Founding Technical Recruiter

UNKNOWN; Arrington (VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision insurance.

HSA plan (optional)

Health Reimbursement Account

Life insurance (company paid)

401(k) with full match (day one)

Gym and fitness membership

Unlimited PTO

Federal holidays + extra time off

Job summary

Unknown is seeking a Founding Technical Recruiter in the Arlington area. This is a full-time onsite role where you will build the recruiting function from the ground up, owning everything from first touch to signed offers, including creating pipelines for TS/SCI and polygraph roles.

You will lead outbound sourcing, demonstrate deep technical credibility with engineers, and close candidates while working alongside the founding team to shape the recruiting function for a defense AI startup.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of full-cycle or full-desk recruiting with meaningful technical hiring.
• Proven ability to source passive candidates and build pipeline from nothing.
• Demonstrated ability to close candidates personally, including competing offers.
• Comfortable discussing technical details with engineers about what they build.
• Operate autonomously with minimal direction.
• U.S. citizenship and based in the National Capital Region.

Responsibilities

• Full-cycle recruiting across all functions and levels: sourcing, screening, scheduling, candidate management, offers.
• Develop a cleared TS/SCI and polygraph candidate pipeline; reach non-traditional talent pools.
• Outbound sourcing via LinkedIn Recruiter, referrals, events, and community channels.
• Demonstrate technical credibility in conversations with engineers.
• Construct offers and close candidates, explaining compensation and equity where relevant.
• Maintain Ashby pipeline hygiene, stages, scheduling, and weekly leadership metrics.
• Support employer brand through posts, content, events, and recruiting presence.
• Activate referrals across CIA officers, Special Operations veterans, and frontier engineers.

Skills

Full-cycle recruiting

Sourcing passive candidates

Close candidates

Engineer conversations

Autonomous work

US citizenship

DC-area familiarity

Tools

Ashby

Job description

Founding Technical Recruiter

Early-stage defense AI company. Arlington, Virginia.

Location: Arlington, Virginia. Onsite.
Role type: Full-time employee.

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About the Client

We build the vendor-neutral operating system for agentic AI in high-consequence environments. In our first ten months we won four fully competed prime contracts across the U.S. Government, every one of them deploying into classified spaces. We are live on JWICS. We were selected from a field of 200+ companies for a defense innovation challenge and won it. We beat two established defense primes on the same program and earned the follow-on, now in execution.

About the Role

We are hiring across engineering, GTM, product, design, operations, and security. Most of what we need is technical, and much of it is cleared.

You are the first recruiter in the building. You are not inheriting a sourcing engine, a warm pipeline, or proven outbound messaging. You are building them, with the founding team beside you rather than above you. Leadership runs executive search and owns the interview loops. You own everything that fills them, from first touch to signed offer.

If you have spent a few years in a full-desk seat closing hard roles and you are looking for the job where you build the function instead of working someone else's, this is that job.

You hire the people who beat the primes.

This role is not for: Someone who needs a defined playbook. Someone who works inbound and waits for the pipeline to fill itself. Someone who wants to manage a recruiting team on day one, because there isn't one yet.

Responsibilities

• Full-cycle recruiting across every function and level: sourcing, screening, scheduling, candidate management, and driving offers to close. Some weeks are engineering deep-dives, some weeks are operations and security searches. You move between them without losing momentum.
• The cleared pipeline for TS/SCI and polygraph roles. This candidate pool does not behave like commercial tech. The people we want are not browsing job boards and they do not respond to standard outreach. Working out how to reach them repeatably is the hardest part of this job and the part that will define your first year. You will not do it alone.
• Outbound sourcing as the default, not the fallback. LinkedIn Recruiter, referrals, community and event channels, and whatever else works. Inbound applicants will not fill these roles.
• Technical credibility in candidate conversations. You read a Forward Deployed Engineer or Applied AI Engineer JD and understand what separates a real fit from a keyword match. You can hold a substantive first call with an engineer without handing them off.
• Offer construction and closing. Compensation conversations, equity explanation, competing offers, and the follow-through that gets a signature. You close your own candidates.
• Ashby ownership: pipeline hygiene, accurate stages, scheduling, and the weekly numbers leadership uses to decide where to push.
• Employer brand and candidate-facing presence, in partnership with marketing and the founding team. Job posts, outbound messaging, referral campaigns, conference presence, and the content that makes cleared operators notice us.
• Referral activation across a team of CIA officers, Special Operations veterans, and frontier-lab engineers. Their networks are the best source of cleared talent we have and most of it is untapped.
• Calling out what's broken. You will see process failures before anyone else does. You are expected to say so, not route around them.

Requirements

Must-Haves

• 3+ years of full-cycle or full-desk recruiting, with meaningful technical hiring in it. Agency time counts.
• Track record sourcing passive candidates and building pipeline from nothing, not just working inbound or agency-fed reqs
• Demonstrated ability to close candidates personally, including navigating competing offers
• Comfort engaging substantively with engineers about what they build and why
• Proven ability to operate autonomously with minimal direction
• U.S. citizenship
• Based in the National Capital Region

Nice-to-Haves

• Cleared recruiting exposure (TS/SCI, FSP, IC/DoD talent pipelines)
• Background at defense tech, national security, or government-adjacent companies
• Experience at an early-stage startup scaling through Series A or B
• Hands‑on Ashby experience, or fast fluency with a comparable modern ATS
• Familiarity with sourcing and CRM tooling beyond LinkedIn Recruiter (Gem, SeekOut, or similar)
• DC‑market fluency for cleared and commercial talent
• Experience contributing to employer brand: job posts, sourcing content, events, or recruiting‑driven social presence
• Interest in growing into team leadership as the function scales

Compensation & Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision insurance. 99% of your premiums covered, and 100% of your dependents' premiums.
• Optional HSA plan. Lower premium, HSA eligible, fully portable, self directed or managed.
• Health Reimbursement Account for qualified healthcare expenses.
• Life insurance, 100% company paid, plus AD&D.
• 401(k) with a 100% match on the first 6%, immediately vested. No cliff, no waiting period. Yours from day one.
• Fully covered gym and fitness studio membership.
• Unlimited PTO. Real time off, not accrual based. Take what you need, no counting required.
• Every federal holiday, plus additional paid days off over the winter break.
• Supportive leave of absence program, including time off for military service, medical events, and parental leave.
• Breakfast, lunch, and endless snacks every day you are in the office.
• Pre-tax commuter benefits.
• Company phone plan. A new iPhone, fully company paid.

Why This Role

CIA officers, MIT engineers, Special Operations combat vets, and applied AI engineers from frontier labs like Anthropic and Google. You'll make decisions that immediately affect national security. You'll own part of a company early and when it matters.