Job titles lie. Always have. "Head of Digital" at a 50-person startup and "Head of Digital" at a Tier 1 bank describe careers that have almost nothing in common — different scale, different complexity, different skills, different trajectory. And yet the hiring market treats them as equivalent because it has no better classification system.
We built one. Not based on titles, not based on seniority, and not based on self-description. Based on what 2,400 careers actually look like when an AI reads the pattern of decisions, moves, and impact across an entire professional history.
Six archetypes emerged. They're not personality types. They're not boxes to put yourself in. They're structural patterns in how professionals create value — and understanding which one you are is one of the most practically useful things you can know about your own career.
The six archetypes
Executive
~14% of the network
The defining characteristic isn't seniority — it's organisational-level impact. Executives change the trajectory of companies, not just teams. Their career pattern shows escalating scope: first managing a function, then multiple functions, then shaping strategy across the business. The AI identifies Executives by the breadth of their impact pattern combined with sustained complexity — they don't just handle one hard thing, they orchestrate multiple hard things simultaneously over extended periods.
The surprise: Many people with C-suite titles aren't classified as Executives. They're classified as whatever they were before they got the title — a Commercial leader who was given a CEO role, a Delivery specialist who was promoted to COO. The title changed. The archetype didn't.
Commercial
~22% of the network
Commercial archetypes create value at the boundary between the company and the market. Revenue generation. Client acquisition. Partnership development. Market expansion. Their career pattern shows a consistent orientation toward growth — even when they've held operational or leadership titles, the impact always traces back to revenue, relationships, or market position.
The surprise: This is the most commonly misidentified archetype. People classified as Commercial often think they're Executives because they've held senior leadership positions. The distinction is subtle but important: an Executive shapes the direction of the organisation. A Commercial shapes the size of the organisation. Both are enormously valuable. They're not the same thing.
Delivery
~20% of the network
Delivery archetypes are the people who make things happen. They take complex, ambiguous mandates and produce outcomes — on time, on budget, at scale. Programme managers, transformation leaders, operations directors. Their career pattern shows a specific rhythm: arrive, assess, restructure, deliver, move on. The AI identifies them by the consistency of their outcome orientation and their ability to sustain performance across different organisational contexts.
The surprise: Delivery is often undervalued in the hiring market because it doesn't sound glamorous. But in our matching data, Delivery archetypes are among the most in-demand — because every company has three transformation programmes running simultaneously and not enough people who can actually land them.
Technical IC (Individual Contributor)
~18% of the network
The deep specialists. Architects, principal engineers, quantitative analysts, security experts. Their career pattern shows vertical depth — progressively harder problems in the same domain, with impact that comes from the quality and sophistication of their individual work rather than from managing others. The AI identifies them by extreme domain depth scores combined with relatively narrow functional breadth.
The surprise: Technical ICs in our network include some of the highest-earning professionals — senior architects at banking software vendors, principal engineers at payment processors. The industry narrative that you must manage people to advance is simply wrong for this archetype. What matters is the rarity and difficulty of the problems you can solve.
Technical Lead
~12% of the network
The bridge between technical depth and people leadership. Technical Leads are former ICs who've crossed into team management without losing their technical edge. Their career shows a pivot point — typically 8-12 years in — where they began combining deep technical judgment with team leadership. The AI distinguishes them from Executives by the specificity of their domain, and from Technical ICs by their leadership signature score.
The surprise: This is the hardest archetype to recruit for, because the supply is structurally limited. Every good Technical Lead was once a good IC who chose to manage — and most good ICs don't want to. The ones who do are rare, and the market knows it.
Functional
~14% of the network
Functional archetypes are deep domain specialists in non-technical fields — compliance officers, HR directors, finance leads, legal counsel, marketing strategists. Their career pattern shows sustained depth in a specific business function, often across multiple companies and sectors. The AI identifies them by domain depth in a non-engineering discipline combined with consistent functional scope.
The surprise: Functional archetypes in fintech command a premium over the same roles in other industries — because the regulatory, compliance, and operational complexity of financial services requires genuine domain expertise that takes years to develop. A compliance officer who's worked in banking software and payments is worth significantly more than a generic compliance officer, and their Brief shows exactly why.
Why this matters more than your job title
Your job title describes your current role. Your archetype describes how you create value — and that pattern persists across roles, across companies, across decades. When you understand your archetype, three things become clearer:
Which roles will actually use your strengths. A Commercial archetype in a pure operations role will be miserable and mediocre — not because they lack talent, but because the role doesn't activate what makes them rare. Knowing your archetype means you can filter opportunities more intelligently than any job description will help you do.
What "development" actually means for you. For a Technical IC, development means harder problems. For an Executive, it means broader scope. For a Commercial, it means larger markets. Generic career advice — "develop your leadership skills" — is useless without knowing which kind of leadership your archetype actually needs.
Why some career moves worked and others didn't. That role you took three years ago that never quite clicked? Look at it through the archetype lens. Chances are it was a role designed for a different archetype — and the mismatch explains the friction better than any other theory.
The 35% who are surprised
We track this informally. About 35% of professionals who receive their Brief are classified differently than they expected. The most common patterns:
Executives who are actually Commercial (they built the business, got promoted to lead it, but the archetype didn't change). Delivery leaders who are actually Technical Leads (they manage teams, but their real value is the technical judgment they bring to architectural decisions). And — the most psychologically difficult one — senior professionals who expected to be classified as Executive or Commercial but turned out to be Functional or Technical IC, because their career, stripped of the title inflation, shows deep specialist value rather than broad organisational impact.
That last group often takes a day or two to process it. And then most of them come back and say some version of: "You're right. And I think I've been chasing the wrong roles for the last five years."
That's the moment the Brief becomes genuinely useful. Not as a badge to show employers. As a mirror that shows you clearly enough to change direction.
Find out which archetype you actually are
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