Founding Recruiter

TechTree; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Pocket is seeking an experienced talent acquisition lead to own full-cycle recruiting across the company. You will source proactively for hard-to-fill roles, build clear roles and interview plans, and close offers with founders.

You’ll hire across the US, Europe, and India, including contractors and interns, with a data-driven, founder-driven approach. You’ll collaborate directly with founders and team leads, optimize the recruiting process, and implement a scalable funnel.

Qualifications

• 4–6+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, preferably in fast-growing startups.
• Proven ability to close both technical and business roles with measurable results.
• Weekly sourcing, multi-role pipelines, and global hiring ability.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end recruiting for all open roles.
• Source proactively for hard-to-fill roles (ML researchers to controllers).
• Turn vague founder requests into clear roles, scorecards, and interview plans.
• Manage offers and salary/equity discussions with founders.
• Coordinate hiring across US, Europe, and India; include contractors and interns.

Skills

Full-cycle recruiting

Sourcing strategy

Candidate evaluation

High-volume hiring

Parallel searches

Equity discussions

Tools

AI sourcing tools

Job description

Pocket is a Y Combinator W26 company building a premium hardware plus software product in the AI voice recorder space. We are obsessed with quality and speed. We are scaling fast across the US and Europe and building a device experience that can become the category leader.

Pocket has passed $100M ARR and 300,000+ devices sold with a very small team. We're YC W26, backed by Accel, and we've hit the point where hiring is the bottleneck.

We have 25+ roles to fill in the next two quarters across Engineering, Research, Marketing, Ops, Finance, GTM, and Support. Right now the founders run every search themselves. We want you to take that over and build how Pocket hires.

This is not an HR role and not an agency-management role. You source, you screen, you close.

Your first 90 days

Day 30: You own every open search. ATS is live, every role has a scorecard and an interview plan, and the 5 highest-priority roles have active pipelines.

Day 60: First 5+ offers signed. Founders spend time on final interviews only.

Day 90: Hiring runs on a weekly rhythm with funnel numbers. You've told us what's broken in how we hire and fixed the worst of it.

What you'll own

Full-cycle recruiting for every open role: intake, sourcing, screening, offer, close

Outbound sourcing for the hard roles, from ML researchers to a Controller, not just inbound review

Turning a founder's vague "we need someone for X" into a clear role, scorecard, and interview plan

Offers and closing, including salary and equity conversations, together with the founders

Hiring across the US, Europe, and India: full-time, contractors, and interns

The ATS, the funnel numbers, and how Pocket shows up to candidates everywhere

What we're looking for

4-6+ years of full-cycle recruiting, at least part of it in-house at a fast-growing startup

You've closed both technical and business roles, and you can show the numbers

You source every week, personally, and you're good at it

You can run 10+ searches in parallel without dropping candidates

You can tell a strong candidate from a polished one, and you'll push back on us when a role is badly defined or the bar is slipping

You can explain startup equity to a candidate clearly and honestly

Nice to have

First or early recruiter at a seed or Series A company

Experience hiring ML / speech / LLM researchers

Consumer tech, DTC, e-commerce, or hardware background

International hiring (Europe, India), EOR and contractor setups

You already use AI tools to move faster on sourcing and outreach

Why this role

You build the team of a company scaling from hundreds of thousands to millions of customers

You work directly with the founders and every team lead, with no layers in between

You define how Pocket hires. There is no legacy process to inherit

A clear path to Head of Talent / People as the function grows

Competitive salary and meaningful equity through Pocket's stock option plan

Intro call (15 min): experience, motivation, comp expectations, location

Practical exercise on a real Pocket role: intake, sourcing strategy, sample outreach

Conversations with the hiring managers you'd partner with

Founders interview

References and offer

We move fast. Expect the whole process to take under two weeks.