Zero to One SearchZero to One Search
Specialisation · Executive Search · AI leadership

AI executive search for Chief AI Officers, VPs of AI & research leaders.

Retained AI executive search for the leaders defining enterprise AI strategy and shipping production AI at scale. AI-specific market maps, paper-level technical calibration, frontier-lab compensation benchmarks, and confidential outreach inside a small, fast-moving talent market.

Open a confidential conversation See parent: Executive Search

The model

Same retained engagement. AI-specific depth.

AI executive search is a specialisation of our retained executive search practice — same exclusive mandate, same written assessments, same 12-month replacement guarantee. What changes is the market we work inside.

The AI talent market is small, concentrated, and fast-moving. Generalist firms map titles; we map work. We read the papers, evaluate the production systems, check the team-building track record, and translate it into a written assessment a board can act on. Compensation is benchmarked against frontier labs and hyperscaler AI groups, not enterprise SaaS — because that's where the real counter-offers come from.

For Fortune 500s standing up an AI organisation, scale-ups graduating from founder-led AI work, and frontier labs hiring leadership, this is where AI talent acquisition meets executive-search rigour.

Roles we place

AI leadership, end to end.

  • Chief AI Officer (CAIO)

    First-CAIO mandates at Fortune 500s and enterprise units, plus CAIO succession at scale-ups graduating from founder-led AI strategy.

  • VP of AI / VP of Machine Learning

    Operational AI leadership running applied teams, ML platform, and AI product. The leader who turns research into shipped product.

  • Head of Applied Research

    Research leadership for labs and applied-AI groups — bridging publishable work and production deployment.

  • VP AI Engineering / Director, ML Platform

    Engineering leadership for the infrastructure, training, evals, and serving stack that AI organisations actually run on.

  • Head of AI Product

    Product leaders who understand model behaviour, evals, latency-cost trade-offs, and how to ship AI surface area customers will pay for.

  • Founding AI / Founding ML Engineer

    First-AI-hire mandates for stealth and seed-stage companies where the first hire defines the next ten.

Why AI executive search is different

A small market with non-standard rules.

  • Talent density is small and concentrated

    The pool of leaders who have shipped production AI at scale is in the low thousands globally, clustered at frontier labs, hyperscalers, and a handful of scale-ups. Mapping titles isn't enough — we map work.

  • Comp benchmarks don't map to enterprise SaaS

    Frontier-lab equity, lab-style sign-on bonuses, and counter-offer dynamics from FAANG-AI groups break standard exec comp models. We bring real, current benchmarks for each candidate cohort.

  • Technical calibration is non-negotiable

    A board-ready assessment of an AI leader requires reading the work — papers, system designs, internal architecture write-ups. Generalist firms outsource this; we do it in-house with research-community advisors where needed.

  • Confidentiality matters more in a small market

    Word travels fast in the AI community. Off-record outreach, controlled disclosure, and discreet reference-taking are the only sustainable way to run senior AI search without burning the candidate or the client.

What's included

End-to-end, on the record.

  • AI-specific market map of the 80–150 humans on earth who could do the role
  • Calibrated 8-person shortlist within six weeks of kickoff
  • Board-ready technical assessments on every finalist (paper-level depth where needed)
  • Frontier-lab and enterprise compensation benchmarks for the role
  • Confidential, off-market approach by default
  • Onboarding partnership through month three on the role
  • 12-month replacement guarantee

The engagement

From mandate to month three on the role.

  1. Week 1–2

    Mandate & technical calibration

    Stakeholder calibration with the board, CEO, and senior technical peers. We translate the role into a written narrative covering technical depth, organisational scope, and the AI thesis the leader will execute against.

  2. Week 3–6

    Market map & confidential outreach

    Full market map of the leaders who could actually do this work — scoped by published research, production AI systems shipped, teams built. Off-record approach calibrated to each candidate's situation (frontier lab, hyperscaler, scale-up, stealth start-up).

