Match on the First Resume: How We Found a Founding AI Engineer for Finalyst
IT recruiter in Lucky Hunter
Karina Kovalenok
About the company
Finalyst is a fintech startup building an AI solution for automatic revenue leak detection for payment processors, PSPs, and ISOs.
Fintech / AI
Industry
2- 10 people
Team Size
An AI analyst that connects transaction data with business context to identify pricing discrepancies, contract mismatches, and settlement anomalies.
Key Feature
Main Task
The goal was to find a Founding AI Engineer capable of independently building MVPs and quickly validating hypotheses in an early-stage startup environment.
Who We Were Looking For
- Experience building zero-to-one products and AI infrastructure: RAG pipelines, multi-agent systems, production LLM integrations
- Stack: Python, TypeScript/Node.js or Go, LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, AWS/GCP/Azure
- High level of autonomy and ownership mindset
- Readiness to work at the fast pace of an early-stage startup
Challenges
We needed an engineer with real production experience in LLM/RAG/multi-agent systems: not theoretical knowledge, but a proven track record of launched products. On top of that, the candidate had to be ready to build MVPs from scratch without established processes and handle a high degree of uncertainty.
Our solution
The key was a thorough profile briefing at the very start: we discussed the technical requirements, as well as the product specifics, team culture, and the exact mindset the ideal candidate should have.
We documented everything in a follow-up after the initial call. It allowed us to start a highly targeted search without unnecessary back-and-forth.
As a result, the very first candidate we submitted turned out to be exactly the person the client was looking for.
We documented everything in a follow-up after the initial call. It allowed us to start a highly targeted search without unnecessary back-and-forth.
As a result, the very first candidate we submitted turned out to be exactly the person the client was looking for.
5 weeks
Time to Close
233
Resumes Screened
1
Vacancies Closed
Поиск Senior Java-разработчика в международную компанию всего за 4 дня
The key to this case was taking the time to thoroughly work through the profile with the client from the very start. Having a clear understanding of the requirements from the first call helped us hit the target straight away.
Recruiter’s Feedback
We were looking for a Founding AI Engineer – a pretty rare profile with strong production experience in LLM, RAG, and multi-agent systems.
We clicked with Lucky Hunter right away: from the very first briefing, the team understood exactly who we needed, asked the right questions, and got deep into our product without wasting our time.
What impressed us most was the speed and precision – the first candidate turned out to be exactly the person we were looking for.
Highly recommend!
We clicked with Lucky Hunter right away: from the very first briefing, the team understood exactly who we needed, asked the right questions, and got deep into our product without wasting our time.
What impressed us most was the speed and precision – the first candidate turned out to be exactly the person we were looking for.
Highly recommend!
Sergey
Karina Kovalenok
IT-recruiter in Lucky Hunter
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