Technical staffing · delivery · placement
Engineers who shipfrom day one.
Specialized IT staffing, direct-hire placement, and managed delivery — backed by twenty years recruiting Silicon Valley's most demanding technical teams. AI/ML, DevOps, Cloud, Data, and Software Engineering — vetted to your bar.
- 14·23·09ML/NLP/Inference✓3d
- 14·18·42DevOps/Platform/Kubernetes✓1d
- 14·11·55Cloud/AWS/Migration✓2d
- 14·07·31Data/ETL/Warehouse✓4h
- 14·02·18SWE/Backend/Go✓1d
A live read on how fast our bench moves. Real engagements, anonymized — clients keep their cover.
Engagements across the Valley's most demanding teams
Twenty years in, the recruiting industry still mostly sells résumés. We're uninterested in that business.
Most staffing firms send résumés. We send engineers who can argue with your architect in the first thirty minutes. For twenty years we've recruited the way good engineering leaders hire — by understanding the work, not by matching keywords.
One partner, four engagements
One partner, four ways to engage.
Whether you need a single senior engineer next week, or a managed team to own an entire delivery stream — Zenaide provides the right model for your timeline, budget, and complexity.
The reasons
The reasons engineering leaders pick up the phone.
We're not the cheapest staffing firm and we're not the biggest. We're the one engineering leaders call when getting the hire wrong is the more expensive option.
Technical depth, not résumé matching.
Our recruiting team evaluates candidates against real technical requirements — stack familiarity, architecture thinking, ML system design, delivery track record. You get candidates who contribute from day one.
Speed without shortcuts.
Most clients see first qualified candidates within 5–10 business days. We move fast because we maintain a deep bench of pre-vetted talent — not because we spray and pray.
Flexible engagement, clear accountability.
Start with one contractor. Scale to a managed team. Transition to direct hires. Our models flex as your needs change — without renegotiating from scratch.
20+ years in the Valley's technical ecosystem.
From startups scaling their first engineering team to enterprises modernizing legacy infrastructure — we've staffed and delivered across every stage.
Disciplines we recruit for
The technical disciplines we recruit for.
We specialize in the engineering work driving modern, AI-powered organizations — not generalist IT support.
AI, ML & Intelligent Systems
Machine learning engineers, LLM specialists, MLOps, computer vision, NLP, and AI infrastructure. Talent that builds production AI — not just notebooks.
DevOps & Platform Engineering
CI/CD, infrastructure as code, Kubernetes, monitoring, site reliability. Engineers who build the platforms your teams ship on.
Cloud Architecture & Engineering
AWS, Azure, GCP — migration, optimization, hybrid and multi-cloud strategy. From architects who design to engineers who execute.
Data Engineering & Analytics
Data pipelines, warehousing, ETL/ELT, BI implementation. Talent that turns raw data into decisions your business relies on.
Software Engineering
Full-stack, backend, frontend, mobile. Engineers across the stack who ship production code — not just prototypes.
IoT & Connected Systems
Device engineering, edge computing, protocol integration, ecosystem architecture. Talent for teams building connected products.
QA & Test Automation
Manual QA, automation frameworks, performance and security testing. Engineers who catch problems before your customers do.
From call to candidate
From first conversation to first candidate.
A short, opinionated process. No portals to log into, no résumé spam.
Discovery
We learn your technical requirements, team dynamics, timeline, and success criteria in a real conversation — not a form fill.
Matching
We source, screen, and technically vet candidates from our network. You see only candidates who meet your bar — typically within 5–10 business days.
Engagement
Your team interviews shortlisted candidates. We handle scheduling, feedback loops, and offer coordination. For managed engagements, we assemble the team.
Delivery
Ongoing check-ins, performance tracking, and flexibility to adjust scope, team size, or engagement model as your needs evolve.
Two decades, measured
Two decades, focused on the work that matters.
Recent engagements
See the work.
Real engagements, measured outcomes.
Hiring leaders
Names withheld; titles preserved. Engineering leaders speak candidly when their cover is intact.
Zenaide understood our technical requirements better than any staffing partner we've worked with. We had three strong DevOps candidates within a week — and our first hire is still with us two years later.
We needed a managed team to own our cloud migration while our internal engineers focused on product. Zenaide assembled the team in three weeks and delivered on time and on budget.
What sets Zenaide apart is that their recruiters actually understand the technology. We stopped getting irrelevant resumes and started getting candidates who could contribute immediately.
FAQ · the short list
Answers to what most teams ask first.
If something isn't covered here, the contact form goes straight to a person — not a queue.
For our core specialties (AI/ML, DevOps, Cloud, Data, Software Engineering), most clients see first qualified candidates within 5–10 business days. Niche or highly specialized roles may take longer — we'll set expectations upfront during the discovery conversation.
IT staffing places individual contributors on your team, under your management. Managed services means we assemble and manage a team that owns a defined scope of work — you get the outcome without the management overhead.
Our headquarters are in San Jose, but we support clients nationally. Many of our engagements are hybrid or remote, with talent sourced across the United States.
We address performance concerns quickly. If a replacement is needed, we prioritize backfill from our pipeline at no additional sourcing cost within the guarantee period.
Start a conversation
Your next hire — or your next delivery milestone — starts with a thirty-minute call.
Tell us what you're building, what roles you need, or what project needs to move. We respond within one business day.