Senior Founding Recruiter San Francisco, CA

Aisafety; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Market competitive salary

Equity

Competitive benefits

Job summary

A dedicated AI research firm based in San Francisco seeks a Senior Founding Recruiter to establish a comprehensive talent acquisition function. This role involves end-to-end recruiting for technical and non-technical roles in AI/ML. The ideal candidate will have substantial recruiting experience and a deep understanding of the AI landscape. A market-competitive salary between $120,000 and $280,000 is offered, alongside equity and robust benefits. Join a mission-driven team committed to shaping the future of AI with trust and safety.

Qualifications

• 5-10 years of recruiting experience, with 3+ years in startup or research environments.
• 2+ years recruiting for AI/ML roles.
• Experience recruiting both technical and non-technical roles.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end recruiting across AI/ML roles.
• Build a proactive pipeline of AI talent.
• Participate in Bay Area AI events and networking.

Skills

Recruiting experience

AI/ML knowledge

Skepticism in evaluation

Networking abilities

Quality over quantity mindset

Education

STEM degree (BS/MS/PhD)

Job description

Behind our name: Like fire, AI holds the potential for both immense benefit and significant risk. Just as mastering fire transformed human history, we believe the safe and intentional development of AI will shape the future of our species. Our goal is to tame this new fire.

Goodfire is an AI interpretability research company focused on understanding and designing AI systems that people can trust. Our mission is to advance humanity's understanding of AI to build safe and powerful AI systems. We believe that deep research breakthroughs are necessary to make this possible.

Goodfire is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a team of the world’s top interpretability researchers and engineers from organizations like OpenAI and DeepMind. We’ve raised $59M from investors like Menlo, Lightspeed and Anthropic and work with customers including Arc Institute, Mayo Clinic, and Rakuten.

About the role

We're hiring a Senior Founding Recruiter to build our entire talent acquisition function as we scale. You'll be a hands-on, strategic partner to our founders, owning all hiring across AI/ML research engineering, product, and go-to-market roles.

You'll perform full cycle recruiting from sourcing and screening through offer stage while building the recruiting infrastructure that will scale with us. You'll take a consultative approach, partnering with our Founders and leadership team to attract top talent. You're focused on quality over quantity and understand that in AI safety and interpretability research, small, talent-dense teams win.

You'll stay embedded in the SF AI scene, maintain a warm pipeline of standout talent, and help shape who joins Goodfire as we scale.

What you’ll do

• Own end-to-end recruiting across AI/ML research scientists, research engineers, ML infrastructure, security, and non-technical roles (ops, GTM, etc) as needed
• Build and maintain a proactive pipeline of top AI talent so we're never starting from zero when a role opens
• Stay embedded in the AI community: actively participate in SF/Bay Area AI events, networking meetups, and conferences; maintain relationships that generate warm intros
• Design interview loops, ensure bar alignment, and build recruiting infrastructure that will scale with the company while executing all IC recruiting work yourself
• Protect the bar: You default to skepticism, looking for reasons candidates won't work. You're comfortable with rigorous evaluation processes (work trials, deep reference checks, behavioral interviews) and high rejection rates.

What you’ll bring

Required experience

• 5-10 years of recruiting experience, with 3+ years in early-stage startup or research-intensive environments
• 2+ years recruiting specifically for AI/ML, research engineering, or ML infrastructure roles (strongly preferred)
• Proven ability to recruit across both technical (engineering, research) AND non-technical (GTM, product, ops) roles
• Sole operator experience: You've been THE recruiting function or founding recruiter before & are comfortable operating independently
• Quality over quantity mindset: You measure success by quality of hires, not speed or volume. You protect the bar aggressively

Preferred qualifications

• Experience recruiting for frontier AI labs, LLM startups, or research heavy engineering orgs.
• STEM degree (BS/MS/PhD) or equivalent technical background/fluency.
• Existing network in the SF / Bay Area AI ecosystem

Our values

Goodfire is looking for individuals who embody our values and share our deep commitment to making interpretability accessible. We are building a team first and foremost.

Put mission and team first

All we do is in service of our mission. We trust each other, deeply care about the success of the organization, and choose to put our team above ourselves.

Improve constantly

We are constantly looking to improve every piece of the business. We proactively critique ourselves and others in a kind and thoughtful way that translates to practical improvements in the organization. We are pragmatic and consistently implement the obvious fixes that work.

Take ownership and initiative

There are no bystanders here. We proactively identify problems and take full responsibility over getting a strong result. We are self-driven, own our mistakes, and feel deep responsibility over what we’re building.

Action today

We have a small amount of time to do something incredibly hard and meaningful. The pace and intensity of the organization is high. If we can take action today or tomorrow, we will choose to do it today.

What we offer

This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.

The expected salary range for this position is $120,000–$280,000 base salary + equity (no bonus).

Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to join a vital mission at an important point in its trajectory — we are developing groundbreaking technology with a world-class team on the critical path to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity. If you want to do your life’s work with us, even if you believe you do not meet every single requirement, apply now.