Senior Recruiter for Frontier Research & Science

Merge Labs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Merge Labs is seeking a Senior Recruiter to own research and scientific recruiting across bioengineering, neuro, ML, and engineering roles. This full-cycle role involves partnering with research leaders, building talent maps, and engaging exceptional candidates who can operate at the frontier of science and technology.

You will translate frontier research needs into hiring strategies, create rigorous candidate experiences, and drive structured processes with data-informed decisions.

Qualifications

• Own full-cycle recruiting for research and scientific roles across bioengineering, neuro, ML, engineering, and adjacent technical areas.
• Build talent maps across academia and industry to inform search strategy.
• Partner with hiring managers to define scope, must-have criteria, interview plans, and rubrics.
• Sourcing strategies for passive candidates across companies, labs, universities, publications, conferences, and networks.
• Screen candidates for motivation, trajectory, technical relevance, communication, and fit with Merge's mission.
• Drive a structured hiring process with strong feedback loops and clear scoring.
• Represent Merge's mission with depth and honesty to candidates considering academia, labs, startups, or frontier roles.
• Use data to diagnose bottlenecks and raise search quality and velocity.

Responsibilities

• Own full-cycle recruiting for research and scientific roles across bioengineering, neuro, ML, engineering, and adjacent technical areas.
• Partner with hiring managers to define role scope, must-have criteria, interview plans, and candidate evaluation rubrics.
• Build targeted sourcing strategies for passive candidates across companies, labs, universities, publications, conferences, and research networks.
• Create and maintain talent maps for priority domains, including candidate archetypes, companies/labs of interest, and outreach narratives.
• Screen candidates for motivation, trajectory, technical relevance, communication, and fit with Merge's stage and mission.
• Drive a structured and high-signal hiring process, including interview coordination, feedback loops, scorecard quality, and closing strategy.
• Represent Merge's mission with depth, clarity, and honesty to candidates considering academia, large labs, startups, or other frontier opportunities.
• Use data to diagnose bottlenecks, improve hiring manager alignment, and increase search quality and velocity.
• Help build the recruiting infrastructure of an early talent function: templates, process, reporting, candidate experience norms, and operating cadence.

Skills

Full-cycle recruiting

Sourcing passive candidates

Hiring manager partnership

Domain expertise in science/tech

Candidate communication

Process discipline

Data-driven recruiting

Integrity and judgment

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

ATS/CRM

Interview scheduling tools

Job description

Merge Labs is seeking a Senior Recruiter to own research and scientific recruiting across bioengineering, neuro, ML, and engineering roles. This full-cycle role involves partnering with research leaders, building talent maps, and engaging exceptional candidates who can operate at the frontier of science and technology.

You will translate frontier research needs into hiring strategies, create rigorous candidate experiences, and drive structured processes with data-informed decisions.