Talent Acquisition Architect

SETI Institute•Mountain View, CA

2d•$80,000 - $120,000•Hybrid

About The Position

At SETI, we aren’t just looking at the stars—we are actively trying to understand our place among them. Our mission is dedicated to advancing humanity’s understanding of the universe through world-class scientific research, exploration, and discovery. We bring together a brilliant, passionate community of researchers, scientists, engineers, and innovators. To fuel our next giant leap, we need a Talent Acquisition Architect who matches our cosmic curiosity and can help us bring the world’s finest scientific minds to our team. How do you convince world-class minds to make SETI their professional home? That is the ultimate question you will solve. We are seeking a creative, highly accountable, and strategic Talent Acquisition Architect who is equal parts masterful headhunter and passionate brand ambassador. Your mission is to design recruitment strategies that attract elite Principal Investigators (PIs), researchers, and the critical administrative staff who keep our operations seamless, confidently selling the unique impact, culture, and vision that makes SETI the absolute employer of choice. Because our playground spans the cutting edge of tech and science, you must be a fast, agile learner who loves adopting new platforms. From architecting elite talent pipelines to flawlessly project-managing our internal Affiliate-to-PI transitions and global immigration tracks, you will use your exceptional communication, documentation, and follow-up skills to keep our universe expanding.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree (or equivalent experience) and 3+ years of full-cycle recruiting or talent acquisition experience.
Proven track record recruiting highly specialized roles, including Principal Investigators, researchers, administrative staff, or technical contractors.
Experience building tailored recruitment marketing strategies to pitch organizations and successfully secure top-tier candidates.
Hands-on experience navigating, tracking, and supporting complex immigration sponsorship processes and employment authorizations.
Superb tech literacy with deep proficiency across Dropbox, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoom, and Slack.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience recruiting for research institutes, scientific environments, academic hubs, or mission-driven nonprofits.
Familiarity with academic funding cycles, university networking, and on-campus student club engagement.
A proven history of leveling up onboarding programs or recruitment pipelines through clever workflow automation.
High comfort level interacting with, and learning from, Principal Investigators and highly specialized scientific teams.
Active experience with tools like Basecamp, Rippling HRIS/ATS, or workforce planning via tools like BASIC.

Responsibilities

Design compelling attraction strategies to recruit elite Principal Investigators (PIs), researchers, and administrative staff, masterfully making SETI the employer of choice.
Act as the central project manager for internal Affiliates successfully transitioning into high-level PI roles, ensuring an empowering, well-documented process from start to finish.
Build diverse pipelines for PIs, researchers, administrative staff, fellows, and interns by combining traditional methods with AI resources, Google Scholar, arXiv, and specialized academic file searches.
Scout for talent where it thrives—attending and recruiting from premier science conferences, forums, universities, virtual sessions, and on-campus student organizations.
Masterfully orchestrate complex immigration/visa tracking for our international scientists while driving daily efficiency through Slack, Zoom, Dropbox, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Basecamp.