Founding Recruiter

A YC W26 AI voice recorder company backed by Accel has passed $100M ARR with a very small team. Every search today is run by the founders directly. 25 roles need to be filled across engineering research and go-to-market over the next two quarters. Hiring is now the bottleneck. This is an urgent hire.

Full-cycle recruiting ownership working directly with the founder day to day. High autonomy on process and strategy paired with hands-on execution: personal weekly sourcing personal screening personal closes. No handoffs to a team no legacy process to inherit. Build the ATS and interview process from scratch while running 10 live searches at once.

• Own full-cycle recruiting for 10 open roles simultaneously across technical (engineering ML research) and business (marketing finance GTM ops) functions.

• Source candidates personally every week. Inbound review or agency management is not part of this seat.

• Convert a vague hiring need into a scorecard and a structured interview plan.

• Run offer and close conversations directly with the founder including salary and equity and explain startup equity clearly to candidates new to it.

• Build and own the ATS end to end including funnel reporting.

• Push back on the founder when a role is poorly scoped or the bar slips.

• 4-6 years of full-cycle recruiting including in-house time at a fast-growing startup.

• Personally closed both technical roles (engineers ML research) and business roles (marketing finance GTM ops) with numbers to back it up.

• Currently sourcing personally on a weekly basis not just managing sourcers or reviewing inbound.

• Running 10 concurrent searches across different functions without dropping candidates.

• Comfortable owning offer and close conversations including equity without a founder scripting every word.

• Based in San Francisco or clearly willing to work hybrid/on-site in SF.

• HR generalist People Ops or HRBP background without end-to-end recruiting ownership.

• Agency or RPO background with no in-house startup experience.

• Never owned a search through to offer (coordinator scheduler or sourcer-only experience).

• Currently managing agencies or vendors instead of sourcing directly.

• Unwilling to work in San Francisco on a hybrid or on-site basis.

• First or early recruiter at a seed or Series A company having built the function from nothing.

• Experience hiring ML speech or LLM researchers.

• Consumer tech DTC or hardware background.

• Experience hiring across Europe or India including EOR or contractor setups.

• Already using AI tools for sourcing and outreach.

• Owned an ATS (Ashby Greenhouse or Lever) end to end including funnel reporting.