About Sunray Hire
Sunray Hire is a founder-led direct-hire recruiting practice for AI, ML, GenAI, data science, and data engineering roles. We help U.S. companies find specialized technical talent through targeted sourcing, candidate qualification, and practical technical screening judgment.
AI / ML / Data Specialization
Focused on technical AI and data roles
Passive Candidate Sourcing
Direct outreach to passive candidates
PhD-Level Technical Evaluation
Screened by PhD-qualified AI/ML experts
Why AI/ML/data recruiting requires specialization
AI, ML, and data science roles are hard to evaluate with standard recruiting approaches. The terminology is dense, the tooling changes quickly, and the practical gap between candidates who talk about AI and candidates who have built real production systems is large and easy to miss.
Generic recruiters tend to screen on keywords — Python, LLMs, data pipelines — without understanding whether the experience behind those words is relevant to the actual role. That produces weak shortlists, wasted interview time, and mis-hires.
AI Engineer, ML Engineer, and Data Scientist are distinct disciplines with different skill profiles, different day-to-day work, and different hiring bar. Sourcing and screening should be calibrated to the specific role — not applied generically.
AI and data resumes are noisy
Many candidates list LLMs, RAG, MLOps, and Python without having owned real production work. Surface-level keyword matching misses this.
The best candidates are usually passive
Strong AI/ML/data engineers are rarely on job boards. Finding them requires direct outreach to people who are not actively looking.
Generic screens miss the real bar
What constitutes strong work in ML engineering is different from software engineering or data analytics. The evaluation criteria need to match the role.
Mis-hires are expensive
A wrong hire at the ML engineer or data scientist level sets back a team significantly. Getting the shortlist right matters.
How we work
Every search follows the same focused process — from intake through offer support.
Hiring intake
We start by understanding the role deeply — must-have skills, compensation range, team context, interview process, and what success looks like in the first 6–12 months.
Targeted sourcing
We build a focused list of candidates based on relevant experience signals, not just job title matches. Most outreach goes to people who are not actively searching.
Candidate qualification
We contact candidates directly, qualify interest and fit, confirm compensation alignment and location expectations, and assess communication before any introduction.
PhD-level technical evaluation
Candidates are evaluated by PhD-qualified AI/ML experts with direct research and production experience. We assess whether a candidate has actually done the work — not just whether their resume uses the right terms.
Shortlist
We present a tight shortlist of qualified candidates with context on each — background, fit rationale, compensation, and any open questions for your team.
Interview and offer support
We support scheduling, candidate follow-up, feedback loops, and communication through offer and acceptance.
About the practice
Sunray Hire is a founder-led practice. Searches are handled directly — not handed off to junior sourcers or run through generic pipelines. We work on a focused number of searches at a time so each one receives the attention it requires.
Candidate evaluation is supported by PhD-level technical consultants with direct AI, ML, and data experience — people who have done this work in research and production settings, not generalists who learned the terminology. This is one of the clearest ways Sunray Hire differs from generalist recruiting firms. We are U.S.-based and work with U.S. companies.
We do not submit candidate information to employers without explicit candidate consent. Before any representation, we discuss the role, company, compensation range, and process with the candidate directly.
PhD-level technical evaluation
Candidates assessed by PhD-qualified AI/ML experts with real production experience
U.S.-based
Wesley Chapel, FL · working with U.S. companies
Founder-led
Direct attention on every search — no hand-offs
SAM.gov registered
Registered business entity
WOSB-aligned ownership
Woman-owned small business structure
Candidate-consent first
No resume submission without explicit permission
Ready to start a search?
Submit your open role and we will respond within one business day.