Meeting Title: Brainforge x JSS Recruitment Partnership Discussion Date: 2026-01-13 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Lydia
WEBVTT
1 00:01:00.750 ⇒ 00:01:02.470 Lydia: Hi, Robert, how you doing?
2 00:01:03.750 ⇒ 00:01:05.259 Robert Tseng: Hey, Lydia. Good, how are you?
3 00:01:05.260 ⇒ 00:01:09.399 Lydia: Yeah, I’m good, thank you. How’s your morning going so far?
4 00:01:10.350 ⇒ 00:01:11.150 Robert Tseng: Going well.
5 00:01:11.840 ⇒ 00:01:13.890 Robert Tseng: Good. Did you eat your evening?
6 00:01:14.700 ⇒ 00:01:26.840 Lydia: Yeah, good! It’s 3 o’clock here, so, not quite yet the evening, still very much working hard for quite a bit of the day yet, but all good. How was your, your festive period? Did you have a nice time off?
7 00:01:28.100 ⇒ 00:01:35.730 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I did. Spent time with family. I’m initially based in New York, but got to travel a little bit, to somewhere warmer, and then kind of came back.
8 00:01:36.250 ⇒ 00:01:38.040 Lydia: Whereabouts did you go?
9 00:01:38.520 ⇒ 00:01:41.800 Robert Tseng: I was in Mexico, and then went to California.
10 00:01:42.550 ⇒ 00:01:47.599 Lydia: Oh, lovely! That’s really nice. Did you go with family to those places, or solo traveling?
11 00:01:47.600 ⇒ 00:01:58.099 Robert Tseng: Yeah, a mix of both, some, some, some just with my… just with my, my wife and I, we went to Mexico and then visited, kind of, my extended family in California.
12 00:01:58.810 ⇒ 00:02:09.660 Lydia: Nice, lovely. Cool. Well, look, yeah, really great to be in touch. I know, obviously, I popped over a message on LinkedIn, just generally around, kind of what I do, my background, and
13 00:02:09.660 ⇒ 00:02:21.370 Lydia: talking through, kind of, the data and AI market at the moment, really. I thought what would be useful is I can give you a bit over… a bit of an overview to me, and who I am,
14 00:02:21.370 ⇒ 00:02:27.290 Lydia: And then hear a bit about you, where you’re at at the moment, and kind of see how we can work together moving forward.
15 00:02:28.150 ⇒ 00:02:29.410 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sure, that sounds good.
16 00:02:29.610 ⇒ 00:02:37.289 Lydia: Nice. I mean, I’m assuming you’ve spoken to headhunters, recruiters in your time throughout, kind of, work and things?
17 00:02:37.960 ⇒ 00:02:49.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think… I mean, I’ve been on the candidate side, being headhunted, and I’ve also… I mean, I run a business, so we partner with some recruiting agencies.
18 00:02:49.320 ⇒ 00:02:54.689 Robert Tseng: To kind of help staff our needs, or also, you know, look for opportunities where
19 00:02:55.040 ⇒ 00:03:09.610 Robert Tseng: you may be trying to fill a role, and it may just fall within our scope, and, you know, we have people on staff that can go and immediately fill that role. So, I think there’s a few different, like, paths that I see that this could end up going in.
20 00:03:10.240 ⇒ 00:03:35.149 Lydia: Okay, cool, that’s great. Yeah, I mean, from my side anyway, I… I work both sides of the coin, so I work both client-facing, managing clients, and those relationships, and I also work on the candidate side. I mainly work with senior and mid-level candidates now. I’ve been in, kind of, the headhunting space for 8-plus years, so just naturally, my network has progressively got more senior, so that just tends to be the work that I do, and the sort of people that I work with.
21 00:03:35.150 ⇒ 00:03:42.710 Lydia: So, yeah, open to, to have conversations about, both sides, really. But yeah, my, my background,
22 00:03:42.980 ⇒ 00:04:02.229 Lydia: been a headhunter in the data and AI space for, about 8 years or so. I’ve worked across, North America, the UK, and the EU markets, so a full scope, really. More recently, I’ve just channeled that to the North American market, and really starting to,
23 00:04:02.280 ⇒ 00:04:27.130 Lydia: kind of advance my network there, and really grow out. I’m actually relocating to Chicago in March this year, so I’ve only got about 50 days left in the UK before I… before I make the move. But yeah, I mainly do permanent recruitment, and it’s across the data and AI space, data science, AI, ML. I do do spaces kind of like data architecture, engineering, governance.
24 00:04:27.130 ⇒ 00:04:33.160 Lydia: analytics, so the full scope of the data lifecycle, really.
25 00:04:33.160 ⇒ 00:04:40.690 Lydia: That’s really it, a bit about me. I don’t know if you have any questions on that, or anything, that you wanted to dig into.
