Our company has made the decision to create a new position for an AI-focused engineer, and I will be playing an integral part in finding the right candidate. Our goal is to fill the position with someone who can help synthesize data from our proprietary software, financial data, and other operational data into useful analysis and tangible outcomes and automated actions (i.e. not just a chat bot).

We are, at our core, a technology/software company but this is our first time filling a position like this and we’re not entirely sure where to start the search. We suspect that posting a position like this on a public job board would likely result in a large number of low quality applications and would like to take a more targeted approach. We suspect the type of candidate that would pique our interest would also be actively perused by a number of other companies, and we are willing to compete appropriately.

What methods have other members of the Hacker News community had success with when filling these kinds of positions?