About
About Critical Path Hiring
Critical Path Hiring is run by Czarina Tabayoyong. We recruit the people who design, build, commission and run data centers and the AI infrastructure inside them.
Czarina Tabayoyong
Founder and Principal Recruiter, Critical Path Hiring
Founder
Czarina Tabayoyong is the founder and principal recruiter, with more than 15 years of technical recruiting experience across software engineering, cloud infrastructure, platform, AI and ML. Her background includes recruiting cloud and data center architecture talent at AWS Professional Services, supporting high-volume recruiting across multiple job families at Amazon, recruiting for Google, and building PMO and project delivery recruiting for hyperscale data center buildouts across active campuses in Texas and Virginia.
She scopes every engagement, runs the research, makes the screening decisions and stays on through the start date. She uses AI tools to organize research and find candidates. She decides who gets submitted.
Focus
We only recruit for data center and AI infrastructure teams. The candidate pools are small, concentrated in a few metros, and mostly employed. The vocabulary takes years to learn. Working in one area lets us tell an employer early when a role can't be filled as written.
Purpose
An open commissioning, controls or platform role can delay a project or leave a live site short-staffed. Czarina builds each search around the actual work the person will do, and the employer keeps the market research for the next hire.
Clients
Hyperscale and colocation operators, GPU cloud and AI platform teams, EPC and commissioning firms, and OEMs. Searches are frequently confidential: replacing a site lead, standing up a team before a build is announced, or checking a market quietly before anyone knows you're hiring.
Disciplines
Roles
Each role has a hiring guide with pay ranges, screening questions and common hiring mistakes.
- Critical Facilities Engineer
What to screen for, what it pays and where the hiring risk is.
- Commissioning Agent (CxA)
What to screen for, what it pays and where the hiring risk is.
- Data Center Technician
What to screen for, what it pays and where the hiring risk is.
- MEP Coordinator
What to screen for, what it pays and where the hiring risk is.
- Data Center Construction Project Manager
What to screen for, what it pays and where the hiring risk is.
- GPU Cluster Engineer
What to screen for, what it pays and where the hiring risk is.
Adjacent seats we support inside the same programs: facilities managers and chief engineers, controls and BMS specialists, QA/QC inspectors, schedulers, and site launch leadership. See every role we recruit.
Markets
Markets
Each market page covers who's competing for the same people, what drives pay, and where candidates are hardest to find.
Searches also run across the United States for traveling commissioning and construction talent, and remote-first for AI infrastructure engineering.
Standards
Standards
Hard news
If a role is not fillable as written, the compensation band is short of the market, or a staffing firm is the better answer, Czarina addresses it in the first conversation.
One recruiter
The person who calibrates the role runs the research, the outreach and the offer. There is no handoff to an account manager or a junior sourcer.
Infrastructure only
The vocabulary, pay levels and employer mix in these disciplines take years to learn.
Research ownership
Target company lists, outreach messages, pay data and pipeline notes go to your team when an engagement ends.
Commitments
We commit to research depth, outreach volume, reporting cadence and response times. Outcomes depend on market conditions, scope, compensation and process speed.
AI use
AI assists with market mapping, research organization and drafting. Czarina owns and documents every screening and submission decision.
Candidate treatment
Candidates receive the role scope, compensation range, constraints and an answer either way.
Name
Name
Critical Path Hiring (criticalpathhiring.com) is a U.S. recruiting firm for data center and AI infrastructure employers, founded in 2025 by Czarina Tabayoyong. It is not affiliated with Critical Path, Inc., Critical Path Search Group or the Critical Path Institute.
Method
Search stages
The same six steps run on every engagement, with the depth adjusted to the model you buy.
- Step 1
Brief
A written role brief, a scorecard agreed with the hiring manager, and a check of scope, pay and location against the candidate market before outreach starts.
- Step 2
Market map
A named list of target companies across AI infrastructure firms, operators, EPCs and OEMs, built with AI tools and checked against people we already know.
- Step 3
Outreach
Direct outreach from Czarina, with a weekly report on how many people were contacted, who replied and why people passed.
- Step 4
Screening
Screens against the scorecard, a written case for each candidate including the risks, and their pay expectations on the record.
- Step 5
Offer
Offer planning, a read on counteroffer risk, and help with the resignation and any relocation through the start date.
- Step 6
Handover
Your team keeps the pipeline, research files, messaging and comp data. The work stays with you when the engagement ends.
What the engagement requires from you
- A named hiring sponsor who can make decisions
- An approved compensation range before outreach begins
- Feedback on submitted candidates within 48 hours
- Interview slots held open during the active search window
We commit to delivery standards, research depth, outreach volume, reporting cadence and response times. Outcomes depend on market conditions, scope, compensation and process speed.
Hiring diagnostic
Tell us the roles and the deadline. We'll tell you what we would do, including when you don't need a search.