It sounds like Aurornis was not, in fact, trying to hire people at the entry level.

Most companies doing regular, non-ML development hire a mix of junior and experienced engineers, with the latter providing code reviews, mentorship and architectural advice alongside normal programming duties.

It's understandable that someone kicking off a new ML project would hope to get the experienced hires on board first.

But there are a lot more junior people on the market than senior people right now - as is the nature of a fast growing market.