26 00:04:41.610 ⇒ 00:04:51.440 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I mean, I think some of those roles we hire for, and I mean, that’s definitely within Aubrey House. We are an AI engineer… AI and data engineering firm, so, we…
27 00:04:51.570 ⇒ 00:05:00.989 Robert Tseng: I mean, there are… we don’t really do staff augmentation too much. Most of it is project-based, so typically, you know, if there’s a need in an organization.
28 00:05:00.990 ⇒ 00:05:16.639 Robert Tseng: I mean, we have different ways of kind of ending up in… with our… with our clients, but yeah, I guess, like, if you’re only looking for permanent roles that you’re, like, trying to fill, I’m curious, like, do you work with… do you work with organizations like ours, or kind of, like, how would you envision us partnering?
29 00:05:17.380 ⇒ 00:05:29.339 Lydia: Yeah, so I was having a look through. Are you at Eden, or are you at Brain Fog AI? Because there’s two roles on your… on your LinkedIn, but I know you said the Brain Fog AI for the, email that you sent across.
30 00:05:29.590 ⇒ 00:05:37.529 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I run Brainforge. Eden’s one of my clients. I am functioning head of data for Eden. I run a data team of 5 people there, so…
31 00:05:37.830 ⇒ 00:05:52.979 Lydia: Fine, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, so I personally do permanent recruitment, but I’ve got a team of consultants that work under me, and within that, I’ve got contract and temporary resources as well, so we can partner on a short-term and a long-term basis.
32 00:05:53.180 ⇒ 00:05:56.619 Lydia: So, yeah, we can work across both areas, really.
33 00:05:57.140 ⇒ 00:06:08.279 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah, I think I’d probably be more interested in that at the moment. So, yeah, I guess, like, you know, if you need anything from us to kind of see, like, how we can get on your radar for
34 00:06:08.590 ⇒ 00:06:26.879 Robert Tseng: for opportunities, like, I think we have a pretty good track record. There’s, like, a couple other, like I said, recruiting agencies here in the States that we work with, where if there’s contract or, corp-to-corp kind of needs, typically these are, like, larger clients that just, like, need plug-and-play resourcing.
35 00:06:27.030 ⇒ 00:06:37.460 Robert Tseng: Like, kind of Fortune, Fortune 1000, I would say. But, yeah, I think there’s, there’s probably, there’d probably be a good fit for us in that.
36 00:06:37.970 ⇒ 00:06:47.030 Lydia: Okay, nice. So, talk me through the business structure in terms of the business model for you guys, and typically how you work with
37 00:06:47.130 ⇒ 00:06:52.709 Lydia: well, in general, and then also, you know, recruitment agency partnerships, how that tends to work out.
38 00:06:53.640 ⇒ 00:07:03.959 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so we’re a consultancy, yeah, I think, like I mentioned, like, we typically staff, like, anywhere 1 to 3 people per client. Yeah, I think,
39 00:07:03.960 ⇒ 00:07:16.859 Robert Tseng: yeah, we function like a boutique consultancy. So we have about 30 people on staff currently, and yeah, kind of depending on… scope-wise, I think data engineering, we’re a Snowflake partner.
40 00:07:16.860 ⇒ 00:07:25.019 Robert Tseng: We have a few other… that’s our main ecosystem that we… that we partner with, so, Snowflake gives us leads, and we’re able to go and basically be like that.
41 00:07:25.030 ⇒ 00:07:28.359 Robert Tseng: Like a technical services partner for them.
42 00:07:28.650 ⇒ 00:07:47.560 Robert Tseng: But any… any organization that’s hiring, like, data engineers, analytics engineers, and product analytics is my bread and butter, so it’s kind of where I came from, so there’s… I can send you, like, a services deck, I guess, for all the different things that we do cover. But really, like, organizations that are trying to
43 00:07:47.640 ⇒ 00:07:54.530 Robert Tseng: like, bring and kind of level up their data stack, I guess?
44 00:07:54.690 ⇒ 00:08:03.000 Robert Tseng: We usually tie our, projects to outcomes, so it’s not really, like, a long-term placement. We usually do things that are, like, 6 months.
45 00:08:03.220 ⇒ 00:08:05.679 Robert Tseng: I would say is probably the average contract length.
46 00:08:05.870 ⇒ 00:08:14.829 Robert Tseng: So, like, a big migration, ERP migration, or complete re-platforming onto Snowflake, or, standing up
47 00:08:14.980 ⇒ 00:08:19.320 Robert Tseng: Like, a data function from scratch, which is kind of what I did for Eden.
48 00:08:19.430 ⇒ 00:08:30.080 Robert Tseng: Where we brought in, you know, they didn’t even have a data warehouse before, so everything there is built in the Google Suite, but we brought in,
49 00:08:30.510 ⇒ 00:08:44.969 Robert Tseng: set up dbt, and kind of developed Animusole’s CICD pipeline and ETL, to connect all their different tools. So, we’ve… we’ve done work… we do work like that as well. So,
50 00:08:45.260 ⇒ 00:08:54.429 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s… those are the types of projects. I can… I can send over a deck with kind of a broader look at our services and some specific case.
