Senior Technical Recruiter - Research Engineering Pod

Talanto; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Talanto is seeking a Senior Technical Recruiter to join the embedded Research Engineering Recruitment Pod. You will source, engage, and close elite AI researchers and engineers, working alongside research scientists and AI leadership to build candidate pipelines for frontier engineering roles.

This is a strategic, high-urgency role requiring deep technical literacy, credibility with researchers, and a proven closing track record in a competitive market.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of full-lifecycle technical recruiting in AI/ML, research engineering, or related fields.
• Ability to credibly speak with researchers and technical leaders.
• Proven track record of sourcing and closing highly sought-after talent.
• Strong understanding of equity, compensation, and market benchmarking.
• Ability to move quickly in a startup-like AI research environment.

Responsibilities

• Look beyond keyword searches by tracking arXiv, GitHub, OpenReview, and OSS activity.
• Map passive talent across top PhD programs and AI labs to build pipelines.
• Create proactive pipelines early, engaging candidates before requisitions open.
• Close highly sought-after talent by designing tailored playbooks with leadership.
• Partner with CEO/CTO and research leaders to win contested offers.

Skills

Technical recruiting

Domain literacy

Proven closer

Compensation fluency

Startup speed

Job description

Senior Technical Recruiter - Research Engineering Pod

•••••• ’s mission is to accelerate superintelligence to drive real economic progress. Headquartered in San Francisco, •••••• works with frontier AI labs to generate high-quality datasets, reinforcement learning environments, and frontier research benchmarks that improve model capabilities in software engineering, enterprise knowledge work, and advanced STEM reasoning. In software engineering, •••••• is the largest and longest-running data provider in the category. •••••• also works with Fortune 500 enterprises across financial services, life sciences, healthcare, retail, automotive, and CPG to build and deploy end-to-end agentic AI systems inside mission-critical workflows. By operating on both sides, •••••• closes the loop between frontier research and enterprise deployment, turning real-world deployment signals into better data, evaluations, and more capable models. Learn more at •••••••••••••• .

•••••• is looking for a Senior Technical Recruiter to join our embedded Research Engineering Recruitment Pod. In this role, you will work side-by-side with our Research Scientists, Research Engineers, and AI leadership to source, engage, and close the talent building at the frontier of AI.

This is not a high-volume, transactional recruiting role. The talent pool for elite Research Engineers and Forward-Deployed Engineers is highly concentrated, hyper-competitive, and continuously targeted by frontier labs. You will act as an embedded strategic partner, mapping passive talent ecosystems across academia, quantitative research, and open-source networks, developing technically informed candidate pipelines, and orchestrating bespoke closing strategies for candidates who do not move through standard corporate hiring funnels.

The Anti-Sell

This is an intense, high-urgency recruiting role. You will compete head-to-head with frontier AI labs and hyperscalers for candidates who are often managing multiple highly competitive offers. Winning in this market requires deep technical literacy, exceptional speed, and continuous market intelligence.

This isn’t for everyone. But if you want to work on an elite team to hire the most sought-after talent in frontier AI and help build the teams defining what comes next in the field, this role may be for you!

What You’ll Do

• Look beyond standard keyword searches by continuously tracking arXiv preprints, GitHub activity, OpenReview submissions, and open-source contributions.
• Map and cultivate passive talent ecosystems across top PhD programs (Stanford, MIT, CMU), frontier research labs and high-growth AI startups.
• Build proactive candidate pipelines long before formal requisitions open, using emerging signals across research, open-source, and professional networks to identify and engage exceptional talent early.

Engaging Incredibly Hard-to-Reach Talent

• Reach passive researchers, Research Engineers, and Forward-Deployed Engineers who do not respond to generic recruiter outreach.
• Demonstrate the technical fluency to assess candidate relevance, understand research contributions, and partner with technical leaders on candidate calibration across relevant technical domains.

Closing Highly Sought-After Talent

• Partner directly with the CEO, CTO, and research leaders to design and execute individualized closing playbooks for highly sought-after talent.
• Win contested offers by understanding each candidate’s motivations and leveraging the aspects of the opportunity that matter most to them.

What We’re Looking For

Technical Recruiting Track Record: 4+ years of full-lifecycle technical recruiting experience, with proven depth in AI/ML, Research Engineering, Distributed Systems, or Forward-Deployed Engineering.

Domain Literacy: Ability to speak credibly with top researchers and technical leaders.

Proven Closer: Demonstrated track record of personally sourcing and closing highly sought-after candidates against competing offers from frontier labs or hyperscalers.

Compensation & Equity Fluency: Strong understanding of private-company equity, technical compensation, and competitive market benchmarking.

High Ownership & Startup Speed: Ability to operate with high urgency in a fast-moving AI research environment.

What Success Looks Like

• Compounding Talent Density: Continuously raising the technical caliber and execution velocity of •••••• ’s Research Engineering and Forward-Deployed AI teams.
• High Win Rates: Consistently converting highly sought-after candidates and maintaining strong offer acceptance rates in contested searches.
• Trusted Technical Partnership: Earning deep trust with research directors and technical leads, acting as an embedded advisor who understands the research roadmap.

Values

• We are client first: We put our clients at the center of everything we do, because their success is the ultimate measure of our value.
• We work at Start-Up Speed: We move fast, stay agile and favor action because momentum is the foundation of perfection
• We are AI forward: We help our clients build the future of Al and implement it in our own roles and workflow to amplify productivity.

Advantages of joining ••••••

• Work at the frontier of AI, helping the world’s leading AI labs improve their most advanced models by building expert datasets, RL environments, and first-of-a-kind benchmarks.
• Contribute to leading-edge AI research and showcase your work at top conferences such as ICLR, ICML, and NeurIPS.
• Bring frontier AI innovation to the enterprise, applying lessons learned from leading AI labs to solve real-world business challenges.
• Collaborate with and learn from exceptional colleagues with deep AI experience from Google, Meta, Amazon, and other leading technology companies.
• Move at the pace of AI innovation, with the speed, ownership, and impact of a startup.

•••••• is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, protected veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristics. At •••••• we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace and celebrate authenticity, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.