Permanent AI search · Australia
Ashrel places permanent AI, machine learning and data leadership into Australian banks, insurers and enterprises. Deep domain mapping, and a calibrated shortlist inside ten business days.
01 / Practice
AI hiring fails when a generalist recruiter screens on keywords. Every Ashrel search is run against a live map of the Australian market: who is building what, who is available, and who is worth the conversation.
Engineers who ship models into regulated production environments, not notebook prototypes.
Senior → Principal · Staff · Team lead
Applied scientists with commercial judgement across pricing, fraud, credit decisioning and claims.
Senior · Lead · Head of Data Science
The platform layer that makes AI repeatable: feature stores, serving, evaluation, observability.
Platform engineer · SRE for ML · Head of Platform
Retrieval, evaluation and agent architecture built by people who have run it at scale.
LLM engineer · Solutions architect · Lead
Model risk, validation and assurance talent fluent in APRA and privacy obligations.
Model validator · AI risk lead · Head of Governance
Product and delivery leaders who can hold a roadmap between the business and the model.
AI product manager · Delivery lead · Chapter lead
Engineers who sit inside the client, translate the problem and build the thing: commercial instinct with real depth.
Forward deployed engineer · Solutions engineer · Lead
Leaders who set the AI agenda and the guardrails around it: operating model, investment case, policy and board reporting.
Head of AI · AI strategy lead · Chief AI Officer
Banking, insurance and superannuation are our core. We take selected mandates in health, government, energy and retail where the AI role profile is the same.
02 / Process
A structured briefing session produces a written scorecard: must-haves, trade-offs, compensation reality and the two profiles most likely to succeed.
We build the full addressable market for the role in Australia, not a keyword search. You see the map, including who we deliberately excluded.
Three to five candidates, each with a written assessment against the scorecard, motivation, notice period and salary expectation stated up front.
Interview coordination, structured feedback loops, offer strategy and counter-offer management through to the signed start date.
✓ You always speak to the person running your search. No handoff.
✓ No candidate is presented without a written assessment.
✓ We tell you when a role is not placeable at the salary on offer.
03 / Evidence
Client names are withheld by agreement. Sector, mandate and outcome are exactly as delivered.
Tier-1 Bank
The bank needed an AI governance lead who could satisfy the regulator and hold credibility with engineers. Nine candidates existed nationally; we mapped all of them.
General Insurance
Four permanent hires across engineering and applied science, sequenced so the lead was in place before the team landed underneath.
Superannuation
An incumbent leader was exiting. The search ran silently for six weeks with no market signal and no internal disruption.
The hire behind the headcount
Which is why the pitch matters as much as the search. We represent your team the way you would.
Start a briefWhat clients say
“The first shortlist was the shortlist. Three people, all of whom we would have hired, with the trade-offs written down before we met them.”
“We had been told the role was unfillable at our band. Ashrel showed us the market data, we adjusted, and the hire was made in a month.”
“The difference is that the person briefing us is the person doing the search. Nothing was lost in translation.”
Attributed on request. Several clients prefer their AI hiring stay off the record.
04 / Insights
Salary & benchmarks
Four published sources put the same role between $115,000 and $250,000. What each number is really measuring, and why no financial-services benchmark exists.
AI governance
APRA’s April 2026 letter introduced no new prudential requirements. That is precisely why it is harder to resource than a new standard would have been.
Hiring strategy
Six requirements that appear on almost every AI brief, what each one actually excludes, and what to write instead.
05 / Questions
Permanent only. Every mandate is a hire you intend to keep, which is why we invest in mapping rather than volume.
Banking, insurance and superannuation are the core of the practice. We take selected mandates in health, government, energy and retail where the AI role profile is comparable.
You deal with the person running the search. No account manager handoff, no CV forwarding, and no candidate sent without a written assessment against your calibration brief.
A percentage of first-year fixed remuneration, agreed in writing before the search begins. Retained and exclusive terms carry different rates, which we will quote on the call.
Every placement carries a replacement period agreed in the terms. In practice, calibration up front is what prevents the problem.
Yes. A large share of our mandates are unannounced roles or replacements, and are handled without the market knowing the client.
A thirty-minute call is enough to tell you whether the role is placeable, what the market pays, and how long it will take. No obligation, no database spam.
Brief received
You will get an initial market read on the role before the call, so the thirty minutes are spent on decisions rather than background.