Recruiter, Hardware

Physical Intelligence • San Francisco, CA

1d • Onsite

About The Position

Physical Intelligence is bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world. We are a group of engineers, scientists, roboticists, and company builders developing foundation models and learning algorithms to power the robots of today and the physically-actuated devices of the future. As a full stack Recruiter, you will help build the team that builds the robots - owning high-impact searches across research and engineering.

The People team at Pi exists to recruit the world’s best talent and provide them the tools and context to do their life’s best work, removing all barriers, physical or digital, save the immense complexity of the problem at hand. The Recruiting team partners directly with founders and technical leaders to design roles, define talent strategy, and close exceptional candidates. We operate with a high bar, high transparency, and strong market awareness.

We design and build our own robots. The engineers who design them, the team that builds them at our factory in Fremont, and the fleet that keeps them running are some of the hardest people in the world to hire, and we need a lot more of them. As our Hardware Recruiter, you’ll build the team that builds the robots. You’ll partner directly with Adnan Esmail, our co-founder who leads hardware, and with the engineering, factory and fleet leads on his team. You’ll own hiring across mechanical, electrical, firmware and controls engineering, manufacturing, NPI, test, supply chain, and the technicians who build and maintain our robots. You’ll report to Blake Williams. The role is in person in San Francisco, with regular time at our Fremont factory.

Requirements

• 6+ years of full-cycle recruiting, with a big share of it hiring hardware (mechanical, electrical, firmware, manufacturing, test, supply chain or technician roles) at companies that ship physical products.
• A network you can use on day one. You can name the first ten people you’d call for our open roles, and they’ll pick up.
• Real hardware fluency. You know a design engineer from a manufacturing engineer, what EVT/DVT/PVT means for someone’s willingness to leave, and how a great PCBA supply manager differs from a buyer. You walk out of an intake with a sharper role than you walked in with.
• Range across both sides of hardware: design engineering, and the factory and fleet.
• A high bar you can explain. Show us yours: the hires you’re proudest of, and why they were hard.
• Resilience.
• Urgency.
• Analytical rigor.
• Genuine curiosity about robots. You want to be at the factory, close to the work you’re hiring for.

Nice To Haves

• Built a hardware recruiting function from scratch, or scaled one through a production ramp.
• Hired technicians or factory teams at volume, including hands-on trials.
• Run senior hardware leadership searches (Director and above).
• Recruited at robotics, AV, drone, aerospace or consumer electronics companies.
• Familiarity with AI-powered recruiting tools and automation workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own every search end to end, from mapping who has actually shipped robots, vehicles, drones and devices at volume to closing them yourself.
• Know the hardware market cold. Know where the best engineers, manufacturing and supply chain people sit, what their titles actually mean, and who they’d take a call from.
• Run two motions at once: hand-pick the few dozen people who could own a subsystem, and build a funnel that hires technicians and factory talent every week.
• Know product cycles, stay close for years if you have to, and be there when the window opens.
• Build interview loops with our hiring managers that test real work, like prototyping exercises and hands-on trials, and keep interviewers calibrated.
• Design bespoke closing strategies.
• Treat every candidate with care and respect.

What This Job Offers

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