Overview
Supercritical Solutions is a rapidly growing clean-technology company developing a high-pressure electrolyser designed to produce green hydrogen at industrial pressures without compressors.
About
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in London, the company has proven its proprietary membrane-free technology at laboratory scale and progressed development to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5. With increasing industry interest and investment driving the roadmap toward pilot-scale deployment, Supercritical needed to rapidly scale its engineering, commercial and operational teams.
At that stage, Supercritical employed 16 people, with an ambitious growth plan to more than double headcount to 34 by the end of 2025. Achieving this required attracting highly capable, technically advanced talent in a competitive global hydrogen and clean-technology market.
To support this growth, Tech Connect Group (TCG) was appointed as the exclusive recruitment partner responsible for managing the full hiring programme. Alongside proactive talent sourcing, TCG proposed an integrated recruitment solution that also incorporated management of direct applicants through Supercritical’s careers page. This included reviewing applications for technical suitability, cultural alignment and right-to-work status, fully qualifying those that met these criteria and integrating successful candidates into the wider recruitment pipeline.
This approach ensured a single, consistent candidate experience while allowing Supercritical’s leadership team to remain focused on advancing the company’s technology and commercial partnerships.
Process
The recruitment programme was built on a foundation of deep technical understanding and close collaboration with Supercritical’s leadership team.
Over a six-month preparation period in 2024, TCG invested significant time developing specialist talent pools aligned to the company’s technology roadmap and growth plans. This included identifying high-calibre candidates across hydrogen, advanced engineering, chemical processing and clean-energy sectors.
Extensive consultation sessions with senior leadership enabled TCG to build a detailed understanding of the product, company culture, technical requirements and strategic objectives for the coming 12–24 months. Example candidate profiles and market insights were provided early in the process to ensure alignment before the hiring campaign formally launched.
When live recruitment began in late 2024, TCG managed the entire hiring workflow, covering candidate sourcing, screening, interview coordination and offer management.
Many of the positions required multi-stage interview processes involving up to three stages and challenging technical assessments. This required careful coordination and candidate guidance to ensure engagement remained high throughout the process while maintaining rigorous technical evaluation standards.
Alongside proactively sourced candidates, TCG also managed the company’s inbound recruitment pipeline, reviewing more than 3,000 direct applications submitted via the Supercritical website. All candidate communications, initial screening and suitability assessments were handled by TCG, ensuring only the most relevant profiles progressed to interview.
Throughout the programme, recruitment analytics were also tracked and presented to leadership during six-month review meetings. This included hiring progress, pipeline performance and diversity metrics such as gender representation across the candidate pool.
TCG has impressed us all the way through the process, right from the shortlisting process we ran. Alongside their headhunting activities, our advertising campaign generated a significant volume of applicants for them to manage, and, whilst this presented an initial challenge in terms of scale, TCG responded proactively – working closely with us, acting on feedback, and continuously refined the process. The outcome of all this effort is a slick recruitment and onboarding process, resulting in a top class team at Supercritical who have the capabilities and attitude to ensure we succeed.
Taza Mohammedbhai
COO
The Outcome
Over a 12-month period, Tech Connect Group successfully delivered 22 permanent hires and 4 contract placements, supporting Supercritical’s rapid organisational growth across engineering, laboratory, commercial and leadership functions.
The result was the creation of a highly skilled and diverse multidisciplinary team capable of advancing the company’s technology towards the next stage of development and commercial deployment.
TCG’s ability to understand both the technical requirements of Supercritical’s hydrogen production technology and the cultural attributes required within a high-growth clean-technology start-up, enabled them to represent the company effectively in an extremely competitive candidate market.
With significant investment secured, new facilities established and growing commercial collaborations with major industry partners including Shell, Supercritical is well positioned to scale its technology towards pilot deployment and continue progressing toward TRL 6 and beyond.
Following the success of the programme, Tech Connect Group has been retained to support future hiring initiatives as Supercritical enters its next phase of growth.
