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Direct hire - United States

Hire US engineers
vetted by
engineers

Permanent hires, on your payroll. On average you interview two, and hire one. All candidates interviewed by our senior engineers.

  • 2 matched profiles, not 200 CVs
  • A senior engineer interviews every candidate
  • 6-month replacement guarantee
YOUR SHORTLIST2 profiles
Senior AI Engineer
Austin, TX · 9 yrs
  • Go
  • Postgres
  • AWS
  • Kafka
$175,000base sought
Senior Full-Stack Engineer
Denver, CO · 7 yrs
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Node
  • GraphQL
$160,000base sought

Each profile ships with a written report on why they fit.

Illustrative
State of the hiring market

More applicants
Harder to find the right

engineer.

+412% Job applications per role since 2023

We don't post jobs and wait for applicants. We headhunt every role, then a senior engineer runs a live coding interview before you see a candidate. You get 2 matched profiles in 7 days.

WHAT A JOB POST GETS YOU
Senior Backend Engineer
Interviewed by a senior engineer
Senior Full-Stack Engineer
Interviewed by a senior engineer
WHAT WE SEND
The process

How it works - from your side.

01The brief

You don't need a job spec

Drop one in if you have it. If you don't, and most founders don't, twenty minutes with one of our CTOs and we'll build it.

A senior engineer signs it off before we search.

Twenty minutes. Then we go.
THE BRIEF
Senior AI Engineer
  • Python, RAG, LLM APIs
  • 5+ years commercial experience
  • Has actually shipped AI to production
  • Figures things out without being handheld
  • Will tell me when I'm wrong - and propose something better

The first two, any recruiter can match. The rest is why a person takes the brief.

A Cloud Employee CTO scoping a role with a client over a laptop
CTO INTAKE CALL
02We interview

Live coding session interviews

Live pair programming on a real problem from your stack. Not an algorithm puzzle. Not a take-home they can hand to an AI.

You can't fake the answer to a follow-up.

100+ sourced. Two make it through.
pair-session · your stackLIVE
A senior Cloud Employee engineer on a live pair-programming callCE engineer
A candidate engineer on the same live pair-programming callCandidate
03On average:

You interview two. You hire one.

Both arrive with the write-up from the engineer who interviewed them, including where they're a stretch.

A candidate with no weaknesses listed means nobody looked.

You decide. We handle scheduling, the offer, the counteroffer.
Senior AI Engineer
Austin, TX · 9 yrs · Python, RAG, AWS
Open report
Coding test88%
InterviewStrong
Culture fitGood

Worth knowing: short tenure in last role. Moving due to wanting to work on something more challenging.

The funnel, in numbers
Initial headhunting pool100+
After CV & AI screening~40
After technical interview~15
After live coding interview~6
You interview both. You hire one.2
Engineers should hire engineers

We do what a recruiter can't do

We've been vetting senior engineers for companies since 2014. This is our proven process.

A senior engineer ran the interview

Live pair programming on a real problem, not a keyword match against a job description. You get their name and their notes.

A written report on both finalists

Why they fit your company and how they work. A candidate with no blind-spots listed just means nobody looked properly.

Start a search

Tell us who you're looking for

Four short steps. A senior engineer reads every one, and it does not go into a CRM.

THE ROLEStep 1 of 4

Start with what you've got

Say it instead

One file, or a few lines. Whatever you have is enough to start.

Saved as you go - finish anytime.

WE'LL COME BACK WITH WHAT YOUR SPEC DIDN'T SAY

Questions

The questions founders and CTOs actually ask.

Not answered here?

Ask our AI chatbot, trained on every sales call we've had.

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