AI Innovation Centre · run in collaboration with a private Ivy League research University in NYC

India's leading sports technology group, building an AI Innovation Centre in New York City, anchored in a research collaboration with Columbia University.

Place researchers at the frontier of applied machine learning and causal inference, profiles who could publish, build and operate inside a product-adjacent research centre.

These are among the hardest profiles to recruit globally. The intersection of academic rigour and applied product impact is exceptionally narrow, and the search had to navigate the India-to-US interface, time zones, visa considerations, and the culture of a NYC research centre run by an Indian company.

A global search across top ML research groups, applied science teams at major tech companies, and academic labs with strong industry transfer.

We ran the search across the US research talent market while managing the India-to-US interface end to end, from sourcing to the practicalities of relocation and visas.

This mandate proved we operate in the global AI research talent market, not just India, for research-grade profiles inside product-facing organisations.

Both roles were placed at the frontier of applied ML, in causal inference and reinforcement learning, forming the initial research core of the centre, positioned to produce both publishable research and product-facing AI.