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Gaming and AI hiring insights

Practical guidance on hiring engineers and technical leaders for gaming and AI teams, from the Talentfinders search desk.

Gaming

How to hire gameplay engineers without slowing your build

Gameplay engineers are judged on feel, not just code. Here is what to screen for, how to structure the loop, and the signals that separate a shipper from a strong interviewer.

AI

ML engineer or applied AI engineer? Hiring for the right role

These two titles attract different candidates and solve different problems. Getting the distinction wrong is the most common reason AI searches stall.

Hiring process

Contingency or retained search: which one fits your role

The two engagement models change who carries the risk, how the work is prioritised, and how quickly a search moves. Here is how to choose.

Hiring process

The hiring scorecard that makes technical searches fast

Most slow searches are not sourcing problems. They are definition problems. A scorecard built before sourcing is what compresses the timeline.

Hiring process

Reducing time to hire without lowering the bar

Speed and quality are not opposites in hiring. Most of the delay in a technical search sits in coordination, not in evaluation.

Gaming

Hiring graphics and engine programmers: what to look for

Engine and rendering roles have the smallest candidate pool in games. A generic process will not find them, and a generic brief will not attract them.

AI

How to evaluate an AI engineering portfolio

Demos are easy and evaluation is hard. Here is how to tell a shipped AI system from an impressive prototype.

Gaming

Hiring backend engineers for live-service games

Live-service backends fail in public, at peak concurrency, on launch day. The hiring bar should reflect that.

AI

Hiring data platform engineers for games and AI teams

Data platform roles get written as analytics jobs and filled by analytics people. Here is how to brief and screen for the engineering version.

Leadership

Hiring engineering leadership: directors, VPs, and heads of studio

Leadership searches fail differently than IC searches. The candidate pool is smaller, the evidence is softer, and the cost of a mistake is larger.

Hiring process

Remote or onsite: what it costs your search either way

The remote decision changes your candidate pool more than any other requirement in the brief. Here is the honest tradeoff.

Hiring process

Why technical shortlists take weeks, and what actually fixes it

The delay is rarely a shortage of candidates. It is usually an undefined bar, a wide brief, and review work pushed onto engineers.