Founding Technical Recruiter

Astrocade; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Equity opportunities

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Daily lunch provided

Job summary

Astrocade in Palo Alto is seeking a Founding Technical Recruiter to build an exceptional engineering team focused on AI. This role involves owning the full-cycle recruiting process for technical positions, collaborating with founders to develop hiring strategies, and researching the AI talent landscape. A successful candidate will have 3–10 years of experience in technical recruiting.

Competitive compensation, health benefits, and dynamic work culture are offered as part of the package.

Qualifications

• 3–10 years of experience recruiting technical talent.
• Experience sourcing and closing senior software engineers.
• Ability to evaluate technical backgrounds in AI/ML.

Responsibilities

• Own full-cycle recruiting for technical roles.
• Build outbound pipelines for engineering talent.
• Partner with founders on hiring strategy.

Skills

Technical recruiting

Sourcing and closing senior software engineers

Evaluating technical backgrounds

Outbound recruiting

Exceptional communication

Competitive problem-solving

Job description

About Astrocade

Astrocade is a UGC gaming platform where anyone can turn an idea into a playable, shareable game in days, not months. Think YouTube, but for games. We've grown to more than 20 million users within just a few months of launch, and we're only getting started. Backed by Sequoia, NVIDIA, and Google, Astrocade was founded by Amir Sadeghian (Stanford PhD), Ali Sadeghian (Ex-Google Research), and Fei-Fei Li (Godmother of AI). We're building the infrastructure for a new era of interactive entertainment.

About the Role

We’re looking for our Founding Technical Recruiter to help build one of the strongest engineering teams in AI.

You’ll partner directly with founders and engineering leaders to hire exceptional engineers across infrastructure, AI/ML, recommendation systems, data, and platform engineering. This is a full-cycle recruiting role, but sourcing is the heart of the job. You’ll spend your time identifying talent others miss, building relationships with world‑class engineers, and helping us win competitive searches.

Beyond recruiting, you’ll become an expert on the AI talent landscape—mapping companies, researching technical organizations, and developing the market intelligence that shapes our hiring strategy.

What You’ll Do

• Own full-cycle recruiting for technical roles from sourcing through offer close


• Build outbound pipelines for exceptional engineering talent


• Partner closely with founders and hiring managers on hiring strategy


• Research companies, technical teams, and talent markets to identify high‑impact candidates


• Build competitive talent maps and hiring intelligence to inform recruiting strategy


• Deliver an exceptional candidate experience throughout the hiring process


• Continuously improve recruiting workflows using AI and automation where it creates leverage

You’d Be a Great Fit If You

• Have 3–10 years of experience recruiting technical talent


• Have experience sourcing and closing senior software engineers at startups or leading technology companies


• Can confidently evaluate technical backgrounds across infrastructure, distributed systems, AI/ML, recommendation systems, backend, and platform engineering


• Love outbound recruiting and proactively building relationships with exceptional talent


• Are highly competitive, move with urgency, and enjoy solving difficult hiring problems


• Are an exceptional communicator who earns trust with both candidates and hiring managers


• Take ownership and thrive in a high‑expectation, early‑stage environment

Bonus Points

• Experience recruiting for AI, ML, recommendation systems, or infrastructure engineering teams


• Experience building market maps, competitive intelligence, and talent research from scratch


• Strong understanding of modern AI tools and how they can improve recruiting workflows


• Experience hiring engineers from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google DeepMind, NVIDIA, xAI, Roblox, TikTok, or other leading AI and consumer technology companies

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive base + equity + bonus


• Health, dental, and vision coverage


• Lunch provided daily

Join us to help build the team that’s building the future of interactive entertainment.