting sector contracted in 2024, Ben was made redundant, an experience he is matter-of-fact about. He moved into a contract role as Partner at CloudRecruit, leading the delivery of senior Technology appointments across APAC, before joining Allura Partners roughly eighteen months later.
Ben is candid about the reputation technology recruitment has earned, and largely deserved. The COVID-era hiring boom attracted a wave of short-term operators who treated the market transactionally, chasing quick placements in a candidate-short market with little regard for relationships or long-term reputation. The subsequent correction cleared most of them out.
"The candidates you place become the clients you work with five years later. It's a full circle, and the recruiters who don't get that don't last," Ben says.
For Ben, that means building relationships early and maintaining them across the full arc of a career. It is a philosophy that connects particularly well in the software engineering community, where reputation travels fast, and the same faces tend to reappear at different companies across a career. In a market where trust is the actual product, that kind of consistency is what separates the operators who last from those who don't.
Ben's read on the current market is clear-eyed. AI has fundamentally redistributed how software engineering work gets done, and the demand for talent is shifting with it.
"The engineer who's going to get the job is the one who knows how to use AI, understands business needs and workflows, and can move into a product mindset. Pure coding capability on its own isn't the differentiator it once was," Ben explains.
He also sees a structural shift happening at the product manager level. As senior engineers develop stronger commercial fluency, the boundary between engineering and product is blurring. In many cases, engineers are crossing it entirely, and the logic is straightforward: coding is harder to acquire than commercial acumen, not the other way around. Organisations are starting to act on that reality.
There is also a degree of anxiety among full-stack engineers right now, and Ben sees it clearly. The pressure to evolve beyond a purely technical remit is real, and the candidates who recognise that early and build toward it are the ones who will remain in demand.
On the client side, the picture is one of deliberate rationalisation. The team bloat that accumulated during the hiring boom has been unwound. The focus has shifted to talent that adds value beyond the code, towards architecture, commercial alignment, and strategic delivery.
"Businesses that create the environment for engineers to develop a commercial mindset will retain the best talent. The ones that keep cornering them into a pure coding role will lose them," he says.
Ben considered his options carefully before making the move. What set Allura Partners apart was a combination of structure, culture, and market positioning. Founder-led and privately owned, Allura Partners operates with a private equity business model and a deliberate approach to the market: no PSA panels, no volume-driven mandates, and a hiring policy built around the quality of consultants rather than headcount.
His focus at Allura Partners will be Software Engineering and Architecture, with particular attention to the more senior end of the market. Financial services represent a significant opportunity, and he will be supporting Allura Partners' existing private equity-backed and SaaS technology clients while building brand awareness in the software engineering space more broadly.
If you are hiring in software engineering or architecture, or looking for your next career opportunity, get in touch with Ben.