How to hire AI engineers
To hire AI engineers, test how they build with AI: screen what they shipped, give a real task in their own tools, follow up on their code, then run AI system design.
- 1✓AI screening interviewAn LLM feature she shipped to productionAriaReport ready
- 2✓Vibe codingAn eval harness built in VS CodeNixReport ready
- 3✓Follow-upHer own code and eval resultsNixReport ready
- 4✓AI system designA RAG service under two secondsWhixReport ready
The AI engineer interview process
Four rounds, each run by an AI interviewer with its own report. Candidates work in the tools they already use.
AI engineer skills to assess
Score every candidate on the same six skills, rated against evidence from the rounds.
- Production LLM experience
- Building with AI tools
- Reviewing AI output
- Evals and debugging
- AI system design
- Cost and latency trade-offs
AI engineer interview questions
Use them in your own loop, or let Aria, Nix and Whix ask them, follow up on the answers and score them.
Tell me about an LLM feature you took to production.
How did you decide what counted as a hallucination?
Build an eval harness that scores a support bot on fifty tickets, for faithfulness and retrieval hit rate.
Your judge gets every retrieved chunk in one prompt. What happens when retrieval returns twenty?
Your refund scores are the lowest. Is that the judge, or retrieval?
Design a RAG service over 5 million documents, with answers in under two seconds.
What happens when your model provider rate-limits you?
Integrity in every round
Bad Actor Detection flags second screens, voice mismatches and calls to AI models outside the allowed list.
Your tools, your rules
You choose the coding tools, AI models and token budget candidates can use.
We evaluate. You decide.
Hello Recruiter evaluates and organizes the evidence. Your hiring team decides who moves forward.
Frequently asked questions
How do you hire and interview AI engineers?
Test how they build with AI, not just what they know about it. Hello Recruiter gives candidates a real task in their own tools with the models the recruiter allows, records every prompt and change, checks whether they review AI output, then asks about their own code and results, and finishes with an AI system design round.
What is a vibe coding interview?
A vibe coding interview is a technical interview where the candidate builds with AI coding tools such as VS Code, Cursor or Claude Code, and is evaluated on how they direct, review and verify AI-generated code. Accepting every suggestion and loosening tests to make them pass is visible in the recording and the report.
Can candidates use Claude Code, Cursor or other AI tools in the interview?
Yes, if the recruiter allows them. The recruiter chooses which coding tools and AI models candidates may use and sets a token budget. Calls to models outside the allowed list are flagged as an integrity signal.
What does an AI system design interview cover?
In the Whix round, the candidate designs a system such as a RAG service on a live whiteboard and answers follow-ups about latency, cost and failure modes, for example what happens when the model provider rate-limits the service.
What does the recruiter get after each round?
A report for every round: an AI score out of 100, evaluation criteria marked Met, Not met or Not yet evaluated, skills rated Very strong, Strong, Weak or Very weak, a risk level, and any fraud signals with timestamps. Hello Recruiter evaluates; the hiring team decides.
More engineering hiring guides
Run this loop on your next AI engineer hire
Precision hiring, with the evidence behind every pick.
