Founding Talent Lead
About The Position
LlamaIndex is seeking a senior Talent Leader to establish and scale its recruiting function from the ground up. This is a hands-on, player-coach role responsible for setting recruiting strategy, building the necessary infrastructure, and personally managing searches for critical technical and non-technical roles. The primary focus will be on technical hiring within AI/ML, infrastructure, full-stack engineering, and developer tools, with company-wide coverage extending to Go-to-Market, marketing, and operations. The role requires exceptional recruiting skills combined with the ability to architect and implement a robust hiring engine.
Requirements
- 7+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, preferably as an early or founding recruiter at a high-growth startup.
- Strong track record of hiring niche technical talent across AI/ML, infrastructure, platform engineering, or developer tools.
- Experience building recruiting infrastructure from scratch, including sourcing systems, interview loops, scorecards, calibration rituals, and hiring metrics.
- Strong talent judgment with the ability to deliver high-precision slates and reduce calibration cycles with hiring managers.
- Comfort operating across functions, including technical hiring, GTM, marketing, and operations roles.
- Fluency with modern sourcing and AI recruiting tools, with strong judgment regarding quality, signal, and automation.
- High ownership, grit, and excellent communication skills with founders, hiring managers, candidates, and external partners.
- Ability to work in-person at the downtown San Francisco office.
Nice To Haves
- Familiarity with AI/ML.
- Experience with open-source developer communities.
- Knowledge of developer tools.
- Experience with agency/vendor management.
Responsibilities
- Build a repeatable, high-precision hiring engine for technical and non-technical roles, including sourcing playbooks, structured interview processes, scorecards, and calibration standards.
- Establish a modern recruiting stack, configuring and optimizing Ashby and AI-powered sourcing tools.
- Enable hiring managers across engineering, product, GTM, and leadership to define roles clearly, calibrate quickly, and conduct consistent, high-signal interview loops.
- Develop an employer brand and candidate experience that accurately reflects the company and attracts exceptional passive talent.
- Implement a data-driven hiring operating rhythm, tracking pipeline metrics, conversion rates, time-to-fill, and source effectiveness, and using this data to inform decisions.
- Manage full-cycle recruiting for critical and specialized roles, from search strategy to offer close.
- Develop company-wide hiring strategy and capacity planning in partnership with founders and leadership, translating roadmap and headcount needs into an executable hiring plan.
- Ensure hiring quality and consistency across the company, acting as the steward of hiring standards and assisting teams in making better hiring decisions.
- Make build-vs-buy decisions regarding agencies and external partners, managing budgets and holding partners accountable.
- Oversee the responsible use of AI in recruiting, ensuring that judgment, calibration, and candidate quality are prioritized over volume.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
