AI and ML hiring for US employers

Hire AI Engineers in India for US Companies

A US company can describe an AI roadmap faster than it can hire for it. Talhive runs dedicated search in India for applied AI and ML engineers, and judges them on the systems they shipped and ran. We recruit in India, not in the United States.

  • Judged on shipped systems, not titles
  • Milestone-based fees
  • 90-day replacement guarantee
Discuss your India AI team See how the hiring route fits
1,200+
Senior closes since 2016
270+
Founders, CHROs & GCC leaders served
20K+
Engineers in our proprietary pool
93%
Still in role at 12 months
Share your hiring brief
A senior team member responds within one business day

The quality of a search is determined early. Start with the role, the context, and what a strong hire looks like at 12 months.

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Selected clients
NBA · DNEG · Atlan · Loopio · Writesonic · Arya.ai · ketteQ · BRABENDER Group · Khatabook
Trusted on
Leadership and specialist search · India team builds · Off-market talent pools · High consequence hires
Who this is for

When the AI roadmap outgrows your home hiring pool

Product plans call for more applied engineers than a home team can hire, and the people who can own evaluation, data pipelines and model serving are the hardest to find. Some companies decide a second AI team in India is the answer.

Talhive runs engineering and AI hiring in India as dedicated search, not staffing. For wider engineering hiring, see the page for US companies hiring engineers in India.

Roles we search

Applied, platform and evaluation roles at each level

The level follows what the person must own, not their years in the field.

Applied ML and LLM engineers

Engineers who take a model feature from prototype to a service users depend on, including evaluation and failure handling. Our guide to AI engineer, ML engineer and data scientist helps choose the profile.

Data and MLOps engineers

People who build the pipelines, serving and monitoring that keep models reliable once real traffic arrives.

AI leads and heads of AI

Technical leaders who own an AI platform, set the evaluation bar and answer to a US head of AI or CTO. A leadership appointment can run as an executive search for US companies.

Areas covered
Applied ML
LLM systems
Evaluation
MLOps
AI platform
Assessment

Keywords and titles against evidence of shipped systems

Where screening on a CV misleads, and what Talhive weighs instead.

Keywords and titles
Evidence of shipped systems
Question asked
Which models and tools are listed?
What did the candidate ship, and what ran in production?
Strength
Fluent vocabulary
Decisions on data, evaluation and failure, explained plainly
Risk
Demo skill that does not hold in production
Surfaced by questions on what broke and how it was fixed
Output
A wide set of CVs to filter
A maximum of five profiles with written synopses
Working with the US

Sharing a working day with a US head of AI

The right pattern depends on your team.

Decide which meetings need both sides.

Design reviews and incident handovers may need live time with the lead. Daily implementation often does not.

Give the India team ownership, not tasks.

A team that owns a model, its evaluation and its release can work through its own day.

Write decisions down.

Evaluation criteria and trade-offs recorded in writing let both sides move without waiting for overlap.

The hiring route

Employing people in India is its own decision

The search and the way the person is employed are separate. Take legal and employment advice. Talhive does not provide entity setup or employer of record services.

  1. Stage one
    01

    Separate the decisions.

    Search first, route in parallel.

    • Your own entity, an employer of record or another partner
    • None of these changes who the right engineer is
  2. Stage two
    02

    Take advice early.

    Legal and employment questions are for your advisers.

  3. Stage three
    03

    Tell the search the route.

    The brief states how people will be employed.

    • Candidates will ask who their employer is
    • The answer shapes the offer
  4. Stage four
    04

    Close and protect.

    The search ends at joining, not at signature.

    • Offer strategy and counter-offer planning
    • Notice-period tracking until the start date
    • 90-day replacement guarantee
Frequently asked

What US AI leaders ask before sending a brief

Plain answers to the questions we hear most often about this search.

Staffing firms supply contract resources. Talhive does not run contract staffing. We run dedicated search for permanent AI hires, with passive market mapping, assessment across twelve dimensions, a shortlist of five profiles at most and milestone-based fees agreed before work begins.
No. Talhive recruits in India. We work for employers based in the United States who want to hire AI engineers there. For a hire located in the US, a different firm is the right partner.
Across twelve dimensions, with weight on production evidence: what the candidate shipped, how it was evaluated, what failed and how they responded. Each shortlisted profile has a written synopsis, and we share five profiles at most.
Yes. Approaches are named and individual, never advertised, and candidates agree confidentiality terms before they see company details. Before outreach we agree who at your company knows about the search and how updates reach them.
Searches are dedicated engagements with milestone-based fees agreed before work starts, rather than a fee that depends only on a placement. Placements carry a 90-day replacement guarantee. The terms are set for each mandate and explained before you commit.

Describe your India AI team to a founder.

Share the brief and a founder will respond. We will say honestly whether dedicated search is the right route.

Discuss your India AI team
India + Vietnam operating base: strong overlap across Europe, APAC, and scheduled US client windows
Privacy handled with EU-aligned standards: all candidate and client data managed under GDPR-aligned data protection practices
Markets covered: India, North America, Europe, and APAC

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