24 Months
Productivity
Acceptance Rate
The Executive Network Challenge
Aerospace manufacturing sits at the intersection of extreme precision, stringent certification, global supply chains, and defense-level accountability. Executives who lead here need more than credentials — they need the cognitive architecture to operate under continuous pressure while maintaining quality standards with zero tolerance for failure.
Defence unemployment is 1.8%. The job description your board approved last quarter already reflects skills that barely existed at scale two years ago—AI integration, CMMC 2.0 compliance, binational operational fluency. The candidate who ticks every box is almost certainly employed, not searching, and not reachable through a posting. This is not a sourcing problem. It is a network problem—and network takes decades to build.
We Don't Visit The
Corridor. We Live In It.
Most search firms treat US-Mexico border operations as a remote assignment. We have built our practice inside the San Diego–Tijuana CaliBaja corridor for over three decades—across both sides of the border, at every clearance level, from legacy primes to defense tech startups.
Our cross-border searches access candidate pools that US-only firms never see. Quadrilingual capability. Direct relationships with INDEX, ProBaja, and the San Diego EDC. A live network of executives maintained before searches begin—not after your vacancy hits 90 days.
0%
Of qualified A&D candidates are passive.Not applying. Not on job.boards. Reachable only through a network built over decades–not a search run this week.
0%
Defense sector unemployment.Your next leader almost certainly has a job right now. Getting to them requires relationships–not postings.
WHEN A 25-PERSON TEAM PLACED NOBODY
Honeywell needed to staff a greenfield R&O facility in Mexico with no local aerospace talent pool to draw on. Their internal 25-person recruitment team had placed zero candidates in 90 days. As Senior Partner at another executive search firm, between 2007 and 2008, Fernando Espinosa placed 517 people across every level and got the site to operational launch on schedule. That mandate is where the methodology behind Top Notch Finders was built.
What We Solve in Aerospace
AS9100, NADCAP & ITAR Compliance
Leaders who maintain certification under operational perssure. We understand AS9100, NADCAP, CMMC 2.0, ITAR/EAR, and IMMEX–not as pitch-deck acronyms, but as frameworks we’ve navigated across 1,300+ placements.
Defense Contract & Cleared Hiring
Security clearance-aware search with defense-grade discretion. 85% of qualified A&D candidates are passive–reachable only through a network built over decades, not a database searched this week.
Greenfield Facility Build-Out
Rapid team assembly in markets with shallow aerospace talent pools–proven at Honeywell scale. From C-suite to individual contributors in a single engagement.
Mexico Maquiladora Leadership
Running an aerospace maquiladora demands a rare stack: multilingual fluency, Mexican labor law, AS91000/NADCAP, IMMEX, and cross-border P&L ownership. These leaders aren’t on Linkedin. They’re in our network.
MRO Operations Leadership
Multi-customer programme management with the precision MRO environment demand–across repair cycles, airworthiness directives, and global supply chain coordination.
Cross-Industry Placement
Identifying transferable cognitive capability from automotive, medical devices, and electronics–dramatically expanding your accessible talent pool beyond candidates with an aerospace badge on their resume.
Download the Aerospace Hiring Guide
Examples of Roles We Place
Honeywell Aerospace SIL, R&O, B&GA Mexico — 500+ Placements
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Challenge — Multiple greenfield and expanding sites across Mexico, including a $40M systems integration and testing laboratory in Mexicali. No local aerospace talent pool. Internal recruiting could not source engineers, managers, and directors who didn't yet exist in the market.
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Approach — Fernando Espinosa, as the owner and full recruiting force operator, deployed as embedded RPO across the program. Identified and validated cross-industry talent from automotive, electronics, and medical devices, engineers and leaders whose cognitive profile fit aerospace before their résumés did.
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Results — 517 placements from Director level to individual contributors across seven sites between 2005 and 2008, including 300+ engineers and managers running aircraft-systems simulations in Mexicali. On-schedule operational launch at every facility.
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Why it Mattered — This program helped redefine how multinationals saw Mexico: not as low-cost assembly, but as a home for sophisticated R&D. Honeywell, Delphi, GE, and GM built design centers employing hundreds of Mexican engineers to handle complex design and testing, from new vehicle models to commercial and military jet engines. We staffed the aerospace edge of that shift.