Hire
Chief Innovation Officers

A Chief Innovation Officer typically costs KRW 18,925/mo – KRW 25,625/mo in total monthly compensation for a senior hire working remotely, with an upward skew for US-based and executive roles. On top of base, budget 10–25% for equity or bonus and roughly 15–20% fully-loaded overhead. Exzev fees start from 12% of the hire's annual compensation, invoiced only after the candidate starts work, with a free replacement within 1–3 months depending on the role.

Executive searches take longer than our 48-hour benchmark for engineering roles: for a Chief Innovation Officer, the timeline to a first shortlist is agreed in the brief, and confidential searches take longer again. The market average for this role is roughly 65 days. The main drivers are how tightly the mandate is scoped and interview throughput on your side.

A senior Chief Innovation Officer owns outcomes across ambiguity; a mid-level one executes a defined scope. For a first Chief Innovation Officer hire or a seat that reports to a C-level, always prefer senior — the cost of a bad leadership-adjacent hire typically exceeds two years of fully-loaded salary.

A full-time Chief Innovation Officer makes sense once the work is continuous and headcount-justified. For early-stage or one-off builds (a single product, a migration, an audit), a fractional or contract Chief Innovation Officer is usually more efficient. Ask one question: will this person be fully utilized inside six months?

Yes. Our active talent pool for this role spans roughly 440 pre-vetted candidates across 30+ countries, most of them comfortable with async-first or overlap-based remote setups. We match candidates to your working hours, location preferences (EU, US, UAE) and compliance constraints (EoR, contractor, local entity) before they reach your shortlist.

Every Chief Innovation Officer we send you has passed a three-stage screen: structured scoping interview, a live working session on a problem drawn from your brief, and two reference checks with named peers. We reject the majority of sourced candidates — you only meet the top of the funnel.