Technical Recruiter

Aurelius Systems•San Francisco, CA

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

Aurelius Systems is a VC-backed defense tech startup developing autonomous, edge-deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We make laser systems to shot down drones. Our small team includes engineers, former US military operators, and experts, focused on creating the first cost-effective, reliable, and robust laser weapon system. We're going from ~20 to 60 people in the next six months. Every hire matters. We need a Technical Recruiter to run full-cycle recruiting on our hardest engineering searches while helping build the recruiting machine underneath. This is a hybrid role. You'll own priority technical searches — screens, process, close — and you'll partner with the Head of Talent on the operating layer that makes hiring scale. You are not a coordinator. You are not a sourcer only. You are the person who moves candidates through the funnel and moves the funnel itself forward. You'll report to the Head of Talent and work directly with founders and engineering leads. Your reqs will span software, controls, robotics, electrical, optics, and ML.

Requirements

2 to 5 years in recruiting, ideally with meaningful technical searches under your belt
Experience recruiting deeply technical profiles — hardware, embedded, robotics, controls, optics, ML, or adjacent engineering.
Strong candidate assessment judgment — you can tell the difference between a builder and someone who talks like one
ATS discipline — Ashby, Greenhouse, or similar. You keep systems clean without being asked
Urgency — you move candidates and decisions forward instead of letting process drift
Comfort with ambiguity, changing priorities, and building process while running it
High ownership and low drop rate. Details don't slip
Technical recruiting at defense tech, robotics, hardware, or deeptech startups.
Agency recruiting where you owned technical searches end to end.
In-house recruiting at Series A to Series C companies where you ran multiple reqs at once without a coordinator underneath you.
Closed hard technical hires that other recruiters couldn't.
Built process at a small company that made hiring measurably faster.
Would rather run five searches well than ten searches poorly.

Nice To Haves

Ashby ATS experience
Defense, national security, or ITAR-sensitive recruiting background
Startup or high-growth company experience
Recruiting operations, reporting cadences, or process documentation ownership
Experience recruiting alongside a founder-led hiring bar

Responsibilities

Full-cycle recruiting on priority technical searches — screens, process management, references, offer coordination
Candidate qualification and assessment against role requirements, working closely with hiring managers
Onsite operations: scheduling, travel logistics, invites, candidate-facing communication, tracker hygiene
Ashby as the single source of truth — clean stages, scorecards, archive hygiene, follow-ups
Process discipline — same-day debrief cadences after onsites, no candidates stalling in the funnel
Onboarding coordination handoff for new hires
Recruiting workflow improvements — templates, reminders, operating cadences, documentation
Pipeline reporting — weekly syncs, quarterly tracking, sourced vs. inbound, stage conversion, bottlenecks