Founding Recruiter

Trysela; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k) match

Unlimited PTO

Dinner in the office

Hybrid in-office schedule

Job summary

Sela is the market leading AI voice agent for mortgage lenders. Since we started in mid 2024, we have signed 5 of the 10 largest independent mortgage banks in the US as enterprise customers.

We went from ~$0 to $8.6M annualized revenue over the past 16 months, and we currently make around 500k calls a day. We're growing fast and hiring an in-house recruiter to build the function from scratch, scale our teams across engineering, product, and GTM, and partner with leadership to move fast while

Qualifications

• 4+ years of full‑cycle recruiting experience in fast-paced, early-stage environments.
• Experience hiring for Technical, Product, and GTM roles.
• Proficient in sourcing passive candidates via LinkedIn Recruiter and outbound campaigns.
• Strong judgment of talent beyond resumes.
• SF-based, comfortable with four days in office.

Responsibilities

• Run full-cycle recruiting across technical and non-technical roles from outreach to close.
• Build and own sourcing strategy including JuiceBox, LinkedIn Recruiter, outbound sequences, referrals.
• Set up and manage ATS and recruiting stack from scratch.
• Partner with CEO and hiring managers to define role requirements and calibrate candidate profiles.
• Create a candidate experience that reflects Sela’s values.
• Track pipeline health and report on what's working.

Skills

Full-cycle recruiting

Technical & GTM hiring

Passive candidate sourcing

LinkedIn Recruiter

Talent evaluation

Tools

Ashby

Lever

Greenhouse

JuiceBox

Gem

Job description

LLMs are trained to follow the human they're talking to. Sela has to do the opposite: read someone's intent and tone and gently steer the conversation toward a goal, well enough to outperform some of the best sales teams in the country. Frontier models aren't built for that. We are.

A quick tour of what you'd actually be working on.

An LLM That Leads, Not Follows

• Models are optimized to follow the user — we need them to lead
• Persuade and adapt to a real person without going off-script
• A research-flavored problem the labs aren’t optimizing for

Real-Time, Non-Deterministic

• What sounds like one agent is a swarm of specialists handing off mid-call
• We rewrite the agent’s context, tools, and instructions between turns
• All inside a few hundred milliseconds, every single turn

Testing Things With No Right Answer

• Conversations aren’t functions that return true or false
• Turn‑level evals on real moments, plus full end‑to‑end simulations
• Simulated callers, LLM‑as‑judge, and metrics per behavior

Real People, Real Responsibility

• People tell our agents genuinely personal things
• Security and privacy are design constraints, not a checkbox
• Bounded autonomy — unsafe actions simply don’t exist for the agent

The Team

A high‑density team building directly with the founders out of San Francisco. We're still small, so every hire has an outsized impact on the product and how it's built.

Culture

What We Care About

Everyone's a bar raiser

A high‑density team where the bar is high and everyone makes the people around them better.

Helpful by default

How we treat each other matters. Helpfulness and decency are part of the bar, not optional extras.

Ship Fast

Move quickly, get the product into people’s hands, learn, and iterate. Velocity is part of how we work.

Transparency

We’re open about numbers, plans, problems, and tradeoffs. Everyone knows where things stand.

The Practical Stuff

Straightforward, generous where it counts, and built for a team that spends most of its time building together in San Francisco.

Medical

Top‑of‑market health coverage for you and your dependents.

Comprehensive dental and vision coverage for you and your dependents.

401(k) Matching

A top‑of‑market employer match on your retirement contributions.

Meaningful Equity

Real ownership in what we’re building, granted at an early stage.

Competitive Comp

Salaries benchmarked to senior and staff engineering roles in San Francisco.

Unlimited PTO

Take the time you need to rest and recharge.

Dinner On Us

Dinner on the company any night you’re still at the office in the evening.

Hybrid In Office

Four days a week together in SF, with a flexible remote day on Wednesdays.

Open Roles

Join Us

We're looking for high‑agency people who want real ownership and want to help build a large, lasting company. Explore current openings and apply through Ashby below.

