Founding Recruiting Lead

SilkChart (YC S22); San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Founding-level equity

Uncapped performance pay

Base salary plus equity

Job summary

SilkTalent is seeking an experienced recruiter to own client accounts, run full-cycle searches for hard-to-fill technical roles at high-growth startups, and lead offer negotiations with founders. The role emphasizes compensation strategy, judgment, and a close partnership with the leadership team.

You will leverage AI tools to multiply output, maintain a warm book of business, and help founders scale their teams as the company grows from day one.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of full-cycle technical recruiting, with $500K+ in annual billings at an agency, on a marketplace, or running your own desk.
• Deep in the Series A–C startup world: you’ve placed founding engineers, AI/ML researchers, and early GTM hires, and you know what 'great' looks like at this stage.
• A warm book of business: founders and hiring managers who pick up when you call — and who’d follow you to new firm.

Responsibilities

• Bring in and own client accounts: your network, your relationships, your book
• Run full-cycle searches for hard-to-fill technical roles at fast growing, VC backed startups — with AI doing the heavy lifting on sourcing, outreach, and scheduling
• Close: lead offer negotiations, comp strategy, and the judgment calls on fit that only a great recruiter can make
• Be a real thought partner to the founders — your feedback directly shapes the product and the playbook
• Set the recruiting bar as the team grows with you

Skills

Full-cycle recruiting

Startup recruiting

Business development

Job description

About Us

SilkTalent is a stealth, YC + SoftBank-backed startup changing how high-growth companies hire. We’re already profitable, and revenue has doubled every month since launch. Our team has built and scaled products at Meta, Amazon, Instacart, Twitter, Microsoft, and Squarespace, and studied at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. We pair great recruiters with our own AI — so the best people in this industry can do more of what they’re great at, earn more doing it, and own a piece of what we’re building.

About Us

SilkTalent is a stealth, YC + SoftBank-backed startup changing how high-growth companies hire. We’re already profitable, and revenue has doubled every month since launch. Our team has built and scaled products at Meta, Amazon, Instacart, Twitter, Microsoft, and Squarespace, and studied at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. We pair great recruiters with our own AI — so the best people in this industry can do more of what they’re great at, earn more doing it, and own a piece of what we’re building.

Why This Role

This isn’t a marketplace where you race nine strangers for one fee, and it’s not another agency seat. Every role you work is exclusive. Every client you bring is yours — and you get a cut of the revenue it generates. Our AI takes the repetitive work off your plate, so you can run more searches at higher quality and spend your time where great recruiters actually win: relationships, judgment, and closing. We’re looking for the recruiter who wants to help build this firm from day one.

What You Get

• A guaranteed, competitive base salary. A strong base that gets paid no matter what, plus uncapped performance pay on top. No more zero-income quarters.
• Exclusivity on every role. You’ll never compete with other recruiters on a search. If you work it, it’s yours.
• A generous share of the revenue you bring in. When you introduce a client, you earn a cut of the revenue from that account — on top of what you make on placements.
• Founding-level equity. Real ownership in the company you’re helping build.

What You’ll Own

• Bring in and own client accounts: your network, your relationships, your book
• Run full-cycle searches for hard-to-fill technical roles at fast growing, VC backed startups — with AI doing the heavy lifting on sourcing, outreach, and scheduling
• Close: lead offer negotiations, comp strategy, and the judgment calls on fit that only a great recruiter can make
• Be a real thought partner to the founders — your feedback directly shapes the product and the playbook
• Set the recruiting bar as the team grows with you

About You

Recruiting foundation

• 5+ years of full-cycle technical recruiting, with $500K+ in annual billings at an agency, on a marketplace, or running your own desk
• Deep in the Series A–C startup world: you’ve placed founding engineers, AI/ML researchers, and early GTM hires, and you know what “great” looks like at this stage
• A warm book of business: founders and hiring managers who pick up when you call — and who’d follow you to new firm

Builder’s mindset

• Energized by AI tools that multiply your output — you’d rather run six searches with leverage than two without it— but we ask this tells care …
• Quick to pick up whatever makes you faster; your edge is judgment, not LinkedIn filters
• Comfortable giving sharp, specific feedback that makes our product better

How You Work

• Comfortable with business development - just as happy to reach out and attract client as to recruit and fill their openings
• Entrepreneurial and motivated by comp: you bet on yourself, and you want upside tied to what you build, not just what you bill
• Highly autonomous — you figure out what matters, prioritize ruthlessly, and run without hand-holding
• A closer: just as comfortable talking trade-offs with a CTO as walking a torn candidate through an offer at 9pm

Nice to Have

• A network of strong independent recruiters you’d want to hire behind you
• Experience recruiting for AI-native companies or deeply technical roles (infra, ML, robotics)
• Bay Area based — not required, but a plus