
You've built a category that didn't exist two years ago.
Embedded Systems Engineer, Perception Engineer, Software Engineer, Remote Pilot, Operations Associate - most recruiters would treat these as five separate searches and get nowhere on at least two of them. We'd build the pool specifically for Brumby: people with real avionics, firmware, perception and flight experience from robotics labs, drone teams and defence or mining - the technical skill that actually transfers, not people who happen to have grown up on a farm.
This is what taking your employer brand to market actually means in practice - not a rewritten job ad and a shortlist, but this is what we'd put in front of a candidate.
Real footage from Brumby's first field test - the kind of thing that gets someone to open an email, not delete it.
Their ad right now: "Competitive salary, meaningful early stage equity."
What we'd send instead: "Your code keeps autonomous cowboys flying over 6,000 head with nothing but a patchy 4G signal to talk to home - and when it goes right, a helicopter stays in the shed."
This page took a morning, is built specifically for you, and isn't a template. That's the pitch for hiring Kairos. Imagine what we'd build to get your five candidates this fired up about joining Brumby.
How we'd actually run this, role by role.
We'd start with what actually matters for a three-person, YC-backed team: people who can own a piece of the stack end to end, work directly with you, and don't need six months to get comfortable with ambiguity.
Robotics engineers get pitched by every well-funded startup right now. What actually gets someone to choose Brumby is the problem itself - reinforcement learning that has to read live animal behaviour, autonomy that can't fail because nobody's there to reset it hundreds of kilometres from a signal - backed by the story you already have: the station, the dropped-out robotics degree, the YC round, the Forbes 30 Under 30. Shown, not just claimed - real footage from the paddock, a job ad someone actually wants to finish reading, help sharpening the best applicants' pitch back to you. An example of exactly that is below.
For a Perception Engineer or Remote Pilot, a CV tells you almost nothing useful. We'd assess for how someone reasons through edge cases in the field - what happens when the drone loses GPS over a paddock, or the herd doesn't move like the training data - not just what's listed under skills.
Five hires is five separate decisions, each with a real cost if it's wrong. We'd bring the context and reference-checking to make each one properly, not just quickly.
Embedded Systems Engineer, Perception Engineer, Software Engineer, Remote Pilot, Operations Associate. Two of these barely exist as a labelled career path in Australia yet - perception engineering and commercial remote piloting are still mostly borrowed from defence, mining and film, not agriculture. Finding people willing to point that experience at cattle stations instead is the actual job.
Six people building a fleet don't have room for a hiring process that eats their week. We'd run this inside Ashby, so the pipeline and candidate history are yours to keep once the search wraps, not stuck in a system you'd lose access to. We'd only pull you in for what actually needs you - the interviews, the final call - not the sourcing grind in between. The same story and behavioural profiling we use to attract people through Taly also feeds how you onboard and manage them once they're hired - useful for any role, more useful for five this critical.
University robotics programs and PhD cohorts, drone operators currently flying for mining, survey or media work, embedded engineers at small hardware startups tired of unglamorous B2B work, and people who've built quadcopters, VTOLs or RC aircraft in their own time. None of that needs a farming background - the actual job specs don't ask for one, so we won't pretend otherwise. We also run Aussie Founders Club - 2,300+ founders in Slack, 4,800+ people reading our newsletters, built since 2024 with Innovation Victoria backing - plus a referral network running through technical people already. Some of this list might not need building from scratch. We'd run attraction through Brumby's own LinkedIn too - yours and the company page - so it reaches people who already follow what you're building, and grows that following in the process.
Fees are based on stage - typically around 14% for a seed-stage company like Brumby. But five hires this critical might be better served by a retainer: one number, paid upfront, that covers more than five placements - employer brand work, Taly-backed onboarding support, and potentially a slice going toward building a sourcing tool specifically for the kind of talent pool these roles need. Worth working through properly on a call.
Kairos is based in Melbourne and works with founders across Australia and New Zealand - Sydney included, where Brumby is based.
We work with and headhunt for startups and scaleups, taking an employer brand to market alongside every search. We also run Aussie Founders Club and The Startup Shortlist - the community and newsletter your five roles would already be landing in front of.
We position your company and the role before we go to market. That includes reviewing the role and job ad, founder-led and culture video, video CVs for customer-facing roles, and behavioural profiling through Taly, so you see how candidates think and communicate beyond their CV - and once they're hired, how to actually manage them: what kind of feedback lands, and how to handle the harder conversations early rather than late. Especially worth it for hires this critical. We can also help you build your employer brand beyond a single search, so the story of why people should join you keeps working for every role you open next.
Just reply. We can jump on a call if it's useful, no obligation either way.
Five roles, one story worth telling properly. Reply if that's easier, or grab a time below.
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