Why Lynestar exists.
Lynestar started inside Internstellar, a team that spent six weeks trying to hire one AI engineer for a critical role. We had LinkedIn. We had a recruiter. We had 40 CVs and eight first-round interviews. We hired someone.
Three months later we were having the conversation about whether it was working out.
The problem wasn't sourcing. LinkedIn gave us volume. The problem was evaluation. How do you tell, before you spend six weeks on a hiring process, whether someone who lists “LLM Engineer” has actually shipped inference infrastructure to production, or just ran a notebook demo and rebranded?
Most AI engineers in the market today are rebranded generalists. That's not an insult to candidates; it's a market dynamic. The titles moved faster than the experience base. For a CTO at an AI-native startup, this means the evaluation problem is harder than it's ever been. You can't just read a CV. You need reference signal, stack depth verification, and someone who's actually done the work at the layer you care about.
Lynestar is the evaluation layer that was missing. We build and maintain a pool of AI engineers: sourced, profiled, and referenced by past colleagues before any role exists. When you submit a role, we match against that pool and deliver five ranked profiles in 48 hours, each with auditable match reasoning, a reference signal, and confirmed availability.
We focus on three cities because depth beats breadth. Knowing the AI engineering community in London, Amsterdam, and Berlin (who is exceptional, who is moveable, what their colleagues actually think of them) requires presence. Going shallow across Europe means surface-level profiles and generic references.
London, Amsterdam, and Berlin are also where the density of AI-native Series A/B companies is highest in Europe. The CTOs we work with aren't looking for someone who can work remotely from anywhere; they need people embedded in cities where the AI engineering talent ecosystem is real.
Geographic focus is a quality guarantee. Not a limitation.
Currently in closed pilot with Series A AI startups in London and Amsterdam. We're being deliberate about who we work with at this stage: the pool quality is the product, and growing it too fast degrades it.
If you're a CTO or VP Engineering at a Series A/B AI startup in London, Amsterdam, or Berlin and you're hiring an AI engineer in the next three months, we want to talk.