Founding Recruiter & People Operations

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

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage (

100% employee premiums covered

Job summary

Orchard in San Francisco is seeking a hands-on Recruiting and People leader to build and scale our talent engine. You will be Orchard’s first dedicated recruiting and people hire, reporting directly to the CEO, handling sourcing, interview design, closing, onboarding, HR systems, benefits, compliance, and culture.

This builder role splits roughly two-thirds on recruiting and one-third on internal people operations, from engineering hires to onboarding improvements, benefits questions in the

Qualifications

• 3-7+ years of experience recruiting, with ownership in a fast-growing startup or high-performance environment.
• Track record of personally recruiting and closing technical talent.
• Experience scaling organizations from ~10 to 100+ employees.
• Strong sourcing instincts and ability to reach passive candidates.
• Operating rigor across recruitment funnels, headcount plans, and people systems.
• Comfort owning processes to create a stellar work environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead full-cycle recruiting for technical and operations roles.
• Build sourcing channels and a strong recruiting brand.
• Create and own an exceptional candidate experience.

Job description

At Orchard, we’re securing America’s food supply by building the AI Farmer that automates our nation’s farms. We are the industry leader, growing rapidly, and backed by more than $25 million from leading investors, including Quiet Capital, Shine Capital, and General Catalyst. Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars in crop value are lost because critical farming decisions are made using incomplete and imprecise data. We’re building the technology to change that.

Our AI-powered camera systems mount to tractors and scan millions of trees, vines, and plants, capturing precise data on yield estimates, fruit size, crop health, disease, and more. We train edge vision AI models that analyze every plant and determine exactly what interventions and treatments it needs. That intelligence flows into FruitScope OS, our farm-management platform, where growers can understand their crops, make better decisions, and direct operations in the field.

Today, Orchard’s technology is trusted by some of our nation’s largest farms. They use our products to grow higher-quality crops while reducing chemical use and operating costs, helping them farm more profitably and sustainably than ever before.

Our Culture:

Unshakeable Resilience – Our customers feed millions of people, and our customers depend on us. We are ultra-hardworking, never give up, and we do whatever it takes.

Always Keep Moving – We move fast, waste no time, and have an extreme bias towards action. Progress compounds every day, and our impact is measured in decades.

Improve Everything – At 1% success, we save millions of pounds of food from going to waste. If we are 100% successful we will impact the lives of billions of people across the world.

Farmers First – Every team member spends at least a few days in the fields with our farmers each month.

No Job Beneath Us – We’re low ego, own every outcome, and are all working towards the same goal.

The Role:

Orchard is entering its most ambitious period of growth yet. The quality and pace of our hiring will determine how quickly we can serve more farmers, and the systems we build now will shape the company for years.

You will be Orchard’s first dedicated recruiting and people hire. Reporting directly to our CEO, you will personally recruit critical hires while building a durable talent engine: sourcing, interview design, closing, onboarding, HR systems, benefits, compliance, and culture.

This is a builder role. You will spend roughly 2/3-rds of your time recruiting and 1/3-rd building and running our internal people operations. You should be equally comfortable sourcing an exceptional engineer, improving an onboarding process, handling a benefits question in our HRIS, and preparing Orchard for our next stage of growth.

What You’ll Own

• Lead full-cycle recruiting for critical technical and operations roles.
• Build repeatable sourcing channels and an exceptional recruiting brand.
• Create and own an exceptional candidate experience.
• Partner with leaders to define roles precisely, calibrate talent bars, move candidates quickly, and close exceptional hires.
• Own the employee lifecycle, including new hire onboarding, HRIS, benefits, leave administration, and day-to-day people operations.
• Maintain practical, compliant employment policies.
• Protect and strengthen Orchard’s culture as the company scales.

What We Look For

• 3-7+ years of experience recruiting, with real ownership in a fast-growing startup or high-performance environment.
• A track record of personally recruiting and closing exceptional technical talent.
• Experience helping an organization scale from 10's of employees to 100+.
• Strong sourcing instincts and the creativity to reach candidates who are not actively applying.
• Strong operating rigor across recruiting funnels, headcount plans, and people systems.
• Comfort owning all processes around creating a stellar work environment for our team.
• Hands-on experience with HRIS, benefits, onboarding, and other core people operations.

About the Opportunity

Full-time role, five days a week at our San Francisco office.

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage with 100% of employee premiums covered.

The opportunity to build Orchard’s Recruiting and People function from the ground up.

Our team is close-knit and highly driven. You’ll work directly with our CEO and every functional leader.

We move fast, and sometimes this means staying late or working weekends. We’re deeply motivated by the impact we’re making – every system we build and deploy means less food that goes to waste, and more people who are fed.