TheLoops
Palo Alto, CA
Forward Deployed AI Engineer × 1
A single, highly specific hire for a 24-person AI startup — a Forward Deployed Engineer with genuine ML depth, enterprise customer instincts, and the confidence to operate in a fast-moving pre-Series A environment. The company was later acquired by IFS in June 2025.
The Challenge
Why this brief was hard
TheLoops was building an AI agentic platform for enterprise business operations — founded by Somya Kapoor (ex-SAP, ex-ServiceNow) and Ravi Bulusu, a serial CTO on his sixth startup. At 24 people and $8.75M in funding, they needed a Forward Deployed AI Engineer who could partner directly with enterprise customers to scope, implement, and tune AI agent workflows. The technical requirements were specific and demanding: hands-on experience with LLMs, RAG systems, vector databases, and the surrounding stack (LangChain, Pinecone, Weaviate, HuggingFace). But technical depth alone was not enough. The person also needed to be genuinely comfortable in front of C-suite and enterprise engineering teams, capable of translating complex AI behaviour into measurable business outcomes. That combination — real ML deployment experience plus polished enterprise communication — is rare. In Silicon Valley, candidates with genuine AI/ML depth tend to gravitate toward hyperscalers or well-funded later-stage companies. Convincing the right person to join a 24-person startup required presenting the opportunity compellingly.
Our Approach
How we tackled it
Ikuto sourced candidates through our Paraform partnership, with a brief that required us to look specifically at the overlap between solutions engineering and ML deployment — candidates who had shipped AI solutions into production and sat directly with customers through the process. We used the strength of TheLoops' founding team as a key part of the pitch: Somya's ServiceNow background and Ravi's track record as a repeat CTO gave serious credibility to the company's trajectory. Every candidate was video screened before presentation, with particular focus on how they explained technical AI concepts to non-technical audiences — a skill that looks easy to assess on paper and rarely holds up on closer examination.
The Outcome
What we delivered
One placement made, within the target salary band. TheLoops went on to be acquired by IFS in June 2025 — a validation of the team, the product, and the quality of the people they built it with. The Forward Deployed AI Engineer role was central to their ability to deliver pilot and production deployments at enterprise speed during a period of rapid growth.
“Ikuto found us someone who genuinely understood both sides of the brief — the technical depth to work in our stack and the communication skills to own the customer relationship. That balance is hard to find and they got it right.”
Mohan
VP Customer Experience, TheLoops
The Client
TheLoops
Palo Alto, CA
At a Glance
1
Placements
FDE / AI Engineer
Role
Acquired by IFS
Outcome
Palo Alto
Location
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