An early Cerebras (and ex-Facebook Labs) Engineer with a MIT Pedigree and Carnegie Mellon PhD wasn't looking when Stephen Tung first engaged him in 2025.
Stanislav Funiak was not looking for a job when Stephen Tung outreached to him (cold) in 2025. He was roughly employee #30 at Cerebras Systems (today valued at USD$50B+), holds a Carnegie Mellon PhD in Robotics and Machine Learning, and had been a Research Scientist at Facebook. One note led to a conversation, the conversation led to a role he says he would not have found on his own, and he has agreed to put his name and his full background to the account below. It is the first time we have published what an Off-market search looks like from the candidate's side of the table.
Founders ask us a version of the same question in almost every intake call: does this outreach actually land with people at that level, or does it get deleted with the rest? Our client-side placements answer half of it. This piece answers the other half, in Stanislav's words rather than ours: what the first note did, what "positioning" meant in practice, why candour was the part he kept coming back to, and the one-line test he now gives peers who get an off-market call.
Read that list the way a founder building a physical AI or foundational-model company would read it, and the problem is obvious. This is a person several companies would want and none of them could reach with a job ad. He was employed, doing serious work, with no reason to update anything. The thesis our whole practice runs on was written for exactly this profile. The best people are already embedded in serious, complex jobs with good employers, and the only thing that reaches them is highly intentional, research-led Craft.
We are not naming the company he joined. The point of this piece is the approach, not the logo, and the role is his to talk about if he chooses.
"I wasn't actively looking when Steve first approached me in 2025. His first note was different in a way I noticed immediately. He had taken the time to understand my work and academic background, and saw how my experience matched one particular company at one particular moment."
Stanislav Funiak, formerly Cerebras Systems and Facebook Research
"One particular company at one particular moment" carries most of the weight in that paragraph. The note was not about Stanislav's market value in general, or a list of roles he might suit. It was about a specific problem at a specific company, at a stage where his combination of large-scale systems work and machine learning research was the missing piece. That specificity is only possible if the research happens before the outreach, which is the order the Talent System™ runs in: build the picture of who the role is for, find that person, then write to them about it.
The other phrase, "different in a way I noticed immediately," does the rest. Someone with his profile receives recruiter messages constantly. Nearly all of them are templated, and nearly all of them are ignored on sight, because a templated message tells the recipient the sender has not done the reading. The note that gets a reply is the one that could not have been sent to anyone else.
"He actively helped me position myself, recognising what he calls the 'alpha' in my experience. This allowed him to advocate for me with the company rather than simply forwarding my CV."
Stanislav Funiak
Alpha is our word for the part of a person's history that produces outsized value in one specific context and is invisible when the CV is read cold. For most senior technologists it sits at an intersection nobody has written down, where research depth, operating experience and the moment in a company's life when that exact combination is needed all meet. The CV lists the pieces without making the argument.
Making the argument is the job. A CV forwarded with a two-line cover note leaves the hiring team to work out why this person matters, and hiring teams, being busy, mostly do not. Advocating means arriving with the case already made: here is what this person has built, here is why it maps onto the problem you have right now, here is what you would be getting that no other profile on the market offers. That is what a founder is paying for when they engage us. The candidate gets it for nothing, and for most of them it is the first time anyone has made that argument on their behalf.
Key Distinction
Forwarding a CV asks the company to find the Alpha. Advocacy finds it first, names it, and makes the case before the CV is opened.
"What I appreciated most was the precision and transparency of his communication. The process was consistently candid, which I found liberating: I could speak my mind, knowing that the substance of what I said would come through clearly."
Stanislav Funiak
"Liberating" is a strong word for a recruitment process. What did it liberate him from? The default experience of being represented is a kind of managed translation. The candidate says one thing, the recruiter softens or sells it, and the company hears something slightly different. Both sides know this, so both sides hedge, and the thing that actually decides whether a senior hire works out, whether the candidate's real view of the role matches the company's real view of the seat, never gets said plainly by anyone.
Candour removes the translation layer. Stanislav could say what he actually thought about the role, the company and his own reservations, and trust that the substance would arrive intact. That serves the candidate, obviously. It serves the founder just as much, because it is the mechanism behind the shortlist quality clients describe: Deckard co-founder Jess Flanagan has put it as candidates who land as "yes or not yet, rather than no." A shortlist like that is only possible when the candidate has been candid about what they want and we have been candid back about whether this role is it.
With people at Stanislav's level, the candidate is evaluating the company at least as closely as the company is evaluating him. Call that a courtesy and you have misread the negotiating position. It is the reality, and running the process candidly in both directions is what gets a person who was not looking to the point of saying yes.
"The process led me to a company I would not have found on my own, in a role that draws on my whole background. If a peer asked me whether to take an off-market call, I would say: take it if the person on the other end can explain your career back to you in a way you recognise but had never said out loud. That was the tell."
Stanislav Funiak
We did not write that test, and we would not have put it as well. It is a better description of what research-led search should feel like from the receiving end than anything in our own material, so we are adopting it.
Notice what it does not say. It does not say take the call if the compensation is right, or the company is well funded, or the title is a step up. It says take it if the person calling has done enough work to see a pattern in your history that you had lived but never articulated. That is the Signal that the rest of the process will be built with the same care, because nobody does that reading for a role they intend to fill by volume.
A candidate-side story is still a founder-side lesson, because everything Stanislav describes was produced by inputs a founder controls.
What the First Note Was Built From
As of 5 September 2026, this way of working has produced 53 placements across 34 client companies since January 2025, and 14 of those 34 clients, 41 percent, have come back for a second search or more. We put that number beside Stanislav's account deliberately. One candidate can describe what the process felt like. The repeat rate says whether the people it produces are the ones founders wanted.
If you want to pressure-test this before taking it on faith, our piece on how to tell whether a search firm actually has off-market access includes the question "why did your last two off-market hires say yes?" This post is our answer for one of them.
A direct note to someone who is employed and not looking, built on prior research into their specific work, about one specific role at one specific company. Stanislav Funiak, an early Cerebras Systems engineer placed by Perpetuate Talent in 2025, described the first note as "different in a way I noticed immediately" because it matched his experience to one company at one moment, rather than pitching him a list of roles.
By identifying the Alpha in the candidate's history, the specific combination of experience that produces outsized value for that one company at that stage, and advocating for it directly with the hiring team rather than forwarding a CV. The case is built from the founder's own intake conversation and independent research on the candidate's work, and it is made before the CV is opened.
Stanislav's test, which Perpetuate Talent has adopted: take it if the person on the other end can explain your career back to you in a way you recognise but had never said out loud. If the caller cannot do that, the outreach was not built for you, and the process behind it will not be either.
No. Almost nobody we place was looking when we first engaged with them. Perpetuate Talent does not publicly advertise roles, so the people we represent are, in our own phrase, the calibre of Operator who paradoxically never needs to apply. Being approached is a function of the work you have done, not of a status on your profile.
If you are a founder scoping a CTO, VP Engineering, Head of AI or senior technical hire and want the outreach to read the way Stanislav describes, that runs through Stephen Tung's AI/Technical practice. Message Stephen on LinkedIn → and bring the honest version of the mandate, because that is what the first note gets built from.
If you are the person who just received one of those notes, apply the tell. If it holds, take the call.