Serval offers $10k vacations to build an IT agent

If you have ever worked in enterprise IT, you know the pain of manually granting software access to dozens of new hires every week. Serval is building an AI agent named Catalyst to take over that chore.

Natural language automations, backed by a wild perk

With Catalyst, IT technicians can simply describe the problem they want solved, like automatically provisioning app permissions when an employee joins. The agent writes the necessary code, which IT teams can test and formally approve before setting it to run on a schedule.

To build this out, Serval is throwing serious cash at engineers. Every new engineering hire gets their first week off as a $10,000 paid vacation to rest up before writing a line of code. On top of that, successful employee referrals will pay out $30,000 to both the referring employee and the new hire.

Why it matters

IT automation is notoriously fragile in large companies, which is why keeping human approval in the loop before automated execution is a smart design choice. It gives enterprises the speed of AI without handing over root access blindly.

Offering a paid vacation before day one is a clever recruiting stunt, but it also highlights just how cutthroat the war for agentic AI engineers has become. Building agents that can reliably operate across sensitive corporate infrastructure is hard work, and Serval clearly thinks high-stakes perks are what it takes to lure top talent.