Pre-seed & Seed Startups
Founding AI hires that set the technical DNA of your company.
AI & ML talent search — seed to Series C and beyond
Recruit.
Align.
Generate.
move fast.
From seed to Series C, VC Firms and beyond, RAG Recruit places elite AI talent that elevate your team.
- 100%
- AI & ML focus
- Elite
- AI talent network
- Seed→C+
- Stages we serve
- US or Remote
- Hiring coverage
Foundation ModelsApplied MLRAG SystemsVector SearchLLM EvalGPU InfraAgentic AIComputer VisionMLOpsMultimodal
About RAG Recruit
Hiring is the single highest-leverage decision an AI company will make.
In AI, talent compounds. The right founding ML engineer ships a model that defines your product. The right Head of AI builds a team that out-iterates everyone else. The wrong hire — can put your product behind.
That's why the talent partner you choose matters as much as the candidates they introduce. We don't run keyword searches. We understand training stacks, eval rigor, and what it actually takes to ship AI in production.
Our Mission
To connect the top AI talent with the most innovative AI startups of tomorrow.
Our Approach
RAG = Recruit. Align. Generate. Placement.
A search process that mirrors how the best AI systems work — sourcing signal, aligning it to context, and generating placements that stick.
- Recruit — deep sourcing across the AI stack
- Align — technical & cultural calibration
- Generate — offers that close, hires that stay
Open role
Recruit
Align
Generate
Placement
Who we support
From the first AI hire to building out an entire org.
We partner with AI-native startups and the VC firms backing them — across every stage of growth.
Scaling Startups
Building out research, applied ML, and infra teams without losing velocity.
Growth-Stage Companies
Senior leadership and specialist hires that compound your AI advantage.
Venture Capital Firms
Talent partner across portfolios — from first AI hire to executive search.
Roles we place
Specialist search across the entire AI stack.
From founding engineers to senior research leadership — we know the market because we live in it.
Machine Learning Engineers
Production ML systems, model serving, and end-to-end pipelines.
AI Research Scientists
Frontier research talent shaping the next generation of models.
LLM & Generative AI Specialists
Prompt systems, RAG, fine-tuning, and agentic architectures.
MLOps & AI Infrastructure
Training stacks, GPU orchestration, and reliable inference at scale.
Data Scientists
From experimentation to causal inference and decision systems.
AI Product Managers
Operators who ship AI products users actually love.
Head of AI / VP AI
Senior leaders who can build and scale an AI org from zero.
And more
Founding engineers, applied scientists, AI solutions architects.
How we work
A search process built for AI hiring velocity.
- 1
Discovery
We learn your stack, your roadmap, and the bar you're hiring against.
- 2
Targeted search
Curated outreach to specialists — not a job-board flood.
- 3
Calibrated shortlists
Pre-vetted candidates with technical signal you can trust.
- 4
Close & onboard
Offer strategy, comp benchmarking, and a smooth landing.
From the blog
View all posts Field notes on hiring AI talent.
Hiring
Hiring your first ML engineer: what actually matters
The first ML hire sets the technical DNA of your AI startup. Here's how to evaluate beyond the resume.
Jun 10, 20266 min read
LeadershipHead of AI vs VP Engineering: when do you need each?
Two senior roles that often get conflated — and the org design implications of getting it wrong.
May 22, 20265 min read
HiringWhat Elon Musk's SpaceX AI hiring call says about signal in 2026
Musk is personally reviewing SpaceX AI applications and asking for three bullet points of 'exceptional ability.' It's a useful reminder of what actually matters in AI hiring.
May 22, 20264 min read
Ready to hire your next AI breakthrough?
Contact us to learn more.