Founding Recruiter

Build the Recruiting Function from the Ground Up | San Francisco | 5 Days In-Office

Location: San Francisco, CA
Work Model: In-person, 5 days per week
Experience: 3–5 years preferred | 2–6 years considered
Function: Recruiting / Talent Acquisition
Career Path: Founding Recruiter

About the Opportunity

We are looking for a Founding Recruiter to build and own recruiting from the ground up.

This is a high-ownership opportunity for a recruiter who wants significantly more than a defined requisition load. You will be the first dedicated recruiting hire, working directly with the founders and hiring managers to shape how the company identifies, attracts, assesses, and closes exceptional talent.

You will have visibility into hiring across engineering, sales, marketing, and other business functions, with the autonomy to build the systems, sourcing strategies, processes, and candidate experience that will become the foundation of the company's recruiting function.

This is a role for someone who can source like a specialist, recruit like a full-cycle operator, think like a talent strategist, and build like an early-stage employee.

The expectation is that this person grows with the company and, over time, builds and leads the recruiting team as Head of Recruiting.

What You'll Own
Full-Cycle Recruiting

Own the recruiting process from beginning to end:

• Source, engage, screen, interview, coordinate, and close exceptional candidates.
• Manage searches across both technical and business/GTM functions.
• Build high-quality pipelines rather than relying on inbound applications.
• Maintain momentum throughout the hiring process and proactively identify bottlenecks.
• Own candidate relationships through offer and close.

Build the Recruiting Engine
You will not inherit a finished recruiting machine—you will help build it.
You will:

• Establish sourcing and pipeline-building infrastructure.
• Develop repeatable sourcing strategies and recruiting playbooks.
• Improve ATS hygiene, pipeline visibility, interview documentation, and process consistency.
• Build scalable workflows that can eventually be handed to a growing recruiting team.
• Identify opportunities to automate repetitive recruiting work.
• Experiment with AI-forward sourcing and research workflows to find strong candidates faster.

Partner Directly With Founders & Hiring Managers
You will work closely with the people making the hiring decisions.
That means:

• Calibrating deeply on what exceptional candidates look like.
• Translating hiring needs into clear sourcing strategies.
• Challenging unclear requirements when necessary.
• Advising hiring managers on candidate quality, market conditions, compensation, and search pacing.
• Keeping searches moving with urgency, clarity, and accountability.
• Becoming a trusted talent advisor—not simply a requisition executor.

Own Candidate Experience
You will represent the company to a highly competitive candidate market.
You will be expected to:

• Create thoughtful, high-touch candidate interactions.
• Build trust with candidates from first outreach through offer.
• Communicate clearly and consistently throughout the process.
• Understand what motivates exceptional candidates and how to close them.
• Protect the company's reputation in every candidate interaction.

Use Data & Market Intelligence
Recruiting decisions should be informed by evidence.
You will use market and sourcing data to advise on:

• Candidate availability and talent pools.
• Compensation benchmarks.
• Search pacing.
• Pipeline health.
• Sourcing channel effectiveness.
• Where recruiting effort should be concentrated.

What We're Looking For
This role is deliberately designed for someone with high agency and a builder mentality.
Must-Have

• 2–6 years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with approximately 3–5 years preferred.
• Demonstrated ownership of sourcing, screening, coordination, and closing.
• Experience recruiting across both technical and business/GTM roles.
• Previous experience in a startup environment or at an agency primarily serving startups.
• Experience as one of the first 1–3 recruiters at a company, or a demonstrable track record as a top performer at a startup-focused recruiting agency.
• Bachelor's degree from a US or Canadian university.
• Strong hands-on experience with LinkedIn Recruiter and the ability to independently build and activate candidate pipelines.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to operate as a true individual contributor in an early-stage environment.
• Willingness to handle recruiting coordination and scheduling responsibilities before additional recruiting infrastructure and headcount are added.
• Comfortable working in person, five days per week, from our San Francisco office.

Nice to Have

• Experience with AI-forward sourcing and talent intelligence tools such as Juicebox, Clay, or Harmonic.
• Experience with Ashby or another modern ATS.
• Experience recruiting across both technical and GTM functions.
• A sourcing-first career trajectory, including experience progressing from sourcing or recruiting coordination into full-cycle recruiting.
• Experience building recruiting playbooks, sourcing strategies, or hiring infrastructure from scratch.
• Experience working with external recruiting agencies and effectively calibrating them on ideal candidate profiles.
• Experience using recruiting data and market intelligence to influence hiring decisions.

What Will Make You Stand Out
We're particularly interested in candidates who demonstrate several of the following:

Builder mentality
You've built something rather than simply operated within an established recruiting machine.

Early-stage experience
You were one of the first recruiters at a startup and understand what it means to create structure where very little exists.

Sourcing excellence
You can identify and engage exceptional candidates who aren't actively applying.

AI-forward recruiting
You've experimented with modern sourcing, enrichment, automation, or talent intelligence tools and can explain how they improved your output.

Startup-focused agency excellence
You've consistently delivered high-quality hires for demanding startup clients and know how to calibrate quickly against an evolving brief.

Strong technical recruiting instincts
You understand that engineering hiring requires a different sourcing and assessment approach from sales, marketing, or other GTM functions.

Commercial mindset
You understand that recruiting is ultimately about helping the business make better and faster hiring decisions.

Career ambition
You want to build toward becoming a Head of Recruiting, not simply manage a stable individual contributor workload.