Boutique Recruiting
Engineers in AI is a small, specialist engineering recruiting firm. We close fewer searches per year than a large agency does in a week, and we do it better because every submittal has been through an engineer's read.
An engineering recruiting firm can be many things. A 200-person agency with a bullpen of sourcers running keyword searches. A contingency shop reselling the same resumes to six clients at once. A retained search boutique charging six figures up front. Or something quieter: a small, engineering-led firm that takes a handful of searches per quarter and closes most of them.
Engineers in AI is the fourth kind. We have closed more than 1,000 placements across 20 years, led by Tony Kochhar, who spent two decades in engineering before he ran his first search. The firm is deliberately small, and it stays that way because the thing we sell is senior attention, not volume.
A 200-person agency has to run on volume. Every sourcer has a monthly placement target, every submittal is optimized for speed rather than signal, and every client is one of dozens. That structure works for filling 15 mid-level seats a quarter. It breaks down when the role is senior and the screening bar is high.
A boutique engineering recruiting firm runs on the inverse. Fewer searches, more depth per search, and compensation aligned with close quality rather than submittal volume. At Engineers in AI, every senior search has Tony's direct attention. We decline roles we do not think we can close, which sounds like it would shrink the business, but it is actually what keeps the close rate and replacement rate where they need to be.
Most recruiters cannot read a resume the way an engineer would. They cannot tell you whether "built a recommendation system" means the candidate owned a production ranking stack or added a library to a prototype. They cannot hear the difference between a candidate who has debugged a distributed transaction race condition and one who has read about it.
An engineering-native firm can. Tony reads every senior resume himself. The first technical call happens before a candidate is even in a submittal. The questions come from a place of having built the systems the candidate is describing. That changes the pool you see by a wide margin.
The mechanics matter, because they are what determines whether a search actually closes. Our rhythm on a typical senior search looks like this. Week one is calibration: a 45-minute call with the hiring manager, a second call with the engineer the role will report to, and a short written brief that we confirm before sourcing starts. Week two and three are targeted outreach and first technical screens. Every candidate Tony forwards has already been through at least one substantial conversation about their shipped work. Week four onward is shortlist refinement, reference pulls, and closing.
That cadence works for senior searches because the pool is small and the candidate experience matters. It would be catastrophic for a 30-role volume engagement. Match the firm to the shape of the search.
A flat 20% placement fee, billed only when a candidate starts. No retainer, no exclusivity, no minimum commitment, and a 90-day replacement guarantee at no extra cost. The fee sits on the low end of the engineering search market, and the terms are deliberately simple so a hiring manager can decide in a single call whether it is worth it.
A flat 20% fee is not a loss leader for us. It is a statement about what a fair price looks like when a search is boutique and founder-led. The larger retained search firms that charge 30% plus a retainer are pricing attention. We price attention too, just at a lower number because our overhead is smaller.
Our client list spans mid-market and enterprise engineering teams: Agoda, Hearst, Con Edison, Trilogy, and a long tail of NYC-based startups. The common thread is that our clients have a technical bar they are not willing to lower, and they value a recruiter who can defend that bar in real conversations with candidates.
If your role is senior, your screening bar is high, and you want a recruiting partner who reads the code, book a hiring call. 45 minutes, no pitch, no obligation. If we are not the right fit for your search, we will say so, and sometimes refer you to someone who is.
1,000+ placements. Flat 20% fee. 90-day replacement. Founder-led.