Harrison Clarke recruits for startups across Infrastructure, Software & Product, AI, Data & Research, and Go-to-Market.
Build and run systems that stay reliable and secure as your product, team, and customer base grow.
Build the systems your business depends on
Infrastructure recruiting connects startups with the people who build, secure, scale, and operate their technical foundations. Harrison Clarke covers cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, site reliability, and security, from the first dedicated hire to the leaders building those teams.
Your product is growing. The systems behind it need to keep up. You may need to make releases safer, prepare for enterprise requirements, reduce operational strain, or give engineers a platform they can build on.
We need to scale without slowing the team down
Build and maintain the environments where software runs. This includes cloud architecture, infrastructure as code, Kubernetes, deployment tooling, and internal developer platforms.
We look at what they built, who used it, and how it changed the engineering team’s ability to ship.
Keep services dependable as usage and complexity grow. The work spans site reliability engineering, observability, incident response, capacity planning, performance, and cloud cost management.
We explore how they handled failures, set service expectations, and reduced recurring operational work.
Protect the product, infrastructure, and the people using them. This includes cloud and application security, identity and access, detection and response, and security leadership.
We examine the risks they owned and how they improved security within the constraints of a growing company.
Operating a mature platform is different from building the first one. We research the scale, team size, and constraints behind someone’s experience, then connect that evidence to the work your startup needs done.
A platform only helps if the product team can use it. We clarify where infrastructure ownership ends and application ownership begins.
Software & ProductTurn what customers need into something they use
Software and product recruiting covers the people who decide what to build, bring it to life, and keep improving it. Harrison Clarke recruits product managers, software engineers, and engineering leaders for startups moving from an early prototype to products and teams that can scale.
You may be taking a prototype to market, expanding a product, supporting more demanding customers, or giving a growing engineering team direction. The right hire depends on the decisions they will own, not just the languages they know.
We need to turn the prototype into a product customers choose
Build the applications, services, and interfaces people rely on. Our coverage includes full stack, backend, frontend, product engineering, and forward deployed engineering.
We trace a person’s contribution from technical decisions through delivery and customer use.
Understand customer problems, decide what matters next, and connect those decisions to delivery. This includes product discovery, prioritization, product management, and product leadership.
We explore how they chose what to build, worked with engineers, and learned from what happened after launch.
Set technical direction and build a team that can deliver it. The work includes architecture, engineering management, team design, hiring, and the transition from founder-led engineering.
We separate the work they owned directly from the achievements of the wider team and examine how they developed others.
A strong builder in a large organization may have had support your startup cannot yet provide. We investigate what they delivered with a small team, how they handled ambiguity, and where they needed help.
When AI is part of the product, we distinguish building the application from developing, evaluating, and operating the models behind it.
AI, Data & ResearchTurn new knowledge into working technology
AI, data, and research recruiting brings together the people exploring new methods, developing intelligent systems, and building the data foundations behind them. Harrison Clarke covers foundational and applied research, AI and machine learning engineering, and data engineering and science.
You may need to investigate a research question, move a model into production, build an AI agent, or make your data reliable enough to support the product. Those are different problems and often require different kinds of experience.
We need the model to work beyond the demo
Investigate difficult questions and test new approaches. The work includes model research, experimentation, evaluation, and translating research into capabilities a product team can use.
We examine the research contribution, the experiments they owned, and the connection between their work and your technical problem.
Build, evaluate, deploy, and maintain AI systems. This includes machine learning engineering, LLM applications, AI agents, inference, model evaluation, and production ML systems.
We look beyond a demo to how they evaluated behavior, handled failure, and balanced quality, latency, and cost.
Make data useful and dependable. Coverage includes data pipelines and platforms, analytics engineering, experimentation, statistical modeling, and data science.
We explore data quality, the decisions their work supported, and whether they built the foundations or worked on top of them.
A research title or a list of AI tools does not explain someone’s contribution. We investigate the methods they developed, the decisions they made, and the evidence that their work fits the problem you are trying to solve.
Training and serving models can depend on specialized systems work. We define whether the need is model development, ML infrastructure, or both.
InfrastructureFind your market and build a way to grow it
Go-to-market recruiting covers the people who help startups reach customers, win their business, and grow those relationships. Harrison Clarke recruits across marketing and growth, sales and account management, customer success, and commercial leadership.
You may be turning founder-led sales into a repeatable process, entering a new market, building demand, or improving retention. We start with the product, buyer, and stage of the business before defining the experience you need.
We need our first customers to become a repeatable business
Identify the audience, sharpen the message, and build demand. This includes product marketing, positioning, demand generation, growth marketing, and marketing leadership.
We explore the market they entered, the channels they built, and how their work connected to customer acquisition.
Turn interest into revenue and expand existing accounts. The work includes founding sales, enterprise sales, sales engineering, account management, and sales leadership.
We distinguish creating demand from inheriting a pipeline and examine the buyer, deal complexity, and support behind their results.
Help customers adopt the product, achieve their goals, and grow their relationship with the business. This includes onboarding, customer success, retention, expansion, and customer leadership.
We research how they worked with customers and product teams, handled risk, and identified opportunities to expand.
Selling an established product is different from opening a market. We research what someone built before there was a playbook, the resources around them, and how closely that experience matches your next stage.
Sales engineers and forward deployed engineers can sit close to both the product and the customer. We clarify whether the primary outcome is winning business or delivering software.
Software & ProductYour next hire may sit between disciplines. We define the primary outcome and the experience that matters, then build the search around it.
See how we define the workWho owns model quality, who builds the application, and who makes it dependable in production?
What must change in the sales approach, product, and security before enterprise customers can commit?
Does this person need to build the solution, shape the buying decision, or connect both?
A few questions that help define the search.
Harrison Clarke recruits for startups across four connected areas: Infrastructure; Software & Product; AI, Data & Research; and Go-to-Market. Together, these cover the people building and operating the technology, developing the product, advancing the research, and growing the business.
Yes. The focus areas include hands-on individual contributors, founding hires, managers, and functional leaders. We define the level through the decisions, team, and outcomes the person will own, rather than assuming a title means the same thing at every company.
We start with what the startup needs to achieve over the next six months. Together, we define the outcomes, responsibilities, and support available. That brief helps distinguish, for example, a platform engineer from an application engineer, or a founding salesperson from a sales leader who will manage an established team.
Yes. ML infrastructure, forward deployed engineering, and technical sales are examples of work that can cross disciplines. We agree on the primary outcome, the experience that is essential, and where a person can develop with support. The search follows that brief rather than forcing the role into a single category.
No. Bring the problem you need to solve, what you want to achieve, and the team the person will join. We can use that conversation to define the work and the evidence that would make someone a strong fit.
Tell us what you’re building, what needs to change, and where the team needs help. We’ll work out the hire from there.
Talk to our team