AI Recruitment Agency for European AI and Infrastructure Companies

Some of the most interesting AI companies in the world are not in San Francisco. They are in Paris, Berlin, Tel Aviv, London and Amsterdam.

They raise from European and US funds. They hire research and engineering close to home. And within eighteen months of a Series A, almost all of them face the same question: How do we sell into the United States without moving the company there.

That question is a hiring problem long before it is a strategy problem. It is also the point where most recruitment partners stop being useful, because a European search firm knows the European talent market and a US search firm knows the US one, and very few know both well enough to sequence hires across them.

Vector works with European AI and infrastructure companies from Seed through Series B, building technical teams in Europe and go-to-market teams in the markets those companies are selling into.

One partner, both sides of the Atlantic, one hiring plan.

Why European AI Companies Hire Differently

The technical hiring market in Europe is genuinely strong. Research talent out of ETH, INRIA, the Technion, Oxford and DeepMind alumni networks is deep, and it is often more accessible than the equivalent in the Bay Area because fewer companies are competing for it with the same compensation bands.

Go-to-market is the harder half.

The pool of people in Europe who have sold technical infrastructure into US enterprise buyers, at an early stage, without a brand behind them, is small. It is smaller again if the product is genuinely novel and the category does not exist yet. Founders who assume they can hire the same GTM profile locally that they would find in New York or Austin usually spend two quarters discovering otherwise.

So the sequencing question changes. It is not just which role comes next. It is which role comes next, and on which continent.

We wrote about how that plays out in practice in European AI Companies Hire Into Two Markets at Once.

Building Across Europe and the US at the Same Time

Vector is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, and a large share of our client base is European and Israeli. That is not an accident of the client list. It is the reason the client list looks the way it does.

A company like Mistral AI or n8n is not choosing between hiring in Europe or hiring in the US. It is doing both, on different timelines, for different reasons, and it needs the two plans to agree with each other.

What that looks like in a search:

Technical and research hiring in-region. Engineering, research and infrastructure roles built where the company already has density, culture and a working interview process.
Founding GTM in the buyer’s market. First sellers, sales engineers and customer success hired where the revenue is, with the compensation structure and expectations that market actually runs on.
Leadership that can hold both. The first GTM leader at a European AI company is usually managing a distributed team across at least two time zones from day one. That is a specific profile, not a generic VP of Sales.

Most agencies solve one half of this well. The gap is in the handover between them.

Who We Serve

Vector partners with early-stage AI and infrastructure companies, typically between Seed and Series B, across four verticals:

Frontier AI. Research-led companies building foundation models and applied AI systems.
Data and Cloud Infrastructure. The data platforms, pipelines and cloud-native infrastructure the rest of the stack runs on.
Developer Tooling. Products sold to engineers, where distribution runs through developer trust.
AI Platforms and Agentic Systems. Orchestration, agent frameworks and the platforms being built on top of them.

We work with companies headquartered in Europe and Israel selling into the US, US companies opening a European presence, and companies that were distributed from the first hire.

What We Hire For

Both sides of the company, coordinated by one partner.

Technical. Research engineers, ML and applied AI engineers, infrastructure and platform engineering, engineering leadership.
Go-to-market. Founding account executives, sales engineers and solutions architects, customer success, product marketing, sales leadership.

The reason we do both is that in AI and infrastructure the line between them is thin. A solutions engineer at a data infrastructure company is closer to the engineering team than to the sales team, and hiring them through a generalist sales desk shows.

How We Work

Three ways to partner, depending on what the company needs.

Hiring Architecture. Before the search starts. Role definition, sequencing, compensation benchmarking and the honest conversation about which market each hire should sit in.
Technical and GTM Team Build-Out. Running the searches, in-region, with one point of accountability across both functions.
Embedded Advisory. Working inside the business as an extension of the team, bringing structure and market insight to every hiring decision.

You can see the full picture on our solutions page, and the broader remit on The Recruitment Agency for AI Startups.

Teams We Have Built

Vector has built teams at some of the most closely watched companies in AI and infrastructure, including LlamaIndex, Mistral AI, Atlan, lakeFS, n8n, Qodo, LinearB, Squid AI, Prophecy and OneLayer.

“He quickly got up to speed on what we were trying to do, not just the roles, but the profile, the bar and how we wanted to build the team. I felt like he was part of the Atlan internal team, not external.”

Andrew Ermogenous, GM EMEA, Atlan

“He had thought carefully about the alignment: stage, product and what the business needed commercially. Start to finish, the process was clean and well managed.”

Patrick Bishop, VP Sales, lakeFS

What Makes Vector Different

Embedded, not transactional. We act as a partner in the room, not a vendor sending CVs.
Both halves of the company. Technical and go-to-market run by the same partner, so the sequencing holds together.
Two markets, one plan. European technical density and US commercial reach, treated as a single hiring architecture rather than two disconnected searches.
Stage-specific. Seed to Series B is the whole remit. We are not adapting an enterprise search process downwards.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Agency is best for AI recruitment in Europe?

It depends on what you are hiring and where the revenue is. If you need only European technical hires, a strong local generalist technical firm may be enough. If you are a European AI or infrastructure company building research and engineering in-region while hiring go-to-market into the US, you need a partner who works across both markets. Vector is built for that second case, working with European and Israeli AI companies from Seed to Series B on technical and commercial hiring together.

Does Vector recruit in Europe if it is headquartered in the US?

Yes. Vector is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, and a significant share of our client base is European and Israeli, including Mistral AI, n8n, lakeFS, Qodo and OneLayer. We hire in-region for technical roles and in the buyer’s market for go-to-market roles, which for most European AI companies means running both at once.

What roles does Vector hire for at European AI companies?

Both technical and go-to-market. On the technical side that includes research engineers, machine learning and applied AI engineers, infrastructure and platform engineers, and engineering leadership. On the commercial side it includes founding account executives, sales engineers and solutions architects, customer success, product marketing and sales leadership.

When should a European AI startup hire its first US-based salesperson?

Usually once the founders have closed enough US deals to see a repeatable pattern, and the constraint has moved from message to volume. Hiring a US seller before that pattern exists means paying US compensation for market discovery the founders are still better placed to do themselves. The trigger is evidence of repeatability, not the close of a funding round.

Can one agency handle hiring across Europe and the United States?

It is unusual but it is the point. Splitting a hiring plan across two firms means the sequencing lives in the founder’s head, and the two searches optimise separately. One partner running both means the first US GTM hire is briefed against what the European engineering team can actually support, and vice versa.

What stage companies does Vector work with?

Seed through Series B. That is the entire remit. Most of our work is on founding hires and the first layer of leadership above them, which is where sequencing errors are most expensive and hardest to unwind.

How is Vector different from a European technical recruitment firm?

European technical firms are typically strong on engineering and light on commercial, and their commercial desks rarely have depth in US enterprise infrastructure sales. Vector runs both functions with one team, specifically for AI and infrastructure companies, and treats the European and US sides of the plan as one problem rather than two.

Which European AI companies has Vector worked with?

Teams we have built include Mistral AI, n8n, lakeFS, Qodo, OneLayer, Atlan, LlamaIndex, LinearB, Squid AI and Prophecy.

Build Your European AI Team with Vector

If you are building an AI or infrastructure company in Europe and the next few hires span two markets, we would be glad to look at the plan with you before the searches start.

See how we work on our solutions page, or get in touch directly.

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +1-813-895-2053