About the Firm
Built for the searches others can’t close.
Sycamore Creek is a boutique talent advisory built on a single premise: the best people aren't applying. That's especially true in the cleared, defense, and AI-native engineering world, where the talent pool is small and the margin for error is zero. Reaching those people requires precision, discretion, and a principal who understands your technical environment as well as your team does.
Founder & Principal
Owen Howe is the Founder and Principal of Sycamore Creek Consulting. Before launching the firm, he spent years embedded inside both high-growth startups and globally recognized institutions, building and scaling recruiting functions from the ground up. He has hired across the full seniority spectrum — from early-career internship cohorts to executive leadership — and has operated in environments where the margin for error on a hire is effectively zero.
Sycamore Creek was founded on the conviction that recruiting consulting should be a craft, not a volume game. Owen works directly with every client engagement, bringing the same rigor to a five-person startup building its founding team as he does to a legacy enterprise transforming its talent strategy.
How We Think
Precision Over Volume
We don't send you fifty resumes and hope for the best. Every candidate we present has been sourced against a detailed technical and cultural scorecard built with you before the search begins.
Principals, Not Associates
There is no handoff after the sales call. The person who scopes your search is the same person running it, evaluating candidates, and managing your offer negotiations. That continuity is the difference between a placed candidate and a retained one.
Market Intelligence
Every engagement produces durable knowledge — compensation benchmarks, competitor org charts, talent density maps — that informs your hiring strategy long after the search closes.