Recruiter

Vals AI•San Francisco, CA

13d•Onsite

About The Position

We're hiring our first in-house recruiter to help us scale a small, talent-dense team without diluting the bar. The ideal candidate likely has a nontraditional background for a recruiter — technical foundation, ideally CS or engineering, who moved into talent because they realized that finding and closing the right people is the highest-leverage thing they can do at an early-stage company. You'll partner directly with the founders and hiring managers to source, screen, and close engineers, researchers, and GTM hires. You'll own pipelines end-to-end: writing JDs that pull the right candidates, sourcing the top of the funnel yourself, running first-round calls, managing candidates through technical loops, and helping us close offers against competitive packages from frontier labs. You're joining as the first dedicated talent hire at a company. Motivated people will own more of this function over time — building out the team, the playbook, and the bar — with a pathway to grow into Head of People as we scale.

Requirements

1+ years of in-house recruiting at a high-growth startup, ideally in AI/ML, infra, or developer tools.
A track record of closing engineers or researchers against competitive offers, including offers from frontier AI labs.
Conversational familiarity with what's going on in AI. You should be able to sustain a conversation with technical talent and speak credibly about the labs, the work and where the field is heading.
Strong written communication.
Ability to work in-person, in San Francisco.

Nice To Haves

A technical background (CS or engineering degree, prior SWE experience).
Prior experience hiring ML researchers or engineers with publications.
Experience setting up scrappy recruiting ops (sourcing tools, ATS selection, interview rubrics) from zero.

Responsibilities

Partner directly with the founders and hiring managers to source, screen, and close engineers, researchers, and GTM hires.
Own pipelines end-to-end: writing JDs that pull the right candidates, sourcing the top of the funnel yourself, running first-round calls, managing candidates through technical loops, and helping us close offers against competitive packages from frontier labs.
Build out the team, the playbook, and the bar over time.
Scale a small, talent-dense team without diluting the bar.