AI Staffing for Startups

Permanent and contract AI talent for fast-growing US startups

Hire the ML engineers, AI engineers and data scientists your roadmap depends on — sourced, screened and closed by a specialist AI recruitment partner.

An AI Staffing Partner That Understands the Work

Generalist staffing agencies match keywords. AI roles don’t work that way. The difference between a research-minded ML engineer and one who ships production models, or between someone who has called an LLM API and someone who has built a reliable retrieval pipeline, is exactly what decides whether a hire works out.

CorePath Talent has focused on AI recruitment since the early 2020s. We help US startups and scale-ups staff AI and engineering roles with people who are a genuine technical and cultural fit — whether you need one critical hire, a contract specialist to unblock a project, or a team built over the next year.

Machine Learning Engineers

Engineers who take models from notebook to production: training pipelines, evaluation, deployment and monitoring.

LLM & Generative AI Engineers

Builders of LLM-powered products: retrieval, agents, fine-tuning, evaluation and the infrastructure around them.

Data Scientists

Applied scientists who turn data into experiments, models and decisions your product can use.

MLOps & AI Infrastructure

Engineers who make AI systems reliable, observable and affordable to run at scale.

AI & Engineering Leaders

Heads of AI, ML leads and engineering leaders who can set direction and hire the team behind them.

Contract AI Specialists

Short-term experts to deliver a defined project, cover a gap or test a new direction before you commit to a permanent hire.

Permanent Hires, Contract Staffing or Embedded Support

Every startup is at a different stage, so we work in the way that fits your plan:

Permanent recruitment. For core team members you want to build around. We run the full search, from defining the role to negotiating the offer.
Contract AI staffing. For defined projects, deadlines or specialist skills you need now, without adding permanent headcount.
Embedded Talent Acquisition. For startups hiring several people without an internal recruiting team. We act as your Head of Talent Acquisition: process, interview design, employer branding and pipeline.

How Our AI Staffing Process Works

Discover and define. We learn your product, stack and roadmap, then agree the role, level, compensation and how to pitch the opportunity.
Targeted sourcing. We headhunt directly, including passive candidates who aren’t applying to job ads, rather than relying on inbound applications.
Technical screening. We screen for real technical depth and startup fit before anyone reaches your shortlist, so your engineers spend their time on strong candidates.
Offer and onboarding. We manage interviews, references and offer negotiation, and stay in touch through the first months.

Why Startups Choose a Specialist AI Staffing Partner

AI talent is scarce, expensive and heavily courted by large tech companies with bigger budgets and stronger brands. Startups win these candidates with a sharper story: ownership, impact and the chance to build something from the ground up. We help you tell that story credibly to people who can tell the difference between a real AI product and a thin wrapper.

Because we focus on startups and SMEs, our process is built for your pace and budget rather than large-enterprise procurement. You get a partner who will challenge a job spec when it doesn’t match the market, give you honest feedback on compensation, and keep your hiring moving while your team stays focused on building.

Looking for a specific role? See how we help you hire machine learning engineers, hire LLM and generative AI engineers or run a founding AI engineer search.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to Build Your AI Team?

Tell us what you’re hiring for and we’ll come back with an honest view of the market and a plan to find the right people.