Founding Recruiter (Robotics and AI)

Destro AI • New York, NY

7d

About The Position

Destro AI is seeking a Founding Recruiter to establish and manage the company's talent acquisition function. This is a critical early hire, responsible for end-to-end recruitment as the company scales from a small team to hiring 20-30 individuals annually, primarily engineers. The role involves hands-on sourcing, closing, and process development, with direct collaboration with founders. The recruiter will have a strategic seat at the table, influencing hiring practices. Key responsibilities include recruiting and headhunting, managing hiring and people tools, and assisting the sales team with outreach and pipeline tracking.

Requirements

• 1+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience (spanning from sourcing to closing).
• Skilled with LinkedIn Recruiter and other AI-native recruiting / sourcing tools.
• Experience hiring technical roles at a startup or high-growth company.
• Strong diplomacy, tact, and experience closing highly sought-after candidates.
• Proven ability to source and close passive candidates on your own.
• Ability to quickly learn our domain and become a deep tech talent expert.
• A desire to become our first talent/HR hire and grow into a future executive at Destro.
• Direct, organized, and seeking a high velocity environments.

Nice To Haves

• Prior agency experience handling high-volume/cadence or mid-level executive recruiting.
• Experience with AI-native recruiting stack or modern sourcing tools.
• Familiarity with basic HR operations, onboarding, and payroll tools.

Responsibilities

• Own full-cycle recruiting for engineering and technical roles, including robotics, software, systems, and field deployment engineers.
• Proactively identify and engage top talent across robotics, ML, systems, and infrastructure.
• Build talent heatmaps of companies, labs, and teams with top robotics engineers to guide sourcing strategy.
• Source and close passive candidates through LinkedIn, GitHub, research networks, university labs, and referrals.
• Build long-term relationships with potential candidates.
• Partner with founders and hiring managers to define role scope, tradeoffs, and urgency.
• Manage offers, negotiations, and closing.
• Own and administer the hiring technology stack, including ATS (Breezy), sourcing tools, scheduling, and reporting.
• Build repeatable systems such as job description templates, outreach sequences, interview scorecards, and pipeline dashboards.
• Track and report on KPIs and department metrics.
• Support onboarding logistics and basic HR operations for new hires in coordination with payroll and HR tools.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed