Taking new searches for Q4 2026 — NYC & SF Bay Area

Technical recruiting for
AI startups that move fast

We find founding and applied AI engineers for early-stage teams in New York and the Bay Area. Deep briefs, short shortlists, and only the people we would vouch for ourselves.

Start a search See how we work

First shortlist within 48 hours of the brief. No retainer to start the conversation.

Specialising in

Seed & Series A AI infrastructure Applied AI products Developer tools Fintech AI
What we recruit

The five roles that define an early AI team

We do not recruit across every function. We go deep on the hires that decide whether an AI company ships.

Founding Engineer

0→1 builders who own the whole stack, make architecture calls without a committee, and turn a founder's sketch into shipped product.

Full stack · Generalist

Applied AI Engineer

Engineers who take models into production — retrieval, agents, evaluation harnesses, latency and cost — not notebook prototypes.

LLM · Agents · Evals

Forward Deployed Engineer

The technical bridge to your enterprise customers. Engineers who can sit in a client's office, scope the problem, and build the integration.

Customer facing

ML Engineer

Training, fine-tuning, and serving models at scale. People who have owned a pipeline end to end and know where it breaks.

Training · Serving · Infra

Product Engineer

Builders who think in user problems and speak in code. The hire that stops your roadmap from becoming a backlog.

Product · Design sense

Something adjacent?

Infrastructure, security, data engineering or a first technical leader. If it sits near this core, tell us the problem and we will say honestly whether we are the right partner.

Ask us →
How we work

Three steps. No black box.

You will always know who we are talking to, why they made the list, and where the search stands.

01 — DEEP BRIEF

We learn the actual problem

A working session on your stack, your first ninety days, and the failure modes of the role. We would rather over-invest here than send you five near-misses.

02 — CURATED SEARCH

Short lists, not long ones

We approach engineers directly through our network, screen them technically, and send you a handful with written context on why each one fits — and where they do not.

03 — CLOSE & LAND

We stay in through onboarding

We help you structure the offer, manage counter-offers, and check in after the start date. A placement that leaves in month three is not a placement.

Where we operate

Two ecosystems. One partner.

Most AI hiring happens in two places. We work in both, so a search is never limited by one city's talent pool.

New York City

The fastest-growing market for AI applied to regulated industries — fintech, insurance, legal, and enterprise SaaS. We are embedded in the NYC founder and operator community.

Fintech AIEnterprise AIVertical SaaSConsumer AI

SF Bay Area

The centre of frontier AI research and infrastructure. Where we source engineers who have already worked at model labs, dev-tool companies, and AI infrastructure startups.

Foundation modelsDev toolsAI infrastructureAgents

We don't send a stack of résumés. We send the right engineer.

A shortlist of four people you would genuinely hire beats forty you have to filter. That is the whole product.

Straight answers

The questions founders actually ask

How do you charge?

A standard contingency fee on a percentage of first-year base salary, payable only when a candidate you hire starts. We agree the number in writing before the search begins, and it includes a replacement guarantee if the hire does not work out inside the guarantee window. No retainer is required to open a conversation.

How fast will I see candidates?

A first shortlist within 48 hours of the brief in most searches. Speed comes from the depth of the brief, not from volume — we would rather send four strong profiles on day two than twenty on day one.

We're pre-seed and can't compete on cash. Can you still help?

Often, yes. Engineers who join at the founding stage are choosing the problem, the founders, and the equity — not the base salary. Our job is to find the people for whom your specific problem is the draw, and to make that case honestly. If your package genuinely is not competitive for the role, we will tell you that before you spend time on a search.

Do you recruit outside NYC and SF?

Our network is deepest in those two markets, and that is where we do our best work. We will run remote and hybrid searches across the US when the role suits it. If a search sits well outside our strength, we will say so rather than take it on.

What do you need from us to start?

Forty-five minutes for the brief, a named decision-maker who can move quickly, and an interview loop that can turn around inside a week. Strong AI engineers are typically in three processes at once — a slow loop is the single most common reason a search fails.

I'm an engineer, not a founder. Should I reach out?

Yes. If you have built AI products in production — agents, evaluation systems, inference infrastructure, or a founding-engineer track record — send us a note. We will not spray your profile across the market; we will come to you when something genuinely fits.

Start a search

Tell us about the role

Send us the brief and we will come back within one business day — with a shortlist, or with an honest answer about whether we are the right partner for it.

We reply within one business day. Your details are never shared.