I’m Matthew Goddard, Founder of Goddard Talent & Coaching. I partner with scaling tech companies on their most critical leadership decisions – from hiring the right leaders to ensuring they actually perform once inside the business.

My work spans the full leadership lifecycle: from defining roles and hiring the right people, to supporting leaders and teams as they scale. The focus is always the same – ensuring leadership decisions translate into real performance.

Over the past 15+ years, I’ve worked across agency, in-house, and embedded roles, supporting companies including Zalando, Personio, and Einride through critical growth stages – hiring and developing leaders across Tech, Product, and Commercial functions.

I began in UK agency recruitment before moving in-house at Zalando in Berlin, where I partnered with the Management Board as one of their first internal Executive Recruiters, hiring Directors, VPs, and SVPs across multiple functions.

At Talentful, I embedded directly with founding teams – scaling Personio from 600 to 1,200 employees, building VP+ leadership benches, and advising on organisational design, hiring processes, and retention across multiple startups.

Over time, one pattern became clear: leadership challenges rarely come from hiring alone – they emerge in how leaders integrate, align, and operate once in role.

This led me to develop the HIT Method™ (Hire. Integrate. Thrive.) – a structured approach that combines leadership search with post-hire integration and coaching to ensure leaders land well and perform.

Alongside my work in leadership and talent, I trained as a Master Intuitive Psychology Coach, deepening my focus on how leaders think, make decisions, and operate under pressure. My advanced diploma is accredited by the Association for Coaching, providing a rigorous foundation for the coaching work embedded across my practice.

Today, I work with founders, executives, and leadership teams navigating growth, complexity, and transition – supporting them through hiring, advisory, and coaching engagements.

My approach is insight-led and people-focused, combining hiring rigour with a deep understanding of leadership dynamics to build teams that perform and scale.