Transforming AI startups with the top 0.01% talent
We Help NY and SF-based AI Startups Build Their Dream Founding Engineering Teams

Trusted by AI startups. Built by engineers from the best teams.

We recruit top engineers from leading tech companies and place them into high-growth AI teams
We Hire For Teams Operating at The Frontier of AI













Deep expertise across applied AI domains
We've built depth across the systems reshaping AI. From the models that think to the interfaces that listen.






Speed that actually matters
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The numbers don't lie
We measure what matters. Placements that stick. Teams that scale. Founders who ship.
Customer satisfaction
Placement success
Retention rate
Frequently Asked Questions
An AI executive search partner is a recruitment expert that helps startups operating in the cutting-edge field of Gen AI—where AI models process and integrate multiple types of data (e.g., text, images, audio, video) to solve complex problems—find the talent required to drive innovation and grow your company.
We deliver high-quality AI talent fast within 24 hours, backed by a 60-day placement guarantee to give you confidence in every single hire. You’ll get access to a highly curated network of engineers, researchers, and operators across AI and LLM-driven systems, including off-the-market candidates who aren’t actively job-seeking, aren’t applying inbound, and often aren’t visible on LinkedIn at all.
Every candidate is presented with a deeply considered profile covering technical depth, real-world impact, motivation, and risk factors through a tailored, founder-led recruitment process built for precision hiring. Our team is available 24/7 via email to keep communication fast, clear, and frictionless.
We work directly with founders to build the first version of their team — not just individual hires. That means owning recruiting across engineering, product, and GTM as you scale.
Typical roles include: Full-stack Engineers, ML Engineers, Data & Research, Infrastructure/DevOps, Product, Customer Success, Sales, Operations, and other critical early hires.
When hiring for AI startups, the hardest part isn’t filtering applicants - it’s reaching the right people in the first place.
StellarSearch works with a tightly curated network of engineers, researchers, and operators who are largely off-market. Many aren’t actively job-seeking, don’t apply inbound, and wouldn’t surface through job boards or standard LinkedIn searches.
We stay close to the ecosystem by tracking who’s actually building and shipping real AI systems - through production work at top AI companies, applied research, trusted referrals, and long-term relationships across applied AI, multimodal systems, and ML infrastructure.
The result is access to candidates who consistently clear the bar, not just those who are easiest to find.
Our average time-to-hire is 17 days from kickoff to offer acceptance, faster than most early-stage hiring cycles. Several roles have been filled in 7–12 days.
Timelines may vary based on your interview loop, availability, and decision-making speed, but because we submit highly vetted, interview-ready candidates within the first 24 hours, founders are typically speaking to strong profiles immediately and maintaining momentum from day one.
We offer retained and success-based pricing, tailored to your hiring plan, headcount, role seniority, and search complexity.
For teams that want more than candidate delivery, we act as a founding-level recruiting partner, owning hiring end-to-end - from role scoping and sourcing through interview design, recruiting operations, offers, and close.
Get in touch and we’ll put together a setup that actually fits how you’re hiring.