How a global energy group filled 24 specialised IT roles in six months, Head of IT included, many in French

The Client

Our client is one of the world's largest energy groups — an organisation of more than 90,000 employees operating across some thirty countries, with annual revenues in the tens of billions of euros. In Romania it is a long-established presence across nearly the entire energy value chain, from gas distribution and electricity supply to renewable generation and technical services.

The digital centre was created to provide technology capability for group entities across European markets — which is precisely what made the mandate unusual.

The Challenge: Three Scarcities at Once

Scarcity one: the roles themselves. The mandate covered a Head of IT, a security expert, NOC Level 2.1 monitoring engineers, NOC Level 2.2 network and security back-office engineers, network automation engineers, Intune software delivery and Level 2 system engineering specialists, an IT project manager and a data analyst. Network automation, Intune specialisation and security engineering are all thin markets in Romania on their own.

Scarcity two: the language. A significant proportion of these roles required professional French in addition to technical expertise, because the teams support group entities in French-speaking markets. The intersection of "network automation engineer" and "speaks working French" is a small population. The intersection of "Intune specialist" and "speaks French" is smaller still. Adding a language requirement to an already thin technical pool does not make the search somewhat harder — it can reduce the addressable market by an order of magnitude.

Scarcity three: time. Six months. For 24 roles, including a leadership appointment and multiple niche technical profiles with a language constraint layered on top.

And a leadership hire sat at the centre of it. The Head of IT would define how the centre operated. That role could not be rushed into a compromise — while everything else still had to be delivered on schedule.

Our Approach

Language-first mapping for the constrained roles. For French-speaking technical positions we inverted the usual sequence: rather than finding technologists and testing their French, we mapped the French-speaking technical community in Romania — including professionals with French education, previous roles in French-owned organisations and returning diaspora — and matched technical fit within it. On roles this constrained, that inversion is the difference between a pipeline and an empty funnel.

Verified language, not declared language. Every French requirement was validated at the level the role genuinely needed. A B1 requirement and a professional-fluency requirement are different roles, and treating them interchangeably produces hires who cannot do the job.

The leadership search run in parallel, not in sequence. The Head of IT search ran alongside the technical programme from day one, so that the leadership appointment did not become the bottleneck that delayed everything else.

NOC roles assessed for shift reality. Network operations positions were evaluated for genuine suitability to monitoring work and shift patterns, not only for technical knowledge — the most common reason NOC hires fail within the first months.

The Delivery

24 specialised roles closed in 6 months — an average of one closure per week, sustained, across some of the most constrained profiles in the market.

Head of IT appointed, giving the centre its technology leadership.

The French-speaking technical roles delivered, including NOC monitoring and network and security back-office engineers, Intune system engineers and the IT project manager.

Security, automation and monitoring capability staffed together, so the centre could operate as a functioning technology organisation rather than a partially assembled one.

The Long View

The group has continued to deepen its Romanian footprint substantially. It has since launched a Global Business Services organisation in Romania, delivering integrated IT, HR, finance and procurement services to group entities across multiple European markets — starting with 180 specialists and publicly targeting several hundred, in premises designed for over 400 people.

The group's own stated reasons for choosing Romania are telling: a strong talent base, language skills, advanced digital capabilities and a mature business services ecosystem. Those are exactly the market characteristics this mandate had to convert into actual hires, several years earlier.

Key Takeaways

• A language requirement transforms a search. Adding professional French to a scarce technical profile can shrink the addressable pool dramatically. It requires a different method, not simply more effort.
• Map the constraint first. When language is the binding constraint, start from the language community and find technical fit within it — not the other way around.
• Verify what you were told. Declared language levels must be tested against what the role actually demands, or the failure surfaces after the hire.
• Run leadership in parallel. A leadership appointment sequenced ahead of everything else becomes the bottleneck. Run it alongside, and protect both the timeline and the quality of the decision.