Lead Recruiter

Avante•Seattle, WA

8d•$130,000 - $160,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Avante is seeking its first in-house recruiter to manage an active hiring period over the next twelve months. This role will be responsible for setting the standard for all future hires and will own the entire recruiting process end-to-end. The recruiter will run key searches across engineering, GTM, operations, and customer-facing roles, either directly or by overseeing external recruiting partners. This position is crucial for scaling the company and will involve strategic decision-making regarding hiring standards and candidate evaluation. The role also presents a unique opportunity to explore and implement AI in the recruiting process, aligning with Avante's AI-powered platform.

Requirements

5+ years of in-house recruiting experience at a high-growth startup or adjacent recruiting agency, ideally one that scaled from under 50 to several hundred people.
Experience closing candidates across engineering, GTM, and ops.
Program management skills; ability to build process and hold people accountable.
Ability to own the entire recruiting problem, including sourcing, coaching hiring managers, and managing offer negotiations.
Sharp judgment on people; ability to identify strong operators and distinguish between talkers and doers.
Low ego, high bias for action.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Based in (or willing to relocate to) the Seattle area; this role is on-site.

Nice To Haves

Experience in enterprise Saas or AI-native product company.
Experience using AI tools in the recruiting process.

Responsibilities

Own the full recruiting funnel from intake through offer accept across every function. Build the pipeline, run the process, debrief the panels, close the candidates.
Run, not just attend, the hiring process. Drive the program-management muscle that contract recruiters typically don't: weekly hiring manager reviews, scorecard discipline, calibration sessions, offer logistics, and clean handoffs to onboarding.
Hold the bar on culture fit. Screen every finalist for low-drama, high-execution behavior.
Manage external partners. Coordinate with fractional recruiting partners and agencies on overflow and specialized searches; decide where to spend, where to pull back, and when to bring work in-house.
Experiment with sourcing channels. Run the public-posting experiment on Lever, evaluate inbound vs. outbound conversion, and build a referral engine inside Avante.
Be the data layer for hiring. Maintain accurate pipeline metrics (time-to-fill, pass-through rates, source mix, offer accept rate) and report them weekly to leadership.
Set the standard for candidate experience. Every candidate, hired or not, leaves with a high opinion of Avante.
Build the recruiting playbook. Write down what works. Codify interview guides, scorecards, and intake templates so future hires can plug in.