51 00:08:54.560 ⇒ 00:09:12.389 Robert Tseng: But yeah, so I think that’s generally how we work, with agencies, or with recruitment agencies, like I said. If you’re like, hey, this company needs, like, 3 Snowflake data engineers, like, we need to hire them quickly, yeah, I mean, like, we’re…
52 00:09:12.700 ⇒ 00:09:23.840 Robert Tseng: we have a pretty wide Rolodex, always have people that we’re talking to that, can plug in, plug into a project very quickly. So, yeah, I think, like, we probably get, like.
53 00:09:24.260 ⇒ 00:09:41.259 Robert Tseng: two requests a month like that, where, within, like, a week, we can basically put, like, a very well-vetted and qualified candidate in front of you. You can get it placed… you get it placed super quickly, and then we typically just… it’s a staff augmentation model where we just kind of take
54 00:09:41.260 ⇒ 00:09:51.220 Robert Tseng: like, like a, you know, 20% kind of margin on top, or something like that. So, that’s, kind of a way that we’ve also done the, like, kind of…
55 00:09:51.450 ⇒ 00:10:05.439 Robert Tseng: it’s still not really permanent placement. Like, I think when those… those types of signals go out from big companies, like, they just need it for, like, usually 6 months. So, yeah, like, there’s… we haven’t really done anything where we’ve placed someone in a…
56 00:10:05.510 ⇒ 00:10:06.630 Lydia: On a team?
57 00:10:06.630 ⇒ 00:10:11.190 Robert Tseng: like, Uberinelli. Like, I just don’t think that’s probably a good fit for us.
58 00:10:11.620 ⇒ 00:10:21.239 Lydia: No, that makes sense. So, we typically don’t partner with companies in that model, so we partner with…
59 00:10:21.240 ⇒ 00:10:35.890 Lydia: companies that obviously are making the hires themselves, and then we would make the hires through… in Tasso and the JSS group, which is the company that I work for, so I typically work with candidates directly, rather than through another company.
60 00:10:36.340 ⇒ 00:10:51.590 Lydia: So I don’t know whether that would be something that we would be able to partner together on, just in terms of the way our business model is set up, cost efficiencies, things like that. What we could do, if it is an option, we could help source
61 00:10:51.590 ⇒ 00:11:05.740 Lydia: people for you, in terms of a candidate side, if you needed them for a client demand that you have, but I don’t know if that’s the sort of resources or potential that you’d be looking for or need support with it, you know, currently or in the future.
62 00:11:06.660 ⇒ 00:11:10.889 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think we’d be open to that. I mean, I do already have,
63 00:11:11.060 ⇒ 00:11:17.269 Robert Tseng: people that I go to for sourcing talent, so I’m not, like… that’s not, like, not a pressing need for me, so…
64 00:11:17.270 ⇒ 00:11:19.170 Lydia: I think, like, the…
65 00:11:19.620 ⇒ 00:11:29.489 Robert Tseng: business development opportunities, always, always open, but as far as, like, kind of having another kind of talent sourcing resource, I’m… that’s not, like, top… top of mind for me.
66 00:11:30.240 ⇒ 00:11:43.619 Lydia: Okay, that’s fine. Yeah, I don’t… I don’t know whether we’d be able to partner on the other side, unfortunately, just with the business model that we have set up and, kind of the… the kind of comms that we have with our clients directly.
67 00:11:43.690 ⇒ 00:12:07.169 Lydia: so I don’t know whether we would be able to move forward with anything at this point. Sure. On that side of things, if obviously you’ve got your resourcing sorted, and it doesn’t sound like you’re, you know, looking for something new at the moment yourself, but it’s up to you. Obviously, we can keep the conversation open, and obviously touch base maybe a few months down the line. It’s always, you know, great for me to hear about what people are doing within the industry as well, and
68 00:12:07.170 ⇒ 00:12:10.439 Lydia: Obviously, you’ve got some great connections with different companies, and
69 00:12:10.440 ⇒ 00:12:15.839 Lydia: understanding different, data challenges as well. So it’s always, you know, interesting to hear about those things for me.
70 00:12:16.750 ⇒ 00:12:35.279 Robert Tseng: Okay, yeah, no worries. Yeah, good to make your contact. Saw that you would be moving to the States soon, or for relocation, so, yeah, let me know when you’re down. Would love to… yeah, I mean, I’m happy to make intros, as you’re… now I know plenty of people that are looking for jobs, so I think there’s always, there’s always something that I can probably help with.
71 00:12:35.850 ⇒ 00:12:42.910 Lydia: That sounds good, Robert. Well, yeah, lovely to touch base. I’ll pop you a connection, and then I’ll, yeah, I’ll pop you a note when I land.
72 00:12:43.320 ⇒ 00:12:44.529 Robert Tseng: Okay, sounds good. Thanks, ladies.
73 00:12:44.530 ⇒ 00:12:47.400 Lydia: Alright, have a good day. Speak soon. You too. Bye.