Founding Recruiter

Founding Recruiter

Technical Recruiting · Reports to CEO · Individual Contributor · Full-time

About the Role

Our client, a venture-backed startup that recently closed a large Series B round, is hiring its first dedicated Technical Recruiter to lead an open-ended engineering hiring ramp. This is a true one-person band: no People function, no recruiting ops, and no inherited sourcing playbook exist today. You'll report directly to the CEO, inherit an established ATS and a dedicated internal submissions channel, and build everything else.

You'll take over two active, niche searches — Forward Deployed Engineer and Data Migration — while ramping broader engineering hiring (backend, frontend, infra, AI/agentic, and engineering management) in parallel as throughput allows. This role is built for someone who is energized by white space, not someone waiting for structure to be built around them.

CEO

Founding Recruiter

Solo hire today — no People function, no recruiting ops

Forward Deployed Engineer, Data Migration

Established ATS, LinkedIn Recruiter, internal chat tools

As needed for candidate meetings, on-site interview loops, and team offsites

Primary Hiring Focus

Forward Deployed Engineer (active search)

A customer-facing engineer who combines deep networking knowledge with TypeScript/JavaScript fluency, modern tooling (AI tools, n8n/Zapier), and live troubleshooting skill. Multiple hires expected. This role is the canonical intake — you'll be able to pick it up, run with it, and source against it without re-education.

Data Migration (active search)

An adjacent technical profile you'll own end-to-end alongside FDE.

Workflow Solutions Engineer / Solutions Architect

Same talent pool, adjacent titles — Implementation Engineer, Integration Engineer, Customer Engineer, and Professional Services Engineer all map to this profile.

Broader Engineering

Backend, frontend, infra, AI/agentic engineering, and engineering management hires, running in parallel as throughput allows.

What You'll Do

• Own full-cycle recruiting for the Forward Deployed Engineer and Data Migration roles — sourcing, screening, scheduling, hiring-manager partnership, offer, and close.


• Develop and continuously iterate Boolean search strategies across LinkedIn Recruiter.


• Screen 200+ profiles per role and conduct initial phone screens.


• Apply the hiring team's four core criteria on every screen: networking depth, TypeScript/JavaScript fluency, modern-tooling curiosity (AI tools, n8n/Zapier), and customer-facing experience.


• Ask the mandatory screening questions covering AI setup, workflow-platform experience, and live-troubleshooting approach.


• Submit only candidates who pass all four criteria, paired with honest, no-spin candidate briefs.


• Own candidate experience end to end — the bar for candidate communication is extremely high.


• Coordinate interview scheduling across a multi-step engineering interview process.


• Flag AI-generated or fraudulent resumes, an ongoing issue in this hiring space.


• Partner closely with the CEO and a cross-functional stakeholder to iterate on the ideal candidate profile based on interview feedback.


• Track funnel metrics in the ATS and report them to the CEO proactively, without prompting.

What Makes This Search Hard

Go in with eyes open — this is not a straightforward search:

• The role requires a rare combination — deep networking knowledge, modern software skills, customer-facing confidence, and startup mentality — in a single person.


• 90%+ of telco/ISP candidates lack modern software depth.


• Strong resumes don't predict interview performance; strong-on-paper candidates have failed at whiteboard workflow design.


• The talent pool skews heavily toward candidates requiring visa sponsorship — work authorization must be confirmed early.

What You'll Bring

Must-haves

• Technical recruiting experience — you've sourced for engineering roles, not just sales or operations.


• Familiarity with the networking / telecom / infrastructure space. You don't need to be an expert, but you recognize signal words like ISP, OSS/BSS, MPLS, provisioning, and TypeScript.


• Boolean search expertise — able to refine strategy across many iterations and review 1,000+ profiles for a single search.


• High-volume screening ability — comfortable reviewing 50–100 profiles in a session and making fast, disciplined yes/no calls.


• Comfort with fast-moving environments, real-time feedback, and giving the same back.


• Experience with niche, hard-to-fill technical roles where the candidate profile is genuinely rare.


• 5+ years of technical recruiting experience.


• Comfort operating under direct executive partnership (CEO-reporting).


• Willingness to travel as needed for candidate meetings and on-site interview loops or team offsites.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience recruiting for ISP, telecom, or networking-software companies.


• Familiarity with well-known networking and telecom vendors, and the ability to recognize the right profiles from that world quickly.


• Experience recruiting Forward Deployed Engineers or Professional Services Engineers at SaaS companies.


• Hands-on experience with a modern ATS, or a demonstrated ability to ramp quickly on new ATS tooling.


• Experience hiring for AI-native or AI/agentic platform companies.


• Bilingual English/French (not required — the company operates English-first).


• Experience at a company that scaled from ~75–100 to 200+ employees.

Technical Fluency You'll Need to Screen Effectively

You'll hold credible first conversations with senior networking and solutions engineers and accurately assess signal before passing candidates to the hiring manager. You don't need to be an expert, but you'll need to:

• Tell when a candidate actually knows networking versus when they're handwaving — the deepest must-have skill for this role.


• Assess whether a candidate is genuinely productive in TypeScript/JavaScript versus only conversant.


• Recognize whether a candidate actually uses modern tooling like AI tools, n8n, or Zapier — versus namedropping them.


• Know what a strong versus weak answer to "walk me through a recent integration you built" sounds like.


• Speak fluently about ISP hierarchies and major telecom and network infrastructure providers without sounding like an outsider.

Experience & Background

• ~5–10 years in technical recruiting, including at least 3+ years in-house at a startup or scale-up.


• No specific degree required.


• Industry expertise in networking, infrastructure, telecom, OSS/BSS, B2B infrastructure, or developer tools is preferred; pure consumer-SaaS or sales/ops-only recruiting backgrounds will be a weaker fit.


• Most important credential: a clean track record sourcing engineering talent for niche, hard-to-fill roles, with clear examples of where those candidates came from.

The ideal candidate has spent 2–5 years recruiting for networking, infrastructure, or PS/FDE roles at comparable companies — someone who recognizes leading networking and infrastructure vendors instantly and knows how to screen for the rare combination this role requires.

Career Path

With direct CEO reporting and open-ended hiring volume, this role naturally trends toward owning the broader Talent or People function as the company scales — likely Head of Talent or Head of People as additional recruiters and a generalist People function build out behind you.

Success in the first 6–12 months looks like: FDE and Data Migration pipelines humming with consistent quality against the hiring team's four criteria, ATS workflows and reporting cleanly set up, strong hiring-manager partnerships, and a broader engineering pipeline ramped in parallel.