Skip to main content
RecruoRecruo
Scope a role

Find the right specialisation

Hire the AI engineer your product needs.

Start with the problem this person will own. Compare seven specialisations, see what we assess, and give your team a clear brief for the search.

Standard: 18% of first-year salary. $2,000 credited at launch; balance when your hire starts. Search scope and terms agreed before payment.

Send my AI role briefSee a sample scorecard

Which role matches your hiring need?

These responsibilities can overlap. Choose a primary outcome and the level of ownership you need, then use the relevant guide to define the evidence you want to see.

AI/ML engineer

Connects a product problem to data, modelling, evaluation and deployment. Can compare a conventional ML approach with an LLM or a simpler software solution.

Hire when: You need one owner to turn a defined AI use case into a measurable product outcome, with the breadth agreed in the brief.

LLM engineer

Owns the quality, latency and cost of a language-model feature: model selection, context design, integration, evaluation and production behaviour.

Hire when: An LLM feature needs a technical owner who can diagnose quality failures and operate it within your product constraints.

RAG engineer

Owns ingestion, retrieval and the context supplied to the model. Tests search relevance, document freshness, permissions and whether answers are supported by the retrieved evidence.

Hire when: Your application must answer reliably from a changing or access-controlled collection of documents.

AI evals engineer

Builds evaluation datasets, grading criteria and release checks. Separates a model-quality change from dataset problems or inconsistent human judgements.

Hire when: You release AI features but cannot reliably tell which changes improve quality, which regressions matter or when to block a release.

Agentic AI developer

Designs tool-using workflows with explicit permissions, state, retries, stopping conditions and human approvals. Assesses where autonomous decisions add value.

Hire when: Your product needs multi-step actions across tools and someone must own correctness, recovery and control of those actions.

ML platform engineer

Builds shared infrastructure for training, deployment, inference and monitoring. Matches operational choices to workload, reliability and cost requirements.

Hire when: Repeated deployment work, production incidents or infrastructure cost are slowing the team; team size alone does not decide this hire.

Generative AI engineer

Builds product features that generate text, images or audio. Connects model capabilities to the interface, evaluation and content constraints for the modalities you need.

Hire when: A generation feature needs product and engineering ownership, particularly when the experience crosses more than one modality.

Across Recruo searches

Our recruitment results so far

Company-wide observations reported by Recruo’s founder on 11 September 2026. These describe our overall experience, rather than a separate cohort for this role or region.

Pass every client assessment stage

≈9/10

Presented candidates who successfully pass the client’s full assessment process, including technical interviews.

Candidates the client would offer to

≈4/5

Client willingness to make an offer after assessment. Offers sent, accepted and hires are separate outcomes.

Completed probation periods passed

100%

All placed candidates whose probation has concluded have passed so far. Ongoing probation periods are excluded.

How to read these results

Pass every client assessment stage: Candidates who pass all client assessment stages, relative to candidates presented. Around 9 in 10 is an approximate company-wide observation, not a published sample of exactly ten people. Offers, acceptance and starts are separate outcomes; sample size, reporting period and treatment of ongoing assessments are not yet published.

Candidates the client would offer to: Presented candidates the client considers suitable for an offer, divided by candidates presented. Around 4 in 5 describes willingness to offer; it does not mean four offers or hires for every five candidates.

Completed probation periods passed: Placed candidates who passed probation, divided by placements whose probation period has ended. Probation lengths vary by engagement; this is not a 90-day retention measure or a guarantee of future outcomes.

Sample sizes and the reporting period are not yet published. The candidate ratios are approximate; none of these results is a forecast for your vacancy.

From an open role to assessed finalists

01

Agree the brief

Define the first deliverable, must-have skills, budget, work location and interview stages. Agree the assessment criteria, launch date and 60-day search window before payment.

02

Source and assess

We run active sourcing and outreach. AI-assisted screening and role-specific technical interviews support the recruiter’s assessment of relevant experience and evidence.

03

Review and interview

Meet finalists who have passed all agreed technical and soft-skill stages, with interest, compensation expectations and availability confirmed. Your engineers review the evidence and run their own interviews with candidates who passed those stages. We support the process through to hire.

Choose how you hire

A full-service search or active sourcing for your team?

Standard recruitment takes your role through sourcing and the agreed technical and soft-skill assessments to finalists with confirmed expectations. The total fee is 18% of first-year salary: $2,000 credited at launch and the balance when your hire starts. Review the 60-day search, refund and replacement terms.

Recruo Pipeline provides active sourcing: candidate research, outreach and follow-ups for your roles. Your team reviews interested candidates in the included Recruo ATS and runs interviews with the AI agent, note taker and voice assistant. The subscription starts at $3,500 per month for two active roles, with onboarding and training included; explore Pipeline.

Executive Search covers confidential leadership mandates with an exclusive search and staged payments agreed privately. Discuss the right engagement with our team.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Start with the problem this person must own and the support already available. A generalist can suit a scoped first AI feature. A specialist can be the right first hire if retrieval, evaluation or infrastructure is the main problem. Team size and job title alone are not enough to decide. Send us the intended deliverable and current team setup, and we can help scope the role.

The total Standard fee is 18% of first-year salary. Pay $2,000 to launch, fully credited toward that fee, and the balance when your hire starts. A 90-day replacement guarantee provides one replacement search under agreed conditions. For a contractor engagement, agree the annual fee basis in the mandate. Compensation, employer costs and any EOR charges are separate from recruitment fees.

Standard runs for 60 calendar days from the agreed launch date. If no qualifying finalist has been introduced by the end of business day 15, you can end the search and receive your $2,000 launch payment back. A qualifying finalist has passed all agreed technical and soft-skill stages, with interest, compensation expectations and availability confirmed. The first introduction does not end our work; hiring decisions and candidate acceptance remain with you and the candidate.

We assess the work relevant to your role through a technical interview, project walkthroughs and recruiter review. Public work can help, but confidential systems can be discussed using redacted examples or an architecture walkthrough without exposing employer information. We assess the candidate’s contribution, decisions and reasoning. Your team makes the final hiring decision.

Our role guides focus on Central and Eastern Europe. We agree actual work location, availability, working-hour overlap and job-related language requirements with you. Employee, contractor and EOR arrangements have different costs and requirements; we confirm the intended setup before sourcing. A country of residence does not establish someone’s skills or work authorisation.

Yes. $3,500 per month covers active sourcing for 2 concurrent roles: candidate research, outreach and follow-ups handled by Recruo. Interested candidates arrive in your included Recruo ATS workspace for review. Your team runs interviews with the AI agent, note taker and voice assistant. Recruitment tools, onboarding and team training are included; additional active-role capacity is agreed with sales.

Get started

Tell us what this hire needs to achieve

Share the role, a JD link or the product problem. We will help confirm the specialisation, budget and search scope before the mandate starts.

$2,000 to launch

Fully credited toward the 18% Standard fee

90-day guarantee

One replacement search under agreed conditions

Human review

Recruiters review the screening evidence

Your hiring request
Prefer to scope it live? Book a 30-min call →

We use these details to respond to your request. Read our Privacy Policy.

Hiring guides and working terms

Hire by location

Further reading