Founding Recruiter Jobs
Founding Recruiter jobs are open across early-stage startups, Series A through C companies, and venture-backed firms at every level from first-in-seat to lead, with specializations in technical recruiting, go-to-market hiring, and executive search. See the openings below and apply to the ones that match your experience.
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About Terac
Terac is building the infrastructure for accessing human capability on demand. We are working toward a future where Terac deeply understands:
What every person is capable of, what they want, and where they can thrive
What work our customers need completed and what success requires
What creates a great match between the two
With this understanding, Terac can intelligently allocate human capability to the work where it creates the most value for both our experts and customers. Today, our initial wedge is providing specialized experts for AI training, evaluation, market research, and other expert-driven research.
We place 1,000s of experts per month and pay our experts, on average, over $90/hr. We're a team of 15 based in San Francisco. We've raised $16M from SignalFire, Emergence, Audacious, and SV Angel, and we work with leading AI labs and research companies.
The problems we get to solve
Terac is a two-sided marketplace, and the most interesting problems live where the money moves. Some of the fun ones:
Pricing work we've never seen before: every project is different (a cardiologist for a 30-minute interview, 200 Amharic transcribers, a team of licensed engineers building RL environments), and we have to quote it in hours, not weeks.
Setting the right pay for experts: rates vary by domain, country, and urgency. Pay too little and the best experts walk. Pay too much and the project stops working for the customer.
Managing spread and take rate: the gap between what customers pay and what experts earn funds everything we build, and it looks different across market research, AI training, and data collection.
Liquidity on both sides: the right experts available the moment a customer needs them, across thousands of niches, without burning out supply or overpromising to demand.
Moving money globally: we pay experts across dozens of countries every month, often before customers pay us, which creates real working capital, FX, and fraud challenges.
About the role
The people we hire over the next year will define Terac. Today, the founders run recruiting themselves across engineering, GTM, operations, and strategic projects roles. You will be our first recruiter and own internal hiring end to end, partnering directly with the CEO and CTO to build a world-class, in-person team in San Francisco.
You'll recruit the people who solve the problems above, and those problems are a big part of how you'll sell candidates on Terac.
You thrive in ambiguity, have exceptional judgment about people, and treat closing a great candidate like closing a deal.
You will:
Own full-cycle recruiting: sourcing, outreach, screening, interview coordination, references, and closing across every function.
Source relentlessly: find exceptional people through LinkedIn, Juicebox, referrals, our investor networks, events, and any other channel you can dream up.
Close candidates: sell the Terac vision, run offer conversations alongside the founders, and make every candidate's experience great, whether or not they join.
Build the hiring machine: interview loops, scorecards, Ashby workflows, pipeline metrics, and an employer brand that makes Terac a place top people want to work.
Run recruiting events: dinners, hackathons, and campus outreach to build long-term talent pipelines.
You have:
2-6+ years of recruiting experience, with meaningful time at a high-growth startup or top agency
A track record of closing hard-to-hire engineering and GTM talent
Strong familiarity with LinkedIn Recruiter, Ashby (or similar ATS), and modern sourcing tools
Strong judgment and the ability to prioritize under pressure
You likely have experience in:
Being an early or first recruiter at a startup and scaling a team through hypergrowth
Exposure to marketplaces, AI, or technical hiring
Misc
Compensation: Competitive salary, meaningful equity vested over four years, $10K relocation bonus (for moving to the Bay Area), and an additional $5k housing bonus (if you move within 0.5 miles of our office), Health, Dental, Vision insurance, 401(k) with company match
Growth opportunities: You're joining Terac at one of the earliest stages and will have an opportunity to shape and grow with the company as a founding member.
Founding Recruiter Jobs by Experience Level
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Find Founding Recruiter JobsFounding Recruiter Job Market
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Science & Research
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in founding recruiter jobs.
- Full-cycle recruiting experience across sourcing, interviewing, and closing candidates
- Demonstrated ability to hire technical roles including engineers and product managers
- Proficiency with applicant tracking systems and recruiting workflow tooling
- Experience building or scaling a recruiting function at a startup or high-growth company
- Strong data fluency including pipeline metrics, offer acceptance rates, and time-to-fill
- Bachelor's degree in human resources, business, psychology, or a related field
Tips for Your Founding Recruiter Job Search
Tailor your resume to hiring velocity
Founding recruiter roles prioritize speed and volume. Quantify the number of roles you closed per quarter and the time-to-fill for hard-to-hire positions like engineers or senior ICs, so hiring managers can immediately see your throughput at scale.
Highlight your ATS setup experience
Many startups have no existing recruiting infrastructure. If you've selected, configured, or migrated an applicant tracking system from scratch, call that out explicitly on your resume. It signals you can build, not just operate, a recruiting function.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists founding recruiter openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Target companies at the right funding stage
Founding recruiter roles spike at pre-Series A through Series B. Filter openings by company stage when you can, and check recent funding announcements to find employers who are about to hire aggressively and need recruiting infrastructure built now.
Prepare a recruiting strategy walkthrough
Interviewers at early-stage companies frequently ask how you'd build a recruiting function from zero. Walk through your sourcing channels, interview process design, and employer branding approach using a previous company as a concrete case study.
Negotiate scope alongside compensation
Founding recruiter offers often include equity and a broad mandate. During negotiation, clarify which functions you'll own, whether you'll eventually build a team, and what budget you'll control so the role matches what you're agreeing to.
Founding Recruiter Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
How many founding recruiter jobs are remote?
About 50% of founding recruiter openings are fully remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting how many early-stage companies operate without a central office. Technical recruiting and sourcing-focused roles tend to be the most remote-friendly, while roles that require on-site candidate experience or executive partnership often prefer proximity to a company hub.
How do you become a founding recruiter?
Start by building full-cycle recruiting experience at an agency or in-house team where you own sourcing through close. Develop fluency in technical hiring, since most founding recruiter roles require filling engineering and product positions. Seek out stretch opportunities to design interview processes or select recruiting tools, then target companies at the pre-Series A stage where those skills translate directly into a founding seat.
Can you get a founding recruiter job with limited experience?
Yes, but you'll need to demonstrate that you've owned a recruiting outcome end-to-end rather than supported one. Candidates with two to three years of agency recruiting or in-house coordination experience can compete if they show they've closed hard-to-fill roles independently, used data to improve funnel performance, or built any part of a hiring process from scratch rather than inheriting an existing one.
What does the founding recruiter interview process look like?
Most founding recruiter interviews include an initial screen with HR or a co-founder, a deep-dive on your recruiting philosophy and past volume, and a practical exercise where you map out a hiring plan or sourcing strategy for a real role the company needs to fill. Final rounds typically involve a conversation with the CEO or multiple department heads, since the hire is considered a company-defining decision at the early stage.
Where can I find and apply to founding recruiter jobs?
You can find and apply to founding recruiter jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from across the United States in one place. Search the listings to find roles that match your background and apply directly to each one that fits your experience and the stage of company you want to join.
See All 24 Founding Recruiter Jobs
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