Founding Technical Recruiter
Location: San Francisco, CA or New York, NY
Work Arrangement: On-site, 4–5 days per week
Employment Type: Full-Time
Base Salary: $120,000–$190,000 + Competitive Equity
About the Opportunity
A rapidly growing, well-funded AI technology company is seeking a Founding Technical Recruiter to join its expanding recruiting organization.
This is a unique opportunity to become the company's first dedicated technical recruiter in San Francisco and play a foundational role in building a high-performing engineering organization.
The company is experiencing significant growth and is expanding its technical teams. This position will have substantial ownership and visibility, with the opportunity to work closely with senior engineering and company leadership.
About the Role
The Founding Technical Recruiter will own the full recruiting lifecycle for technical positions, with a primary focus on hiring exceptional backend engineers, full-stack engineers, and data engineers.
This is a highly hands-on recruiting position. The successful candidate will be responsible for building pipelines, developing sourcing strategies, managing candidate relationships, and driving searches through close.
You will have significant autonomy and will be expected to operate as a builder rather than simply execute an established recruiting playbook.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the full-cycle recruiting process for engineering positions from sourcing through offer and close.
- Build and maintain strong pipelines of backend, full-stack, and data engineering talent.
- Conduct extensive hands-on sourcing and outbound recruiting.
- Partner closely with engineering leadership to understand hiring needs and develop effective recruiting strategies.
- Identify and engage highly competitive technical candidates through LinkedIn Recruiter, GitHub, Boolean search, networking, referrals, and emerging AI sourcing tools.
- Manage candidate communication and relationships throughout the recruiting process.
- Develop strategies for attracting technical talent in the San Francisco market.
- Help establish and strengthen the company's engineering recruiting presence locally.
- Operate independently while managing multiple technical searches and competing priorities.
- Maintain accurate candidate activity and recruiting workflows within the ATS.
- Continuously evaluate and improve sourcing strategies based on results and hiring-manager feedback.
- Contribute to the development of recruiting processes as the technical organization scales.
Required Qualifications
- 3+ years of full-cycle, in-house technical recruiting experience.
- Demonstrated experience recruiting software engineers, particularly backend and/or full-stack engineers.
- Experience recruiting data engineers.
- Strong hands-on sourcing and outbound recruiting skills.
- Proven ability to manage the recruiting lifecycle from initial outreach through closing.
- Experience partnering directly with technical hiring managers and engineering leadership.
- Strong candidate assessment and relationship-management skills.
- Highly self-directed, resourceful, and comfortable working with significant autonomy.
- Ability to work on-site 4–5 days per week in San Francisco or New York City.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience recruiting within a high-growth startup or technology company.
- Experience building technical recruiting pipelines in a rapidly scaling organization.
- Experience working in an early-stage or rapidly evolving recruiting function.
- Familiarity with Ashby or another modern ATS.
- Experience using AI-powered sourcing or recruiting tools.
- Technical education or a technical background.
- Experience recruiting in the competitive San Francisco technology market.
Ideal Candidate Profile
The strongest candidate will be a hands-on technical recruiter who genuinely enjoys sourcing and knows how to identify and attract difficult-to-reach engineering talent.
You should be comfortable operating without a highly established playbook, making decisions independently, and building recruiting strategies from the ground up.
The ideal candidate will have demonstrated success in a startup or high-growth technology environment and will be equally comfortable working strategically with leadership and executing searches personally.
This role is particularly well suited to someone who wants to grow with a company and potentially take on increasing responsibility as the technical recruiting organization expands.
Compensation & Benefits
- $120,000–$190,000 base salary, commensurate with experience
- Competitive equity package
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Unlimited PTO
- Office meals
- Commuter benefits
- Relocation assistance
Work Arrangement
This is an on-site position requiring approximately 4–5 days per week in the office.
Preferred location: San Francisco, CAAlternative location: New York, NY
Candidates who are not currently located in either market should be willing to relocate.
Interview Process
The anticipated process includes:
- Initial conversation with the hiring manager
- Interview with a member of the recruiting team
- Technical recruiting/sourcing take-home exercise
- On-site final interview
- Reference check
- Offer
The company aims to move efficiently through the process.
Pay: $120,000.00 - $190,000.00 per year
Benefits:
Work Location: In person