  3. Week 7–14

    Assessment, reference, offer, onboarding

    Structured technical and leadership assessment, multi-source references including the research community, compensation design across cash, equity, and lab-style sign-on, and partnership through start date and month three on the role.

FAQ

AI executive search, answered.

What is AI executive search?
AI executive search is retained search for the leaders of an AI organisation — Chief AI Officer, VP of AI, Head of Applied Research, VP of ML Engineering, and equivalent roles. The work is the same as generalist executive search (full market map, confidential outreach, written assessments) but the calibration, networks, and comp benchmarks are specific to the frontier AI talent market.
How is AI talent acquisition different from traditional executive recruiting?
AI talent acquisition for leadership roles is a small-market problem. The pool of people who have actually shipped a production AI organisation at scale is in the low thousands globally. Generalist firms map titles; we map work — published research, papers shipped at NeurIPS / ICML, production systems built, teams hired and retained. Compensation is also non-standard: equity at frontier labs, comp ladders that don't map to enterprise SaaS, and counter-offers that move on different timelines.
Which AI leadership roles do you place?
Chief AI Officer (CAIO), VP of AI, Head of AI, VP of Machine Learning, Director of ML Platform, Head of Applied Research, Head of AI Product, VP of AI Engineering, and Founding ML Engineer / first-AI-hire mandates. We also work CTO and VP Engineering mandates where AI is the technical centre of gravity.
How long does an AI executive search take?
Most retained AI mandates produce a calibrated 8-person shortlist within six weeks of kickoff and place a finalist within 10–14 weeks. Closing time depends on whether the candidate is at a frontier lab (longer notice, equity vesting cliffs), at a hyperscaler (predictable but slow), or in a scale-up (fastest). We tell you what to expect on the kickoff call.
How do you calibrate AI talent technically?
Our search team is technical enough to read the work — papers, GitHub, system designs, internal architecture explanations — and translate it into a written assessment a board or CEO can act on. For roles requiring deep technical depth (Chief AI Officer, Head of Applied Research) we also bring in independent technical advisors from the AI research community.
How do you handle confidentiality in a small market?
By default. The frontier AI talent market is small enough that off-the-record outreach is the only sustainable approach. We work under NDA, control candidate-side disclosure, and never confirm the client's name without explicit permission. Most of our AI executive mandates run quietly — sometimes the role isn't public, sometimes the incumbent isn't aware.
Where do you place AI executives geographically?
Europe (Berlin, Munich, London, Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam), the United States (SF Bay Area, NYC, Seattle), and increasingly remote-first mandates where the leader's network matters more than location. We work cross-border by default — most senior AI hires today are international moves or distributed-leadership mandates.
How is this different from your generalist executive search?
It's the same retained engagement model, run by the same partners, with the same 12-month replacement guarantee. The difference is depth in one market: AI-specific market maps, technical calibration, comp benchmarks for frontier labs versus enterprise, and a network built specifically inside the AI research and applied-AI communities.

Proof

AI leadership searches that shipped.

Retained and milestone-based AI executive placements at AI-native and AI-adopting teams.

AI · Seed

Founding CTO

AI-native seed start-up · Munich / Amsterdam · Hybrid

Outcome

Shortlist of 10 in 1.5 months · 2 finalists · signed without a retainer

“They found a hands-on CTO who could architect the product and stay in the code — exactly the profile we'd struggled to define ourselves.”

— Founder & CEO

Read case study →

View all case studies →

Other ways we partner

Executive Search →

Retained C-suite and VP search across all sectors — CTO, CRO, Country Head, board mandates.

Embedded Recruitment →

A senior recruiter inside your team for 3–9 months, owning pipeline across many roles in one function.

AI & Tech roles →

Chief AI Officer, ML platform, applied research, and the broader AI tech roles we hire.

Hiring an AI leader?

One conversation,
complete confidentiality.

Start a conversation See success cases