We offer full-service technology recruiting and fractional CTO services, including executive search, distributed hiring, startup placements, and specialized AI/ML roles.
Our recruiters are all highly technical, so we know exactly how to highlight roles, screen, and close candidates.
You need to move fast, with people who are willing to work hard and bet big. It's tough to be cash-competitive, so you need to sell people on the vision and the value of your equity. We get it!
If you recruit like a big company, you won't get the talent you need. That's why you need a firm with startup experience. As experienced founders ourselves, we utilize specialized channels, job descriptions, and outreach and sales strategies to find candidates who are excited to take the plunge with you, moving with velocity to stand your best team up fast! Since founders can be critical to selling candidates at this stage, we partner closely with (and can advise) your team to create great candidate experiences from start to finish.
Like an early employee, we're willing to reduce our fees in exchange for equity. We are also happy to place co-founders and first employees.
Michael Barnathan began coding at age 7 and has over two decades of experience in the tech industry, as well as a PhD in Machine Learning from Temple University. He currently lives in NYC, with extensive talent networks in NYC, the SF Bay Area, Denver, Washington DC, and Melbourne.
Founder of two acquired startups as well as the Head of ML Engineering at Cash App, Newsfeed Recommendation Infrastructure Lead at Meta, Head of ML at Niantic (the maker of Pokemon GO), and Director of Software Engineering at Amplify Education, Michael has sourced and screened thousands of engineers and data scientists, made thousands of hiring and leveling decisions, built software and AI teams of up to 150 people, designed orgcharts, career ladders, hiring plans, and interview loops for companies of all sizes, and closed hundreds of technical and executive candidates at all levels from L3 SWE to VPE/CTO roles. His work has been featured in TechCrunch, CNET, Wired, Huffington Post, HackADay, Android Police, and EdSurge.
Michael became known as a natural talent magnet across all of his roles, staffing large, high quality teams at blistering speed and inspiring others to join the areas he led. After spinning up several 25 person teams in under 6 months and a 150 person team in under a year, Michael founded CTO-Led Recruiting to share his talent and passion in this area with the world.
When you work with CTO-Led, Michael will be your direct point of contact.
