Who we serve
Recruiting for AI Infrastructure Companies
Critical Path Hiring recruits the infrastructure teams inside AI companies: GPU and HPC engineering, distributed systems, platform engineering, SRE, observability, MLOps, model serving, inference performance and forward-deployed engineering. We separate those markets before sourcing, because one requisition written across all of them is a common reason an AI hiring plan stalls.
The hiring conditions we are called into
- A cluster or capacity commitment lands before the operating team exists.
- Research or product teams are maintaining infrastructure they should not own.
- Reliability moved from an internal target to a customer commitment.
- Inference cost and latency need an owner with authority over the serving stack.
Roles we recruit here
- GPU and HPC cluster engineers
- Distributed systems and storage engineers
- Platform engineers and SREs
- MLOps, LLMOps and model serving engineers
- Inference performance and cost engineers
- Forward-deployed and solutions engineers
Engagements
How the work is usually structured.
Fixed-fee research or fixed-monthly search capacity. Every commitment is a delivery standard, not a guaranteed hire.
Talent Intelligence Sprint
Fixed-scope market read before headcount is committed. See homepage engagement scopes.
Embedded Search Sprint
A recruiter inside your process for a defined sprint. See homepage engagement scopes.
Fractional Talent Partner
Recruiting leadership and systems support tied to your hiring plan.
Selective Executive Search
Focused search for a leadership seat that carries the plan.
FAQ
Questions buyers in this segment ask.
- Do you recruit AI researchers?
- No. We recruit the infrastructure layer that makes research and products run. Research and modeling hires are a different market and we say so rather than taking the search.
- How fast can a search start?
- Calibration happens first, and outreach follows once the scorecard and compensation band are agreed. Outcomes depend on role clarity, market conditions and decision speed.
- Can you help split one requisition into the right roles?
- Yes, and it is often the first deliverable. Splitting platform, reliability, deployment and customer-facing work into separate scorecards changes the candidate pool immediately.
Tell us what you need to build.
A short hiring diagnostic covers scope, market reality and compensation, and ends with a recommendation.