Next Step Systems

Next Step Systems is a national IT recruiting firm founded in 1995, operating across the United States, Canada, and England from headquarters in Naperville, Illinois. The firm places permanent full-time and contract IT professionals into client organizations, claiming thousands of placements across its three-decade history. In 2014, it acquired Parallel Partners, an established Chicago-based recruiting firm, to expand market reach. The company focuses on technical domains directly relevant to infrastructure and security: DevOps, cloud computing, cloud engineering, network engineering, software engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cybersecurity. It also handles senior-level technical and executive hiring. This specialization means the firm works with organizations actively building or hardening their technical stacks - teams dealing with cloud migration, infrastructure modernization, and security posture expansion. Next Step Systems operates as a recruiting intermediary rather than a direct employer. Its business model centers on matching qualified technical talent with client organizations seeking permanent or contract placements. The firm markets itself as connecting forward-thinking companies with the specialized talent needed to solve complex technical problems.