Contract Technical Recruiter / Sourcer

Eka; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 83,000 - 138,000; Part time

Job summary

Eka Robotics is seeking a Senior Contract Technical Recruiter/Sourcer with deep domain expertise in Robotics, RL, and Physical AI. The role focuses on passive sourcing for world-class researchers and engineers, partnering with engineering leaders to map labs and engage top candidates.

You will also cover internal PTO interviews and contribute to RecOps projects, leveraging GitHub, arXiv, and niche communities to build talent pipelines.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of technical sourcing experience, including robotics/ML/RL talent.
• Experience navigating research venues (arXiv/OpenReview/Conferences) to identify talent.
• Proven ability mapping university labs and elite research groups.
• Familiarity with non-LinkedIn candidate channels (GitHub, forums, niche communities).

Responsibilities

• Passive high-touch outreach to passive PhD researchers and robotics engineers.
• Map university labs, industry labs, and competitor teams for structured pipelines.
• Own top-of-funnel sourcing for complex roles using specialized platforms and community channels.
• Provide coverage during internal PTO and support RecOps projects.

Skills

Technical sourcing

Robotics

ML/RL

Academic sourcing

Lab mapping

Passive outreach

Tools

GitHub

Semantic Scholar

arXiv/OpenReview

Discord/Slack communities

Job description

Job Title: Senior Contract Technical Recruiter / Sourcer

Compensation:

$60.00 -- $100.00 / hour (DOE / domain expertise)

Commitment:

up to 40 hours/week | 3-Month Initial Contract (Targeting Long-Term Engagement)

Location:

Hybrid preferred (Boston area for initial onboarding/ramp-up and occasional site visits) but open to strong remote candidates.

Eka Robotics

Eka Robotics is on a mission to build intelligence for the physical world - robots that are fast, general, and reliable. Our approach, grounded in physics, unlocks superhuman capabilities. We are defining the frontier of robotics research and deployment.

Our team consists of pioneers in robotics and machine learning. We are now hiring to scale our R&D effort. We are looking for hands-on individuals who are excited to help shape the future of robotics.

About the Role

We are seeking a high-caliber Senior Contract Technical Recruiter/Sourcer with deep domain expertise in Robotics, Reinforcement Learning, and Physical AI. In this role, your primary focus (90%+) will be deep-dive passive sourcing for world-class research and robotics engineering talent. You will partner closely with engineering leadership to map elite academic labs, mine top AI conferences, and engage non-obvious candidates building the future of physical intelligence.

Beyond sourcing, you will provide lightweight recruiter coverage during internal PTO (including interview coordination) and contribute to targeted RecOps side projects.

Key Responsibilities

• Passive Talent Acquisition: Execute high-touch, hyper-personalized outreach to passive PhD researchers and high-performance robotics engineers.
• Talent & Lab Mapping: Map out key university research groups, industry labs, and competitor teams to build structured talent pipelines.
• Full-Stack Sourcing Execution: Own top-of-funnel generation for complex roles using specialized platforms, literature repositories, and community channels beyond traditional LinkedIn (e.g. Github).
• Recruiter Support & Coverage: Provide coverage for full-cycle coordination and candidate management during internal recruiting team PTO.
• RecOps Projects: Assist with ad-hoc talent operations, pipeline analytics, and workflow optimizations.

Target Roles You Will Source

1. Research Engineers (ML / RL, Computer Vision, Simulation)

• Target Profile: PhD-level researchers with strong publication records in top-tier conferences (CoRL, ICRA, NeurIPS, CVPR) and post-doctoral or specialized industry experience.

2. Software Engineers (Robotics & ML/RL Infrastructure)

• Robotics Software: Performance-focused systems engineers specializing in low-level Linux profiling, real-time compute, ROS2, and edge deployment of ML models (TensorRT, ONNX).
• ML/RL Infrastructure: Distributed systems engineers proficient in C++/Python/JAX who build scalable training infrastructure, orchestration pipelines (Kubernetes, SLURM), and internal developer tools.

Minimum Qualifications

• 4+ years of technical sourcing experience, with at least 1+ year specifically targeting niche Robotics, ML/RL, or Embodied AI talent.
• Academic & Literature Sourcing Expertise: Proven ability to navigate research proceedings (arXiv, OpenReview, CoRL, ICRA, IROS, CVPR, RSS, NeurIPS) to identify publication-author talent.
• University Lab Mapping: Experience mapping and extracting top talent from elite university research groups (e.g., MIT CSAIL, Stanford RAIL, UC Berkeley BAIR, CMU Robotics Institute).
• Beyond-LinkedIn Toolkit: Demonstrated mastery of alternative candidate identification channels (GitHub, Semantic Scholar, X/Twitter, specialized Discord/Slack communities).
• Technical & Domain Fluency: Ability to fluidly converse in physical AI concepts, evaluate thesis work, and translate technical job requirements into highly relevant candidate pools.

Bonus Qualifications

• Active talent networks and existing relationships within the robotics and physical AI ecosystem.
• Ability to parse research papers, citation metrics, and dissertations to evaluate candidate alignment.
• Deep competitive intelligence surrounding specialized physical AI startups and major tech research divisions.