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AI, Analytics & Data Recruitment

AI, analytics & data recruitment — the applied talent that puts AI to work.

Every company needs people who can actually use AI and data — not frontier researchers, but the engineers and scientists who build pipelines, ship models and turn data into decisions. PHM recruits that applied talent for mid-market technology, industry, and firms adopting AI for the first time.

Why this hire is hard

Canada has no AI law. That is the part people get wrong.

The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act died when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025 and has not come back, so an AI governance hire in Canada is working to privacy law, human rights law and provincial rules instead. Those rules already differ: Ontario makes you declare AI screening in a job posting whether or not a human reviews the result, while Quebec’s disclosure duty bites only where no human is involved at all. Someone who learned this from the commentary rather than the statutes will get it backwards.

What it costs while the seat is open

Hiring the wrong AI or data lead costs a year. The platform gets built the wrong way, and the cost is only visible when you try to put something into production.

How we run it instead

Our AI and data recruiters assess people on what reached production and stayed there — and on whether they can name which rules actually apply, not the ones that were proposed.

Roles we recruit

From data engineers to heads of AI.

A focus area we’re actively building — real and growing depth across the data, analytics, and AI disciplines, and the same search rigour on every mandate. A sample of where we place:

AnalyticsAnalytics engineeringApplied AI / GenAIBig dataBusiness intelligenceCloud data (Snowflake / Databricks)Data architectureData engineeringData governanceData platformData scienceData strategyData visualizationETL / pipelinesHead of Data / AILLM / NLPMachine learningML engineering / MLOps

Levels from data engineers, analysts, and scientists through ML engineers, data architects, analytics and data-platform leads, and directors and heads of data & AI.

How we engage

Exclusive contingency.

Retained-level rigour, on an exclusive basis, for a fee paid on the hire — no upfront retainer and the delivery risk on us. We also work standard contingency where a role suits it. How we engage →

Because we don’t run volume, an exclusive data mandate gets our full bandwidth — and we’re driven to deliver in less time than industry norms.

Where data & AI teams work

Product companies, data-driven enterprises, and AI adopters.

Technology & product

Data science, ML, and applied-AI talent for software and product companies building AI into what they ship.

Data-driven enterprises

Analytics, BI, data platform, and governance for organizations turning data into decisions at scale.

AI adoption in industry

First data and AI hires for engineering, construction, and manufacturing firms putting AI to work in the real world.

Common questions

AI, Analytics & Data recruitment, answered.

What data and AI roles do you recruit for?

The specialties and levels are listed above. We recruit them for consultancies, owners, contractors and industrial employers across Canada and the USA.

Do you recruit frontier AI researchers?

Our focus is the applied talent the mid-market actually needs — the engineers and scientists who ship real models and pipelines — not the frontier lab researchers. That’s where we add the most value for our clients.

Can you tell whether a candidate is genuinely AI-fluent?

Yes. We assess AI fluency directly as part of how we vet — whether a candidate can truly use these tools and judge their output — and we press on it in conversation, so you’re not relying on a polished resume.

Do you work on a retained or contingency basis?

Exclusive contingency. You get the reach and rigour of a retained search, invoiced only when you hire — so an unsuccessful search costs us, not you.

Where do you recruit data and AI talent?

Across Canada and the United States. We’re headquartered in London, Ontario, Canada and remote-fluent by design.

Are the best data and AI roles even advertised?

Often not. The strongest data and AI people are in high demand and rarely on the open market — they’re reached through direct search, where the role is filled before it is announced.

Related disciplines

Explore where else our expertise runs deep.

Get in touch

Hiring a data or AI specialist? Tell us the role.

An advisory conversation about the data hire ahead of you — and where the right person is likely to come from. Not a commitment.