Founding Technical Recruiter, AI Research & Engineering

Founding Technical Recruiter, AI Research & Engineering Seattle, Washington About Nuance Labs Nuance Labs is building photorealistic, real-time AI avatars with emotional intelligence: a full-duplex audiovisual system that can listen, speak, react, interrupt, and respond like a real person. We're a research company, with PhDs from MIT, UW, Oxford, CMU, and Johns Hopkins, and industry experience from Apple, Meta, Amazon AGI, and Discord. The team is small, the work is real, and the problems are unsolved. How Nuance Differentiates Most conversational AI avatars today are hacks — a face slapped on a speech-to-speech pipeline, stuck in the uncanny valley: emotionless, mechanical, one-turn-at-a-time. Current systems take 2–5 seconds to respond; natural conversation requires sub-500ms. That's a 10x improvement, and it demands rethinking the entire stack. That rethinking starts with full-duplex: an AI that listens and speaks simultaneously, perceives emotion in real time, and responds with a face that actually reflects it. It's an extremely hard problem, and we're developing foundation models designed for it from the ground up. About the Role Hiring is one of the highest-leverage things happening at Nuance right now. We’re building a small, exceptional team to solve hard problems in real-time multimodal AI, and the people we hire over the next year will shape the company for years to come. We’re looking for a Technical Recruiter to own full-cycle recruiting for AI research and engineering talent. You’ll source and close candidates who have real options: researchers from leading AI labs, exceptional new PhDs, ML systems engineers, and senior engineers who have shipped at serious scale. This is not a role for someone looking to plug into a mature recruiting machine. You’ll work directly with the founders and the team to build the machine: sourcing strategy, candidate experience, interview process, closing motion, and the operating cadence that keeps hiring moving. The right person is both strategic and hands‑on. You know how to find rare candidates, build trust before there is an open process, run tight interview loops, and close people on a company that is still early but deeply ambitious. What You’ll Own Own full-cycle recruiting for AI research and engineering roles, from sourcing through close Build deep, high-signal pipelines across AI labs, research universities, startups, and frontier engineering teams Proactively source for hard-to-fill roles, including ML researchers, multimodal modeling specialists, ML systems engineers, infrastructure leads, and research fellows Develop genuine relationships with candidates long before they are actively interviewing Run fast, thoughtful, respectful interview processes that reflect the quality and seriousness of the team Partner with founders and hiring managers to calibrate role requirements, interview loops, scorecards, and hiring bars Drive debriefs, references, offer strategy, and close plans for high-priority candidates Help candidates understand Nuance’s technical ambition, stage, equity story, and long-term upside Build the recruiting operating layer over time, including ATS hygiene, sourcing systems, pipeline reporting, interview kits, and process improvements Raise the talent bar while keeping the process warm, human, and candidate-centered What We’re Looking For Required Strong full-cycle technical recruiting experience in a high-bar environment, such as an AI lab, top-tier technology company, or fast-moving technical startup Demonstrated success hiring ML researchers, research scientists, ML engineers, infrastructure engineers, or similarly technical talent A track record of sourcing and closing candidates directly, not just coordinating an existing process Evidence of winning competitive candidates against larger companies, stronger brands, or higher-cash offers Excellent candidate judgment: you can quickly understand someone’s background, identify real signal, and separate substance from surface-level credentials Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to represent Nuance clearly and credibly to senior technical candidates High ownership, urgency, and follow-through — you treat hiring outcomes as your responsibility What makes someone great in this role You are warm, curious, and genuinely interested in people. Candidates remember talking to you because they felt seen, not processed. You understand enough about modern AI systems to have informed conversations with researchers and engineers. You do not need to be a researcher, but you should be able to read a candidate’s background and ask thoughtful questions. You have strong closing instincts. You know when to push, when to listen, when to involve a founder, and how to build conviction over time. You are comfortable selling an early-stage opportunity: ambiguity, equity, technical ambition, and the chance to help define a company from the ground up. You care about process, but you are not process-bound. You know when a tool helps, when a spreadsheet is enough, and when the right answer is to pick up the phone. You are energized by building the recruiting function itself, not just filling requisitions. Bonus Points Prior in-house recruiting experience at a frontier AI lab, AI startup, or highly selective engineering organization Experience hiring PhDs, research scientists, or candidates coming out of top academic programs Familiarity with AI research hiring cycles, including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, lab-leaving moments, and faculty-to-industry transitions Experience recruiting international candidates, including visa support, relocation, and compensation normalization Experience building or scaling a recruiting function from early stage through Series B or beyond Comfort with tools such as Greenhouse, Gem, Ashby, LinkedIn Recruiter, or similar recruiting systems Compensation $200,000 – $300,000 base salary, plus meaningful equity. We think long-term ownership matters and structure equity accordingly. Logistics Location: In-person in Seattle, five days a week — we believe in the compounding value of working shoulder-to-shoulder. Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas (O-1, H-1B, green card) from day one. AI-native tooling: Do your best work with the best tools, including unlimited tokens. Health: HSA plan with ~$2,000 in annual company contributions — roughly 2x what most big tech companies put in. Time off: 15 days of PTO plus public holidays, and we close the office for a full week at year-end. Food: Lunch, drinks, and snacks on us every workday — the small thing that quietly makes the day better. Commuter benefits: We help cover the cost of getting to the office. 401(k): In the works. Nuance Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We believe diverse teams build better AI. #J-18808-Ljbffr Nuance Labs