Stealth FinTech Venture (London)

Sourcing a Head of AI Engineering to Lead an AI-Driven Risk Intelligence Platform from Inception

The Challenge

Our client was a London-based stealth FinTech venture building an AI-driven risk intelligence platform to help digital financial institutions detect and manage real-time fraud and credit exposure. The founding team could not share the company name, the product detail, or the investment backing publicly. They needed to hire a Head of AI Engineering into a role that did not officially exist yet, at a company most candidates would never have heard of.

That is a specific kind of hard. The person needed to design and lead the AI function from scratch, bringing experience in machine learning engineering, real-time decisioning systems, and cloud-native architecture, alongside the judgment to operate in regulated financial environments. At this level, the right candidates are typically well-compensated, well-positioned, and not looking. Convincing them to seriously consider an opportunity they cannot research, at a company they cannot name-check, requires a different approach to sourcing and a different kind of conversation.

The founding team came to Xist4 for a retained search because they needed a partner who could carry the credibility of the opportunity in market and manage candidate trust through a process that required discretion at every stage.

The Solution

Xist4 ran a retained search built around the specific constraints of a stealth hire, structuring outreach and candidate communication to build confidence without disclosing what the client needed to protect.

• Worked with the founders to scope the role precisely, aligning it with the product roadmap and regulatory requirements so the opportunity could be positioned compellingly without naming the business.
• Analysed 170 senior AI engineers across FinTech, digital banking, and financial services, profiling compensation expectations, leadership tenure, and the overlap between AI engineering depth and regulated environment experience.
• Identified adjacent talent pools across AI, risk technology, and cloud-native companies where the right combination of technical leadership and delivery credibility was most likely to exist.
• Ran a structured multi-touch outreach campaign targeting passive candidates, building enough credibility around the opportunity to generate genuine interest from people who had no reason to respond to a blind approach.
• Managed candidate confidence throughout the process, providing enough context at each stage to keep strong people engaged without compromising the client’s stealth position.
• Delivered weekly reporting on candidate availability, sentiment, and how the opportunity was landing in the market, giving the founders clear visibility without requiring them to be directly involved in early conversations.

The Result

Within eight and a half weeks, Xist4 presented a shortlist of AI engineering leaders from FinTech, digital banking, and major financial services firms, each with the technical depth and regulatory awareness the role required.

The appointed candidate now leads a cross-functional AI engineering team delivering explainable, production-grade models for financial risk intelligence. Getting there required candidates to take the opportunity seriously before they knew who the client was. That only works when the recruitment process itself carries enough credibility to make the conversation worth having.