Founding Recruiter

Lightfield•San Francisco, CA

4d•$170,000 - $210,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Lightfield is reinventing CRM from the ground up - and we're doing it fast. We're an early-stage startup where every hire directly shapes our trajectory, and we need someone who is energized by that pressure, not intimidated by it. Reporting directly to the CEO, you'll own talent across Engineering and GTM in one of the most critical phases of company building: the zero-to-one sprint where the right hires compound and the wrong ones cost months. Your north star is scaling a world-class engineering team without losing the bar.

Requirements

5+ years of full-cycle recruiting, with a heavy focus on scaling early-stage engineering teams in fast-paced, high-growth environments
A proven closer who has landed senior and staff-level engineers in competitive markets - and can tell the story of how
A builder by nature - you've stood up or overhauled recruiting systems from scratch in ambiguous, low-infrastructure startup environments and thrived in it
Comfortable with speed and ambiguity - at an early-stage startup, the priorities shift, the roles evolve, and the bar keeps moving; you adjust without losing momentum
Autonomous and decisive - you operate well as a team of one, make trade-offs without hand-holding, and iterate fast
Genuinely motivated by the mission, not just the process - you want to help build something from the ground up, not just fill seats

Responsibilities

Full-spectrum recruiting - end-to-end ownership across Engineering and GTM, with a heavy center of gravity on scaling early-stage engineering teams fast. Senior engineers, ML specialists, infrastructure leads - you know how to find them, pitch them, and close them in competitive markets.
Talent strategy & employer brand - define what "great" looks like at an early-stage company moving at our speed, craft the narrative that makes elite engineers and operators choose us over the big names, and build the employer brand from scratch.
Sourcing engine, zero → one - there's no inherited playbook here. You'll build repeatable, data-driven pipelines from the ground up across outbound, referrals, events, and community - and iterate on them constantly.
Process & tooling - implement the right amount of ATS structure and communication discipline for a lean, fast-moving startup so no great candidate ever falls through the cracks - without over-engineering for a company our size.
Candidate experience - run a crisp, high-velocity process that respects candidates' time and turns skeptics into advocates, hired or not.
Hiring manager partnership - coach managers across functions on calibration, interview technique, and closing; surface weekly funnel insights so leadership always knows where things stand.