The original project-based placement firm for architects & designers.
We didn't enter this category — and four decades later we're still owner-led, still design-native, and still here.
A designer who saw a better way to hire.
David McFadden founded Consulting for Architects in 1984 to align architects and interior designers with design practices on a flexible, project-based basis. A published designer trained in architecture, he worked in multiple design offices — full-time and freelance — before identifying the structural inefficiencies in how the profession hired.
So he built something that didn't exist yet: project-based, flex-core placement for architects & designers — pioneering flex hiring and full-time freelancing, and reshaping how design talent is deployed across the profession.
At its height, the firm ran offices in New York, Boston, and Chicago and an award-winning Autodesk training operation that put countless design professionals through its classrooms — Autodesk’s own CEO presented at CFA’s New York event space in 2002. After September 11, CFA consolidated back to the thing it invented: staffing.
Four decades and four major recessions later, the firm is still owner-led and design-native — people who read portfolios and match by sensibility, not keywords. The same person who built this category is still the one who takes your call. And the team beside him stays: where global agencies cycle through recruiters every couple of years, ours measure tenure in decades.
The career we invented.
When CFA opened in 1984, a “temp” in the design world carried a quiet stigma — the assumption that anyone working job to job couldn’t hold a full-time post. David saw it backwards: what if the most talented designers worked year-round by choice, moving between firms, because range made them better and kept them in demand?
That idea created a new class of professional — the career project architect — and solved a problem firms had wrestled with for decades. Through the boom-and-bust cycles of the trade, practices had earned a hard reputation for hiring in the fat years and laying off in the lean ones. CFA’s model let them staff to the work without burning the people they’d need again next quarter.
“In 1984, a temp was someone who couldn’t get hired. I thought — what if project work became the choice of the most talented people in the field?”— David McFadden, founder
The people who place you
David McFadden
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David McFadden founded Consulting For Architects, Inc. in 1984, pioneering project-based, flex-core staffing for architects and designers — and built it into a national operation spanning New York, Chicago, and Boston, featured in Engineering News-Record, Interior Design, Architectural Record, and Progressive Architecture.
A Pratt- and Miami-trained designer himself, David has spent four decades matching design talent with the firms that need it, training countless design professionals through CFA's award-winning Autodesk division — many still applying those skills in practice today.
Elaine Gross-Krauss
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Elaine specializes in interviewing and matching the industry's top talent with leading architecture and design firms, building and sustaining the client relationships that keep firms staffed and careers moving.
She brings deep recruiting expertise and a relationship-first approach honed over decades — the kind of continuity no global agency can offer.
Emily Schepp
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Emily builds strong relationships with both hiring firms and job-seeking designers, listening closely to address candidates' short- and long-term goals so every match works for everyone involved.
Her instinct for fit — and her staying power — make her a trusted advocate on both sides of the table.
Chad Zimmerman
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Chad is an architecture- and engineering-focused recruiter with eight years of experience supporting hiring across the architecture industry. Having studied and briefly worked in design himself, he relates to candidates in a way that lets him offer a uniquely informed level of support.
That shared background makes for efficient, thoughtful conversations about the options that exist in the market. He is actively sourcing new opportunities and welcomes anyone to reach out — even just for advice about the architecture industry.
Forty years, and the field we trained
For four decades, CFA has been where design-staffing careers begin — and where much of the industry's expertise was first trained.
The wave of the future
The old way to bring freelance help into an architecture office was plain temping. David had worked inside that model — and was sure it could be done better. In 1984 he founded CFA on a different idea: project-based, flex-core placement — the right designer on the right project, so a firm could keep a lean core and scale to the work in front of it.
The trade press wasn't sure it would last. In 1988, Architectural Record asked whether freelance architects were "the wave of the future" — and quoted competitors who doubted the whole idea.
Firms can maintain a lean staff in lean times and hire free-lancers when business picks up — and hire people with the particular skills needed for particular jobs.
Four decades later, CFA is still placing architects and designers — and the doubters are footnotes. Project-based placement isn't "the wave of the future" anymore. It's simply how the industry works.