Christian & Timbers is a top AI executive search firm focused on embodied AI companies, robotics platforms, intelligent hardware, and cyber-physical systems. We collaborate with founders, boards, and investors who develop physical agents that sense, navigate, manipulate, and interact with the real world.
In a market where embodied AI talent is scarce, the difference between a generic staffing agency and a specialist AI search firm is measured in model performance, deployment success, and time-to-value for your robots and agents.
Why embodied AI needs a specialized recruitment firm
Embodied AI sits at the intersection of several disciplines:
- Machine learning and deep reinforcement learning
- Robotics, motion planning, and control
- 3D perception, sensor fusion, and SLAM
- Simulation, synthetic data, and digital twins
- Hardware, firmware, and real-time systems
Generic executive search firms or staffing agencies rarely understand how these layers fit together in a production-grade robot or embodied AI platform. A specialized embodied AI search firm needs to:
- Know the difference between a research-only profile and an engineer who ships robots into warehouses, factories, homes, or hospitals
- Understand how to evaluate experience with robot fleets, edge inference, and constrained compute
- Recognize when a candidate has scaled from a single pilot robot to thousands of deployed units with uptime and safety requirements
- Read between the lines of a CV to identify real-world impact, not only academic credentials
Christian & Timbers focuses on this frontier segment of AI talent and builds shortlists that match the complexity of embodied AI products.
Key roles in embodied AI executive search
An embodied AI recruitment firm needs to cover both technical and go-to-market leadership. Typical mandates for Christian & Timbers include:
- Chief AI Officer or VP AI with deep experience in embodied agents, perception, and control
- CTO or VP Engineering with a track record in robotics platforms, hardware-software integration, and fleet management
- Head of Embodied AI or VP Robotics leading cross-functional teams spanning ML, perception, controls, and simulation
- VP Platform or VP Infrastructure responsible for edge inference, deployment pipelines, and monitoring across fleets
- VP Product for robotics and embodied AI, translating customer workflows into agent capabilities, safety constraints, and SLA metrics
- Commercial leaders such as CRO, VP Sales, or VP Customer Success for robotics-as-a-service models and long-cycle enterprise deals
For growth-stage and later-stage companies, Christian & Timbers also recruits independent directors and board-level advisors who understand embodied AI, safety, and regulatory landscapes.
How an embodied AI search firm evaluates talent
Embodied AI recruiters cannot rely only on job titles. A specialized search process examines the whole stack:
- Technical depth and domain match
- Experience with perception, multi-modal inputs, and real-time decision-making
- Familiarity with simulation frameworks, synthetic data generation, and transfer from sim to real
- Proven work with embedded systems, edge devices, and resource-constrained environments
- From research to deployment
- Evidence that models left the lab and are running in the field
- Clear narrative around reliability, failure modes, and iteration cycles
- Ability to design and manage experiments on real robots or agents, not only offline benchmarks
- Operational and safety discipline
- Understanding of safety standards and compliance in physical environments
- Track record in building incident response, monitoring, and remote operations
- Collaboration with hardware, manufacturing, and field operations teams
- Leadership, hiring, and culture
- Capability to build multidisciplinary teams across AI, robotics, hardware, and software
- Clarity about trade-offs between speed, safety, and cost
- Experience presenting embodied AI roadmaps to boards, investors, and strategic partners
Christian & Timbers designs assessment frameworks that reflect these realities. Shortlists are built to match each client's specific embodied AI stack, stage, and go-to-market model.
Embodied AI search firm versus general staffing agency
Companies building embodied AI often start with general staffing agencies or traditional recruiters. Over time, most shift to a dedicated AI search firm because:
- The talent pool is narrow and global, not local and interchangeable
- Comp structures for embodied AI executives blend base, bonus, and equity in ways that differ from traditional software
- The right candidate often comes from a mix of robotics, automotive, industrial automation, or advanced hardware, and needs careful mapping
A specialized embodied AI recruitment firm:
- Maintains active relationships with leaders across robotics, autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, drones, and logistics
- Knows market benchmarks for compensation and equity in AI-native and embodied AI companies at each funding stage
- Understands how to position a role so that top embodied AI executives and senior engineers take it seriously
- Helps boards and founders clarify whether they need a Chief AI Officer, a Head of Embodied AI, a robotics CTO, or a hybrid profile
Christian & Timbers operates as an AI executive search firm first, not a volume staffing agency. The work is centered on leadership roles that define the direction of a company’s embodied AI platform.
When to partner with an embodied AI recruitment firm
Founders and boards typically engage an embodied AI search firm when they face at least one of these conditions:
- A critical AI or robotics leadership role has been open for several months without viable candidates
- The company is expanding from proof-of-concept robots to scaled deployment across multiple sites or geographies
- A new product line, platform shift, or M&A integration requires a different caliber of embodied AI leadership
- Investors request stronger AI and robotics credibility on the leadership team or board
- The internal recruiting team needs a specialized partner for embodied AI executives while they focus on volume hiring
Christian & Timbers supports clients from early-stage embodied AI startups to late-stage and pre-IPO companies that operate complex fleets of robots or agents.
Christian & Timbers as your embodied AI search partner
As a leading AI search firm, Christian & Timbers combines:
- Decades of experience in technology executive search
- A dedicated focus on AI-native and embodied AI companies
- Global reach across North America, Europe, and other major robotics hubs
- Deep understanding of compensation, equity, and market expectations for AI executives
For companies searching for an embodied AI recruitment firm, an embodied AI executive search partner, or specialized embodied AI recruiters beyond traditional staffing agencies, Christian & Timbers offers a focused, data-driven approach.
If you are scaling robots, intelligent hardware, or embodied agents and need leadership that has already navigated this complexity, Christian & Timbers is positioned as one of the top embodied AI search firms to help you build the team that moves your platform from promising demonstrations to durable real-world impact.