Talent Partner

About Drive Capital

Drive Capital backs the next generation of great technology companies built outside of Silicon Valley. Founded in 2013 by two former Sequoia Capital investors, we manage $3 billion in assets and have invested in more than 150 companies across the US and Canada, including Duolingo, Root Insurance, VAST Data, Path Robotics, and Alpaca. Our founders lean on us for more than capital. We help build their teams and establish the foundation for operational excellence.

Drive Talent

People are the core of our investment strategy. Drive Talent is the team that helps our founders hire the people who define their companies: founding engineers, AI/ML and robotics engineers, first product leaders, and the go-to-market and operating leaders who scale the business.

We run real searches, not referral lists. Every search is outbound: we have no inbound applicant flow, so every candidate we present is someone we found, engaged, and earned. We partner directly with founders, CXOs, and hiring managers, own each search from intake through close, and stand behind the quality of every candidate we put forward.

We are a small, experimental, and highly collaborative team. Everyone uses AI to work faster and rethink how recruiting gets done. We win as a team, and the collective wisdom we share across searches is a key reason we land exceptional talent.

The Role

As a Talent Partner, you will run concurrent searches for Drive portfolio companies. Your roots are in technical recruiting, but your range is wide: one week you might be sourcing an AI/ML researcher for a robotics company or a founding full-stack engineer for an AI startup, and the next an enterprise account executive, a founding talent acquisition lead, or a growth marketer. Think of it as the best of two worlds: the depth and ownership of a senior in-house recruiter and the pace, client management, and multi-search discipline of a strong agency recruiter.

Most searches are run as a pair. You will typically partner with a more senior Talent Partner who shapes the search strategy and leads the heaviest founder and hiring manager management, while you drive sourcing, outreach, assessment, and candidate experience. When the situation calls for it, you will own a search end-to-end on your own. You will work closely with portfolio founders and leadership teams, Drive's investment team, and the rest of Drive Talent. This is a full-time role based at our HQ in Columbus, Ohio.

What You’ll Do

• Run 4–6 concurrent searches (on average) across engineering, AI/ML, robotics, product, GTM, G&A, and operations roles.
• Partner with a more senior Talent Partner on most searches, from intake and calibration to a clear scorecard, ideal candidate profile, and sourcing strategy.
• Build every pipeline from scratch. We rarely have inbound applications to consider, so sourcing is the core of the job.
• Map talent markets and build target lists across companies, teams, labs, open source projects, and communities.
• Run multi-channel outreach that gets replies from passive candidates, using Juicebox, Herbie, LinkedIn, and your own network.
• Screen for technical depth, business judgment, and stage fit, and verify the evidence behind each candidate's story.
• Keep searches moving with structured loops, fast feedback, and a great candidate experience.
• Navigate compensation and equity conversations and help close offers with care.
• Use Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and other tools to build and improve your own workflows, from research agents to pipeline automations.
• Get up to speed on a new niche fast, whether that's humanoid robotics or revenue operations.
• Grow a long‑term network of builders and operators who know and trust Drive.

What You Bring

• 5–8 years of full-cycle recruiting, with experience both in-house at a high-growth company and at an agency, search firm, or VC talent team.
• A strong technical recruiting foundation, ideally at venture-backed startups, plus the range to recruit for go‑to‑market, G&A, and operations roles.
• A sourcing‑first mindset. You are energized by outbound, you build pipelines from nothing, and your outreach gets responses from people who are not looking.
• A track record of closing hard‑to‑fill roles, such as senior or founding engineers, specialized AI/ML or robotics talent, or senior business leaders.
• Hands‑on fluency with AI. You already use tools like Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor in your daily work, and you have built at least one workflow, automation, or agent that changed how you recruit.
• A team player. You enjoy partnering on a search, share credit easily, and have a high bar for performance and output
• Strong compensation and equity knowledge across startup stages, and a calm hand in offer conversations.
• Clear, concise writing. Your outreach, candidate write-ups, and updates are crisp and specific.
• Organized and data‑minded. You keep clean pipelines and use metrics to spot when a search is drifting.

The compensation for this position will be determined by a candidate’s experience and performance during the interview process, but base salary is expected to be in the range of $100,000 - $150,000 annually. You may be eligible for variable compensation, including carried interest and an annual bonus.

Other Benefits Include

• Healthcare coverage at no cost to you or your dependents, a Healthcare Reimbursement Account, 401(k), paid parental leave
• Take time off whenever you need it. In addition, we're off for major holidays and for two weeks at the end of each year
• A cell phone on our company plan
• Catered lunches, snacks, and drinks (every day)
• A parking pass and the view above at our Short North office in Columbus, OH, one of the fastest-growing cities in the US
• A fun, high-impact environment to grow your career