What Research roles do you place?

In Research we place: VP of Research, Director of Research and Heads of Research; Founding research engineers; Research scientists and research engineers; Specialists in world models, representation learning and reinforcement learning; Multimodal researchers across vision-language models, generative music and audio; Data research and dataset engineering.

Can you work with a stealth startup?

Yes, and a good share of our clients are. We run the search confidentially and do not name you until either the candidate is a long way through your process, or you tell us we can. You decide when that happens, not us. Several case studies on this site stay anonymous for the same reason.

How quickly can you deliver a shortlist?

Brief to shortlist is approx. one week. Brief to offer is approx. three weeks for a permanent (full-time) hire and approx. one week for a contract hire.

What we place

AI Research Recruitment for Startups and Labs

Digitalent, the AI/ML executive search firm, places research engineers and research scientists into VC-backed startups, labs and established companies across the US, UK and Australia. That includes founding research hires at companies still in stealth, where there is no brand to open the conversation with.

Get in touch Recent placements

Research at Digitalent

500+

AI/ML placements since January 2021

200+

executive and leadership hires

90%+

still in post after 12 months

By market: 300+ US, 100+ UK, 100+ Australia
By seniority: 200+ executive and leadership hires, 300+ senior individual contributors
Brief to shortlist: approx. one week
Brief to offer: approx. three weeks for a permanent (full-time) hire, approx. one week for a contract hire

Figures updated August 2026.

Roles

What we place in Research

These roles come up most often, at both leadership and senior individual contributor level.

VP of Research, Director of Research and Heads of Research
Founding research engineers
Research scientists and research engineers
Specialists in world models, representation learning and reinforcement learning
Multimodal researchers across vision-language models, generative music and audio
Data research and dataset engineering

The hard part

What makes these searches hard

Research hires are the hardest searches we run, and they are a genuinely different problem from applied engineering. The pool for one research direction can be a few hundred people worldwide, most of them mid-PhD or settled at an industrial lab, and none of them are looking.

The briefs are narrower than in any other area we work in. Not a research engineer, but somebody working on world models, or egocentric vision, or generative music and audio, or one specific corner of reinforcement learning. For a given direction the number of people doing serious work might be a few dozen, and they are not distributed conveniently. They are wherever the lab that funded the work happens to be.

So these searches are global out of necessity rather than ambition, and relocation is part of the conversation from the beginning rather than a complication at the end of it. We open them expecting to move somebody to the US or the UK, and we raise visas, timing and what a move actually costs a family at the first call rather than the offer stage.

Assessing them is a different job as well. Published work and where it landed, citation record, who supervised the doctorate and at which lab, and whether the interesting papers are the ones somebody led or the ones they were fifth author on. A CV tells you very little here. Google Scholar tells you a great deal.

These searches are then won on the quality of the approach rather than the volume of it, because everyone worth hiring is already being contacted by somebody. Where the people who fit will not move full time, we have built engagements around part-time residencies instead.

Case study

Placements in this area

Client names are withheld where the company is still in stealth.

A Founding Research Engineer at the intersection of world models and robotics

A Series A data research lab in New York, backed by a16z, hired its first research engineer through Digitalent while still in stealth.

The company was in stealth, so there was no brand to lead with in outreach, and the role sat at a rare intersection of world models and robotics, trained on a data type almost nobody has at scale. The technical bar set by the founding CTO was extremely high. The realistic pool was a few hundred people worldwide, most of them mid-PhD or settled in research posts at the major industrial labs. None of them were looking.

The founding hire was given the title Head of Robotics Research early on and now leads a multi-phase product roadmap, and the client came back to build the rest of the research team around them.

Client: Withheld, still in stealth
Stage: Series A
Funding: a16z-backed
Location: New York
Roles: Founding Research Engineer
Brief to shortlist: one week
Brief to offer: three weeks

A part-time research residency at a data research lab

Having placed the founding research engineer, the same New York lab needed a research bench. We built it as a part-time residency for people who would not have moved otherwise.

The people who could do this work would not take it. They were mid-PhD or settled in research posts at the major industrial labs, and none of them were going to leave for a conventional full-time role at a company still in stealth. Rather than keep approaching the same small pool with an offer they had already declined, we built the engagement around a part-time residency instead, which meant selling a working arrangement as much as a job.

Three researchers joined on that basis. Both founders have since committed to hiring the rest of the research bench through us exclusively.

Client: Withheld, still in stealth
Stage: Series A
Funding: a16z-backed
Location: New York
Roles: Three part-time researchers
Brief to shortlist: one week
Brief to offer: two weeks

Also

The other areas we cover

We work across 7 areas of AI and machine learning. Most clients hire across more than one.

FAQ

Research: frequently asked questions

What Research roles do you place?: In Research we place: VP of Research, Director of Research and Heads of Research; Founding research engineers; Research scientists and research engineers; Specialists in world models, representation learning and reinforcement learning; Multimodal researchers across vision-language models, generative music and audio; Data research and dataset engineering.
Can you work with a stealth startup?: Yes, and a good share of our clients are. We run the search confidentially and do not name you until either the candidate is a long way through your process, or you tell us we can. You decide when that happens, not us. Several case studies on this site stay anonymous for the same reason.
How quickly can you deliver a shortlist?: Brief to shortlist is approx. one week. Brief to offer is approx. three weeks for a permanent (full-time) hire and approx. one week for a contract hire.

Hiring in Research?

Tell us the role and the market. A short call is usually enough to tell you what the pool looks like for it.

Get in touch

Hiring in the US, the UK or Australia? You will reach the person who runs searches in that market.