Foundational AI Architecture
The numbers that mattered
A stealth-mode AI venture developing a first-of-its-kind multi-modal agent required a founding engineer to architect their entire technical foundation. As the company’s first external hire, the mandate demanded an individual capable of owning the complete stack, from LLM training pipelines to scalable product infrastructure, while establishing the engineering standards for the future team. The search targeted a rare tier of talent: a builder who possessed both the deep academic rigor of multi-modal reasoning and the hands-on resilience required to deliver in a zero-to-one environment. Identifying this 'foundational' hire was the primary bottleneck to the firm's product launch and long-term technical maturity.
Roles filled
Founding Engineer
Time to shortlist
Days to deliver the first qualified candidates
Still employed
Founding hire remains with the company
Time to hire
Search completed
The venture faced a fundamental execution gap: their product roadmap was in stasis without a founding engineer capable of bridging the gap between high-level AI research and production-grade infrastructure. Finding an individual with hands-on LLM training experience and the zero-to-one resilience to build a multi-modal agent from scratch was the primary hurdle in a hyper-competitive market.
We engineered a search for elite AI research and systems talent.
Our process involved direct sourcing from top-tier AI labs and research groups to identify builders with hands-on experience in LLM training and distributed compute. Beyond traditional sourcing, we conducted deep technical validation of multi-modal architectures and systems-level expertise to ensure the candidate could own the roadmap from zero to one. By partnering closely with the founders to refine equity benchmarking and cultural alignment, we secured a technical anchor capable of setting the company’s engineering standards and de-risking their path to MVP.
Securing the Technical Catalyst for MVP and Market Validation.
Within weeks of joining, the engineer successfully designed and deployed the core LLM training pipeline and early multi-modal agent capabilities. By establishing the startup’s engineering standards and foundational infrastructure, they provided the technical maturity required to ship the firm's first working MVP. This hire did more than just build product; they became the technical foundation of the company’s long-term roadmap, enabling the founders to validate their direction with both users and investors with absolute authority.
Delivered a high-signal shortlist of elite AI researchers within 10 days of the search launch.
Secured a founding hire with hands-on LLM training experience and zero-to-one engineering grit.
De-risked the product roadmap by shipping the company's first MVP and establishing foundational technical standards.
"Finding a founding engineer with deep LLM training experience and the grit to build from zero felt like an impossible search. Thyme didn’t just understand the technical nuances of multi-modal agents; they moved with incredible speed to secure a technical anchor who has fundamentally shaped our product trajectory and engineering standards."
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