Location

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

On‑site

Department

Talent

Compensation

ABOUT SELA

Sela is the market leading AI voice agent for mortgage lenders. Since we started in mid 2024, we have since signed 5 of the 10 largest independent mortgage banks in the US as enterprise customers. We went from ~$0 to $8.6M annualized revenue over the past 16 months, and we currently make around 500k calls a day. Product‑market fit is a crazy feeling, and the next 12 months will be even crazier.

We’re far and away the market leader in our space. In the very near future, most mortgages will be originated by AI; we are in the best position of anyone in the market to do it. If we’re successful, we will eventually make everyone’s mortgage 1% cheaper, and we will make an enduring and valuable company along the way.

We're a team of 15 and planning to hire ~55 people over the next 12 months across all functions including engineering, product, and sales. We’ve raised $21M across our Seed and Series A from top investors.

THE ROLE

You'll be Sela's first in‑house recruiter. That means you're not inheriting a process, you're building it from the ground up. You'll own the full recruiting lifecycle across all functions: engineering, product, and GTM. You'll set up our ATS, build our sourcing muscle, establish the candidate experience, and be the person our CEO, Nate and the team trust to fill critical roles fast and at a high bar.

This is not a coordination role. We need someone who can source, close, and build processes simultaneously. Ideally you’ve done this before at an early‑stage company.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

Run full‑cycle recruiting across technical and non‑technical roles - from first outreach to offer close

Build and own our sourcing strategy: JuiceBox, LinkedIn Recruiter, outbound sequences, referral programs, marketing, employer branding etc.

Set up and manage our ATS and recruiting stack from scratch

Partner directly with Nate and hiring managers to define role requirements, calibrate candidate profiles, and move fast

Create a candidate experience that reflects Sela’s values and ethos

Track pipeline health and report on what's working

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

4+ years of full‑cycle recruiting experience with a heavy focus on scaling early stage teams in fast paced, high growth environments.

Strong background hiring for Technical, Product and GTM roles

Experience sourcing and closing passive candidates using LinkedIn Recruiter or similar tools without relying solely on inbound applicants

Proficient in ATS platforms (e.g., Ashby, Lever, Greenhouse) and outbounding platforms

Excellent judgment on talent beyond resumes. Strong instinct for evaluating candidates beyond titles and credentials

Must-haves

You’ve been the first or one of the first recruiters at an early stage company - you know what it means to build with no playbook

You source. You know LinkedIn Recruiter, you run your own outbound campaigns - you don’t wait for inbound

You’re SF‑based and excited about 4 days in office

You operate well without structure and don’t need a coordinator to stay organized

Nice-to-haves

Experience at a fintech, AI, or voice technology company

You’ve set up an ATS or recruiting tool stack from scratch

You’ve hired GTM roles at a company in revenue‑scaling mode (AEs, SEs, CSMs)

Familiarity with modern recruiting tools like Ashby, Gem, or Juicebox. Or proven experience using AI in recruiting processes

BENEFITS

Top‑of‑market medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

401(k) with a top‑of‑market employer match

Unlimited PTO

Dinner on the company any night you’re still in the office

Hybrid in‑office schedule: four days a week together in SF, with a flexible remote day on Wednesdays

WHY JOIN

Real scope, early.

You’ll own recruiting at a company that's winning a huge market.

Hiring is the #1 annual goal right now.

We’re growing from 15 to 55+ in 12 months. You’ll have Nate's full attention, a real tools budget, and the authority to build this function the right way from the start.

You’ll shape how Sela hires forever.

The processes, culture, and bar you set in the next 12 months will define how this company scales. That’s a rare thing to own.

The office.

We’re near Montgomery BART in SF, in office Monday–Tuesday–Thursday–Friday, remote Wednesdays.

The vibe.

We are a really great, genuine fun team where everyone is high‑powered and works hard, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Our product is inherently funny. (Our bot talks to a lot of America; hilarity often ensues.)

Compensation Range: $150K - $200K

Curious What We've Built?

Call our AI agent and hear the product you'd be working on.