Founding Recruiter Job San Francisco area,California USA,HR/Recruitment

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.

The Role

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.

Responsibilities

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.

Requirements

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.

Not a Fit If

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.

Good to Have

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.