Riviera Partners Expands in APAC Region
October 21, 2026 – San Francisco-based Riviera Partners, a recruitment provider specializing in C-level engineering, product, and design leader placements, has expanded it the APAC region with the addition of Gaurav Dev Burman as a partner based in Bengaluru. In this role, Gaurav will advise boards, CEOs and investors on technology leadership searches across India and the APAC region.
“Gaurav has an uncommon depth of knowledge about the companies, the talent and how leadership decisions get made in India and the broader APAC region,” said Glenn Murphy, managing partner, EMEA at Riviera Partners. “That region is producing some of the best technology talent in the world, and the companies competing for that talent can benefit from a partner who knows those markets like Gaurav does.”
Mr. Dev Burman’s career includes more than 20 years of experience spanning FMCG, banking and management consulting. across India, the United States, and Africa. He also has over a decade of executive search experience, with a strong track record of placing senior technology leaders for organizations across India, APAC, and the U.S. He joins Riviera from Boston Consulting Group, where he served as Partner and Director where he led the firm’s Leadership Talent Architecture practice.
Prior to BCG, Mr. Dev Burman spent close to a decade at Korn Ferry as Client partner and senior client partner focused on the technology and professional services sectors and served as APAC executive recruiting leader for Technology at Google.
Riviera Partners is a global recruiting firm specializing in the technology industry. The firm provides clients with optimal placements by combining recruiter interactions and experience with data-driven findings about candidates. Riviera Partners has recruited for key executive roles at Pinterest, Postmates, Tinder, Twilio, Uber, Asana, Dropbox, GitHub, DoorDash, Hulu, and partnered with venture-backed concerns, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Benchmark, Accel, Menlo Ventures, KPCB, Greylock, and General Catalyst.
Related: Riviera Partners Expands Public Practice
Through machine learning algorithms, Riviera Partners identifies specialized, highly qualified candidates that fit an organization’s needs from 600,000 professionals across tech geographies. Riviera can often provide a short list of candidates in 30 days and has a success rate of over 95 percent.
Recent Acquisition
This past June, Riviera Partners acquired Lateral Labs, a specialized recruiting firm serving top AI startups. “The acquisition comes as companies remain challenged to meet the demand of organizational AI readiness,” the firm said. “Adding Lateral Labs positions Riviera Partners to help companies meet that challenge across the full arc of an AI company’s growth, offering executive and technical talent search from seed-stage startup through IPO.”
Scaling Growth Through Transformative Talent
High-growth environments can compress time, magnify decisions, and expose leadership gaps in an instant. As companies move through periods of rapid expansion, the ability to build and evolve the right leadership team becomes increasingly critical to sustaining momentum and creating long-term value. Across private equity, venture capital, and technology-driven businesses, organizations are rethinking how they assess executive talent, strengthen leadership benches, and prepare teams for the demands of the next stage of growth. From founder-led recruiting and executive assessment to AI-enabled talent intelligence, cybersecurity leadership, and organizational design, the focus is shifting toward more deliberate, data-informed decisions about the people ultimately responsible for scaling the enterprise.
Hunt Scanlon Media will convene more than 250 private equity & venture capital operating partners, chief talent officers, and executive recruiters at The Marker Hotel in San Francisco on October 28, 2026. The program will explore how organizations across venture capital, private equity, and high-growth technology sectors are building the leadership infrastructure required to scale—examining how talent decisions, executive team design, and leadership assessment strategies are evolving to support sustained growth, innovation, and long-term enterprise value.
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“Our research shows as few as two percent of companies are organizationally ready to execute with AI, and the gap almost always comes down to talent,” said Kyle Langworthy, partner and head of AI, ML and data practice at Riviera Partners. “This acquisition gives companies deeper access to the most in demand AI and machine learning talent their businesses need to execute.”
Lateral Labs partners with some technical teams in AI, including Cursor, ElevenLabs, Runway, Scale AI and Luma Labs. The firm’s retained and contingent search models meet the specific demands of machine learning and AI research roles through deep domain knowledge, talent relationships and repeatable processes. The company was established in 2024 by founder and CEO Rob Infantino, a veteran recruiter for leading AI labs including OpenAI and Amazon Web Services.
“The people who build great AI are rare and in high demand, and reaching them takes real relationships, infrastructure and know-how,” said Mr. Infantino. “Together, Riviera Partners and Lateral Labs can support an AI company’s hiring across its full lifecycle — from its first technical hire through IPO — spanning research, science, infrastructure, engineering, product and leadership roles.”
Related: Riviera Partners Appoints Chief Operating Officer
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
