Recruiter

Light Labs•Austin, TX

54d•Onsite

About The Position

As the first Recruiter at Light Labs, you'll own hiring end to end. Hiring is the number one lever for scaling this company, and it's your job to pull it: find the best talent in the entire industry, from the best chemists and microbiologists in lab science to the Account Executives and Account Managers scaling our book of business, and get them to join us. We've grown from zero to a multi-million-dollar run rate in under 2 years, and the team you build will determine whether we reach a $50M run rate in 2027.

Requirements

Proven full-cycle recruiting results. You've personally sourced, run, and closed hires, and you can walk us through the best ones: how you found them, how you won them, and what they went on to do.
Range across functions. You've recruited beyond one lane, ideally spanning technical or scientific roles and commercial ones, and you know how to calibrate what great looks like in a domain that's new to you.
A sourcer at heart. You don't wait for applicants. You headhunt, and you have creative, repeatable ways of reaching people who aren't looking.
A demonstrated high bar. You can point to hires where you held out for better, and you're comfortable telling a founder no on a candidate.
Relentlessly responsive. Operates with urgency and treats speed as a competitive advantage, not a courtesy.
Excellent communicator. A sharp storyteller and closer, in writing and in person, who can represent Light Labs to a PhD microbiologist and an enterprise seller in the same day.
Entrepreneurial mindset. Operates independently, thrives in ambiguity, and builds structure where none exists. You'll be defining recruiting here, not inheriting it.
Mission-aligned. Motivated by improving transparency and integrity in the food system.
Austin, TX (in-office 5 days per week). This role sits side-by-side with the founders and broader team as we scale Light Labs.

Responsibilities

Own recruiting end to end. You're the first dedicated recruiter. Sourcing, screening, process design, scheduling, offers, closing, and the tooling behind it all belong to you. Founders and hiring managers stay deep in the process; you run it.
Recruit across the sciences and GTM. Identify and land the best chemists, microbiologists, and lab talent in the industry, and the AEs and AMs who scale our book of business. Learn each craft well enough to know what great looks like, assess it, and sell to it.
Raise the bar. Every hire should raise the team's average. Hold the line on quality even when a req has been open too long, and push back when "good enough" shows up in a debrief. A+ talent attracts A+ talent, and you're the guardian of that.
Amp up the pace. Speed wins talent the same way it wins deals. Respond to candidates within hours, compress time from first touch to offer, and never lose a great candidate to a slow process. The best people are off the market in days.
Hunt, don't post. The best chemists and the best sellers aren't reading job boards. Source them directly: map the industry, headhunt from the labs, brands, and companies where the best people work, and build creative paths to a first conversation.
Always be recruiting. Even when we're not actively hiring, build the rolodex. Know who the best people in the industry are before we need them, keep relationships warm, and facilitate intros to our founders with people we should be talking to who may be in market.
Sell the mission. You're often the first person a candidate meets. Tell the Light Labs story with precision and conviction, and make every candidate, hired or not, leave the process impressed.
Build the machine. Structured interviews, scorecards, referral programs, employer brand, offer strategy. Document what works so recruiting scales past you.
Use AI to out-recruit everyone. Personalize outreach to the person, their work, and their world. Bring a level of polish and relevance to candidates that no other company in this industry matches.
Scale impact. Help drive Light Labs to a $50M run rate in 2027 by making hiring our sharpest competitive edge.