Mobility Executive Search

Mobility is no longer three separate industries. It is one industry, unfolding across four modalities — ground, air, shared, and last-mile — and it is being built simultaneously by legacy OEMs and by a venture-backed startup layer that increasingly sets the innovation clock. Silvia Flores leads mobility executive search at Alder Koten across the US–Mexico corridor, placing operating and technical leadership into the companies building the vehicles, aircraft, silicon, software, and platforms that will define the next decade of movement.

The mobility thesis

The Farnborough International Airshow 2026 closed with autonomy visible on every serious stand — from Boeing's MQ-28 Ghost Bat and BAE's Bronte Max collaborative combat aircraft, to BETA Technologies' autonomously controlled ALIA MV250, to Electra's $850 million hybrid-electric eSTOL factory in Ohio. Three weeks earlier, the same operating pattern showed up at ACT Expo in North America (autonomous freight trucks and last-mile delivery robots), and it will show up again at SAE International's shows in Detroit (the canonical venue for automotive engineering and autonomous ground systems) and at CES in Las Vegas in January 2027 (embedded-AI silicon, autonomous cabin platforms, consumer-adjacent mobility). The same technology stack — sensor fusion, on-vehicle AI inference, over-the-air software delivery, high-voltage power electronics, and a fleet-scale telematics layer — now runs across all of them. The leadership profile that can hold that stack, ship product against certification pressure, and run plants that look more like automated cells than manual assembly lines, is scarce across every modality.

The modalities we cover

• Autonomous passenger cars and robotaxis
• Software-defined vehicles and the ADAS-to-Level-4 progression
• eVTOL and hybrid-electric fixed-wing aircraft (advanced air mobility)
• Drones — cargo, inspection, defense-adjacent, and consumer
• Micromobility — shared and owned e-scooters, e-bikes, e-mopeds
• Shared mobility and MaaS platforms
• Autonomous freight, delivery robots, and last-mile logistics
• The venture-backed startup layer building all of the above

Sub-practices

• Automotive & software-defined vehicles — OEM, Tier-1, and Tier-2 leadership for the shift to software-defined vehicles — ADAS, sensor fusion, autonomous stack, robotaxis, and the cars that will drive themselves.
• Aerospace & advanced air mobility — eVTOL platforms, hybrid-electric aircraft, autonomous cargo and utility UAS, counter-drone systems, and the vertiport infrastructure that makes air mobility a real market.
• Micromobility & shared services — Scooters, e-bikes, shared ride, mobility-as-a-service (MaaS), fleet-electrification operators, and the last-mile delivery layer.
• Mobility electronics & silicon — AI cockpit compute, ADAS silicon, LiDAR and radar, high-voltage power electronics, and the cabin-electronics layer of the software-defined vehicle.
• Mobility startup executive search — Retained executive search for VC-backed mobility startups — Series B through pre-IPO — across autonomous driving, drone OEMs, eVTOL, micromobility platforms, and the autonomy tech stack.

OEMs, Tiers, and the venture-backed layer

Two ecosystems, one leadership market. The OEM and Tier ecosystem — Ford, GM, Stellantis, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Kia, Hyundai on the automotive side; Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, Bombardier, Lockheed, Northrop, BAE on the aerospace side; Bosch, Continental, ZF, Aptiv, Magna, Denso, Marelli, Faurecia, Yanfeng across the Tiers — is scaling ADAS, EV, autonomous freight, and eVTOL programs against production and certification deadlines that require a specific class of operating leader. The VC-backed startup ecosystem — Waymo, Cruise (in its revised form), Zoox, Wayve, Applied Intuition, Tesla's autonomy layer, Nuro, Aurora, Kodiak Robotics, Gatik, Serve Robotics, Starship, Cavnue, Bird, Lime, Voi, Tier (mobility), Dott, Joby Aviation, Archer, Beta Technologies, Lilium's successors, Vertical Aerospace, Wisk Aero, Overair, Electra, Skydio, Zipline, Wing, Matternet, Anduril, Shield AI, Skydweller, and hundreds behind them — is a growing share of the practice. Retained searches run the same way for both.

Where the mobility corridor sits in Mexico

The Mexican industrial map has already become a mobility map. The Bajío is where Ford, GM, Nissan, Mazda, and Honda have their strongest assembly and engine plants, where Bombardier, Safran, Airbus, and their Tiers built Querétaro into North America's third aerospace cluster, and where the emerging EV-battery ramp is being installed. Monterrey and Saltillo–Ramos Arizpe add Stellantis, GM, and heavy-industry Tier depth, plus the drone and defense-adjacent border interface. Ciudad Juárez, Reynosa, Matamoros, Tijuana, and Mexicali add integrated cross-border production. Guadalajara adds the electronics and semiconductor-adjacent layer that increasingly is the mobility stack. The mobility practice runs across all of them.

How the mobility search runs

Through The Dynamic Fit Method™, Alder Koten's work-first search model — assessing Ability, Capability, and Capacity against the rate of change the role will carry, delivered via Alder Koten's seven-step retained search process. Mobility mandates typically require a candidate assessment that spans automotive-plant discipline, aerospace-certification maturity, and startup-velocity fluency inside a single profile; the method is designed for exactly that kind of multi-competence read. Connects naturally to the automotive, aerospace, EV and battery, and electronics pillars, and to Alder Koten's private equity practice for portfolio-company mandates.

Mobility executive search — questions

Why treat mobility as one practice instead of separate automotive and aerospace practices?

Because the leadership profile has converged. The Farnborough 2026 show — closing on £62.9B in deals, with autonomy visible on every serious stand — made explicit what SAE International and CES have argued for two years: the engineer-manager who runs a modern automotive plant, an eVTOL assembly line, and a drone-OEM operation is drawing from the same competency pool. Software-defined manufacturing, autonomous systems, ADAS-adjacent silicon, and the AI-quality layer show up simultaneously in the product and in the plant, across all three modalities. The scarcity is real and it is a mobility-wide scarcity.

Where does mobility executive search fit in the US–Mexico corridor?

The Bajío (Querétaro, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí) is the mobility corridor — automotive Tier-1s, EV powertrain, aerospace OEMs and MRO all in the same industrial belt. Monterrey and Saltillo–Ramos Arizpe add heavy-industry and OEM automotive assembly. The border cities add cross-border integrated production for defense-adjacent and drone programs. Guadalajara adds the electronics and semiconductor-adjacent layer. The practice runs across all of them.

Do you serve VC-backed mobility startups or only established OEMs?

Both. The mobility startup ecosystem — VC-backed autonomy stacks, robotaxi operators, drone OEMs, eVTOL developers, micromobility platforms — is a growing share of the practice. Series B through pre-IPO mandates for founding operators, VPs of Manufacturing, Chief Technology Officers, and Chief Revenue Officers are placed under the same retained-search discipline that serves the OEM base.

How does this practice work with the automotive, aerospace, and EV pillars?

The mobility practice is the horizontal frame; the automotive, aerospace, EV/battery, and electronics pillars remain the vertical execution routes. A robotaxi program becomes a joint automotive-plus-mobility mandate; an eVTOL production ramp becomes aerospace-plus-mobility; a fleet-electrification operator becomes EV-plus-mobility-plus-shared-services. The Dynamic Fit Method™ is the common instrument.