Spark Recruiting is hiring: Senior Founding Recruiter in San Francisco

Title: Senior Founding Recruiter

Location: San Francisco - Onsite (relocation available)

Salary: $170,000 - $280,000 DOE

Schedule: M - F

About the Role

We're seeking a sharp, driven, and team-oriented Senior Founding Recruiter to partner with a cutting-edge AI startup pushing the frontiers of interpretability and AI safety. As the sole builder of the talent acquisition function, you'll own all hiring end-to-end while creating scalable recruiting infrastructure from the ground up. You'll be a strategic, hands-on partner to the founders, focused on attracting exceptional talent across AI/ML research, engineering, product, and go-to-market roles.

In this high-impact role, quality trumps quantity, small, talent-dense teams are how we win in interpretability research. If you're hungry to shape a world-class team in the heart of the SF AI ecosystem, thrive in intense early-stage environments, and are motivated by a mission-critical effort to build safer, more beneficial is your chance to do the most meaningful work of your career.

What You'll Do

• Own full-cycle recruiting for AI/ML research scientists, research engineers, ML infrastructure, security, and non-technical roles (ops, GTM, product, etc.) as needed.
• Build and maintain a proactive, warm pipeline of top-tier AI talent so we're always positioned to move quickly.
• Stay deeply embedded in the AI community: actively participate in SF/Bay Area events, meetups, reading groups, and conferences to cultivate relationships and drive high-quality warm intros.
• Design calibrated interview processes, align on the bar with leadership, and build recruiting systems/infrastructure that scale with the company, all while executing hands-on IC recruiting.
• Protect the bar relentlessly: default to healthy skepticism, seek out reasons a candidate might not succeed, embrace rigorous evaluation (work trials, deep references, behavioral interviews), and maintain high rejection rates to ensure only exceptional hires join.

What You'll Bring

Required

• 5–10 years of recruiting experience, including 3+ years in early-stage startups or research-intensive environments (Series A,B,C Funding periods).
• 2+ years recruiting specifically for AI/ML, research engineering, or ML infrastructure roles (strongly preferred).
• Proven ability to hire across both technical (research, engineering) and non-technical (GTM, product, ops) functions.
• Experience as the sole or founding recruiter: comfortable building and operating the entire function independently.
• Quality-over-quantity mindset: you measure success by the excellence of hires, aggressively protect the bar, and are unfazed by high rejection rates.

Preferred

• Experience recruiting for frontier AI labs, LLM startups, or research-heavy engineering organizations.
• Technical fluency (e.g., STEM degree or equivalent hands-on experience understanding AI/ML concepts).
• Computer Science degree or background is a plus.
• Established network within the SF/Bay Area AI ecosystem.

We're looking for someone who embodies hunger (relentless drive in a high-intensity mission), humility (team-first, open to feedback, ego in check), and smarts (sharp judgment, fast learner, deep insight into talent calibration).

What We Offer

• Market-competitive compensation, including base salary in the range of $170,000–$280,000 (depending on experience) + meaningful equity.
• Comprehensive benefits package.
• The opportunity to join a vital mission at a pivotal moment: building transformative AI technology with a world-class team on the critical path to safer, more beneficial outcomes for humanity.

If this resonates and you're ready to build something extraordinary—even if you don't check every single box—apply today. We're assembling an exceptional team and would love to hear from you.