Our Story
Most Staffing Firms Are Built to Fill Roles. We Built Game 7 to Protect Delivery.
That means fewer missed tape-outs, less schedule slippage, and no months of back-and-forth on candidates who never should have been submitted.
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Chapter 01. The Problem
Most Staffing Firms Are Sourcing Agencies. Not Partners.
We'd seen it from the inside. A hiring manager with a real problem. A DFT hole two weeks before tape-out, a physical design lead who left mid-program, a verification team stretched thin across three concurrent SoC efforts. Reaches out to a staffing firm.
What comes back: a stack of resumes. Seven, ten, fifteen candidates. Most don't match the discipline. Some list tools they've never used seriously. None of them have been screened by someone who could tell the difference between ATPG coverage closure and a scan insertion role.
So the hiring manager spends two or three weeks running technical screens, burning engineering bandwidth they don't have, and the tape-out clock keeps running.
“That's not a staffing service. That's outsourcing the hard work back to the client. And charging them for the privilege.”
The industry average is seven to eight candidate conversations before a hire. That's not a process. That's noise dressed up as activity.
The Standard Firm
Resume volume over match quality. Generalist recruiters who don't understand the discipline. Two to three weeks of screens before a hire. No technical accountability.
The Game 7 Standard
Two to four pre-vetted candidates per role. Recruiters who know the difference between RTL and physical design. One conversation per hire as the goal. Not the exception.
The Common Experience
"They sent us twelve candidates. We interviewed six. One worked out. By then we'd lost three weeks.". A sentiment we heard too many times to ignore.
What Engineers Deserve
A recruiter who respects their craft. Clear scope. Honest communication. Roles that match their actual background. Not roles that match keywords on their resume.
Chapter 02. The Decision
We Started Game 7 Because We Wanted to Build a Better Way of Doing Business
The Foundation
Two Decades of Relationship-Building. Before Game 7 Existed.
The network Game 7 runs on wasn't built with ads or LinkedIn campaigns. It was built over twenty years of working directly with semiconductor and hardware engineers: understanding their craft, respecting their careers, and earning the right to call them when the right role opened up.
The Decision
Recruiting Didn't Have to Work the Way Everyone Assumed It Did
The old model. Post a job, collect resumes, forward the pile. Wasn't serving anyone. Not the hiring managers drowning in intake calls. Not the engineers getting submitted to roles that didn't fit. Not the recruiters who wanted to do meaningful work. We built Game 7 to fix all three.
The Focus
Semiconductor-Only, by Design
We made a deliberate choice: no IT. No generalist engineering. No sprawling discipline list that nobody could actually recruit to depth. We picked semiconductor, chip design, board design, and embedded firmware. And we went deep. That specificity is what lets our recruiters have real conversations with engineers and hiring managers.
The Standard
Success Measured by Whether the Engineer Delivers. Not by Whether We Filled the Req.
We built Game 7 around a simple belief: our success is concentrated in the achievements of our engineers and our clients. Not our own profit margins. That means longer discovery calls, harder screening, and fewer submittals. It also means better outcomes.
The name says it all. Game 7 is the moment that separates teams who prepared from teams who didn't. It's when having the right person in the right role determines whether a program ships on time or misses its window.
Semiconductor engineering doesn't get second chances the way other industries do. A missed tape-out window can mean a year lost, millions in mask costs, and a market opportunity that doesn't wait. The engineer you need for your Game 7 moment has to be the right one. Fully vetted, discipline-matched, and ready on day one.
We are the experts in our business. You are the experts in yours. When our expertise unites, we are truly able to engineer success.
That's not a tagline. That's the architecture of how we work: deep discovery, technical screening, and a partnership that doesn't end at the offer letter.
We don't need a job description. We sit there and walk through what is the actual problem, why do you have pain, what's the technical context within that pain, and where are your biggest missing gaps.
Nathan Alderman. Co-Founder, Game 7 Staffing
Chapter 03. What We Built
A Recruiting Process Built for Engineers Who Have Actually Shipped Silicon
Most staffing firms start with a job description. We start with a conversation about the problem. What's causing the schedule pressure, what the technical context is, where the biggest gaps are. No paperwork required.
From that conversation, we build the engineer profile ourselves. Our recruiters are calibrated to the specific discipline, program phase, tool ecosystem, and team structure. Not reading from a form.
Every candidate goes through AI-powered verification of identity, credentials, and experience consistency. Followed by a 30 to 45-minute technical and personality screen by a recruiter who actually understands the discipline. Then a real-world technical assessment. Only after all three layers do we submit.
That process runs about 3.5 hours of internal screening per candidate. What you receive is two to four engineers who are ready to evaluate. Not a calendar blocked for three weeks.
Problem-First Discovery
One 30-minute call. No prep, no paperwork. We ask about the real constraint. Not the job title.
AI-Generated Profile
Discipline-specific, calibrated to your program phase and tool ecosystem. You don't write a thing.
Deep Screening
AI verification + human technical screen + real-world assessment. ~3.5 hours per candidate internally.
One Interview per Hire
2-4 pre-vetted candidates. A single conversation. That's the goal we design toward. Not the exception.
Every engineer we submit has shipped real systems into production. That's a baseline, not a differentiator.
Chapter 04. Where We Are
Two Decades in the Making. Proof in the Numbers That Matter.
The companies we work with aren't giving us a chance. They're bringing us back , for the next program, the next node, the next tape-out. That repeat business is the real proof of what we've built.
We've placed engineers at Cisco, Northrop Grumman, Micron, NXP Semiconductors, Broadcom, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft. And across the broader Fortune 500 semiconductor supply chain. Not because we pitched them. Because someone on their team had already worked with us and knew what we deliver.
Our network of 50,000+ vetted engineers wasn't built overnight. It's the result of two decades of treating engineers with respect, communicating honestly, and being worth calling back when the next role opens.
Game 7 is Austin-based and intentionally sized. We're not trying to be the biggest staffing firm in semiconductor. We're trying to be the one that engineering leaders call when the stakes are real.
Small enough to know every placement. Experienced enough to know every discipline. Fast enough to respond the same day a req opens. Because our recruiters have been building relationships with the right engineers long before the req was written.
Our growth is a byproduct of doing this right. When engineers land in roles that fit and programs deliver on schedule, hiring managers remember. That's the loop we've been compounding for twenty years.
Chapter 05. What We Stand For
Success Measured by Achievements. Not Profits.
We continually challenge the standards of our industry and ourselves to build a culture centered around trust and encouragement. The recruiters here are measured on match quality, not call volume. They're expected to understand what they're recruiting for. Not just what keywords to search.
The engineers who work with us trust us with their careers. That's not something we take lightly. It's why we take time to understand their background before we put their name on a submittal. It's why we communicate honestly about fit, timing, and rates. Even when it's not what they want to hear.
The hiring managers who call us trust us with their schedules. They know we won't waste their time with candidates who don't fit. They know we'll tell them if we can't find the right person. And what the market actually looks like if we can't.
We are a team of connected technical recruiters and account managers who are committed to putting people first. Because in this industry, the people are the product, and they deserve to be treated accordingly.
That's not a mission statement drafted in a conference room. It's why we built Game 7 in the first place. And it's the standard we hold every engagement to, regardless of deal size or client prestige.
Get Started
Tell Us What You're Building. We'll Find Who Can Build It.
No job description required. One discovery call. Usually scheduled within one business day. We'll handle the rest.
Placed at: Cisco · Northrop Grumman · Micron · NXP · Broadcom · Amazon · Tesla · Meta · Apple · Microsoft