Hunter Cestone places elite attorneys into AmLaw firms and cleared technologists into the agencies that protect the country — faster, because he built the AI that finds them.
No handoffs, no junior associates learning on your search. You work with me directly — whichever world you're hiring in.
Partner and lateral moves, litigation, in-house and general counsel, and the legal IT & operations roles that keep a firm running. I speak the language of practice groups, books of business, and conflicts — built on relationships across 70+ AmLaw 100/200 and boutique firms.
Hire legal talent →TS/SCI and polygraph-cleared engineers, cybersecurity, cloud, data, and software talent for defense contractors and agencies across Maryland, D.C., and Virginia. I understand clearance levels, contract vehicles, and the time-to-fill pressure that puts a contract at risk.
Hire cleared talent →I hold an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence from Johns Hopkins and built my own recruiting platform — placement.solutions — that continuously maps the legal and cleared talent markets. While other agencies start a search from zero, I start from a live, AI-ranked map of who fits. That's how a one-person boutique outpaces firms ten times its size.
Thousands of mapped attorneys & cleared professionals, refreshed continuously.
Best-fit candidates surfaced in days, not weeks — ranked before I pick up the phone.
AI filters; a human headhunter judges. You only meet the real finalists.
Proprietary tech, owned end-to-end. See the platform →
Illustrative · live match-ranking engine
A focused call to define the role, culture, comp, and clearance or practice requirements.
The platform surfaces a ranked universe of who fits; I work my network in parallel.
Only vetted, genuinely-interested finalists — with my honest read on each one.
I quarterback offers, references, and the start — and stay through onboarding.
Confidential by default. Conflicts respected. I never mass-blast your opening to the market.
Hunter Cestone is a boutique headhunter with an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence from Johns Hopkins and a rare dual specialization: BigLaw legal search and TS/SCI cleared & technical search.
He spans two of the most demanding, hard-to-serve hiring markets in the country — the AmLaw 100/200 and the cleared community across the Mid-Atlantic — and backs both with a recruiting platform he built and owns himself.
The promise is simple: you work with me, not a junior associate, and not a 200-recruiter machine that forgets your search the moment a bigger client calls.
“Add a real client testimonial here once you have permission to use it.”
One confidential call. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right headhunter for it.