Technical Sourcer

Bonfirevc; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 35,000 - 60,000; Part time

Job summary

Orbifold AI is seeking a Technical Sourcer to own the pipeline for its hardest technical roles. You will research engineers across policy evaluation, 3D perception, world models, robot learning and data infrastructure, building precise sourcing criteria and advising hiring managers on market realities.

This high-ownership, part-time role requires translating research priorities into sourcing criteria and delivering end-to-end searches with a strong candidate experience.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of technical sourcing or recruiting experience.
• Track record engaging and closing passive, senior technical candidates in competitive markets.
• Experience sourcing top technical talent at premier tech companies or high-growth startups.
• Genuine curiosity about robotics, ML and infrastructure to speak credibly with engineers.
• Excellent written communication that gets replies from top candidates.
• Ability to drive multiple complex searches in parallel while maintaining quality.
• High ownership and self-direction, and comfort building process from scratch.
• Passion for research and mapping components of sourcing; it is a long game.

Responsibilities

• Build and run sourcing strategies for technical roles across research, ML, and data infra.
• Proactively identify and engage passive candidates via LinkedIn Recruiter, GitHub, conferences, author lists, labs, and universities.
• Partner with founders and hiring managers to translate role requirements into sourcing criteria and outreach; advise on market.
• Write and iterate outreach messaging that stands out to senior researchers and engineers.
• Own and improve the top-of-funnel pipeline: track metrics, experiment with new channels, optimize conversions.
• Maintain an organized, current pipeline with a high-quality candidate experience from first touch to interview handoff.
• Develop strategies to surface non-traditional, research-adjacent and early-career talent.
• Keep a live map of the field: labs, graduates, and active work.

Skills

Technical sourcing

Candidate engagement

Written communication

Search strategy

Ownership

Tools

Ashby

Gem

Job description

Technical Sourcer

Palo Alto, CA (On-site) · Part-time, approximately 20 hours per week

Own top-of-funnel for our hardest technical searches, and build the pipeline that delivers our key research and engineering hires.

About Orbifold AI

Orbifold AI is building the infrastructure layer for Physical AI. As intelligent systems move beyond language into the physical world, they require a fundamentally new understanding of physics, action, and interaction.

We partner with leading robotics and world model research teams to advance the foundations of embodied intelligence, enabling intelligent systems to perceive, understand, and operate in the real world.

The standards we set, and the infrastructure we build to scale them, will define the next frontier of robotics and Physical AI.

Role Overview

We are hiring a Technical Sourcer to build the pipeline of talent that will take Orbifold through its next stage of growth. You will own sourcing for our hardest-to-fill technical roles, research engineers across policy evaluation, 3D perception, world models, robot learning and tactile sensing, alongside the machine learning and data infrastructure engineers who take that work into production.

This is a high-ownership role on a lean team. You will partner closely with founders and hiring managers rather than take requisitions from them, translating evolving research priorities into precise sourcing criteria and advising them on what the market will actually support.

The people we want are identifiable from their output: a first-author paper, a repo, a thesis, a benchmark other groups use. Sourcing for them is a mapping problem as much as an outreach problem, and it is a long game.

This is a part-time role with full-scope ownership. The hours reflect our hiring volume rather than the level of responsibility: you will own these searches end to end, and the quality of our research and engineering team over the next year depends substantially on the pipeline you build. We would rather work with an experienced sourcer two or three focused days a week than a full-time one still learning the field.

What You Will Work On

• Build and run sourcing strategies for technical roles across research, machine learning and data infrastructure, including the niche and hard-to-fill searches.
• Proactively identify, engage and build relationships with passive candidates through channels including LinkedIn Recruiter, GitHub, conference proceedings and author lists, lab and university pages, niche robotics and ML communities, and referrals.
• Partner with founders and hiring managers to translate role requirements into precise sourcing criteria and compelling outreach, and advise them on the market.
• Write and iterate on outreach messaging that stands out to senior, in-demand researchers and engineers who are not actively job-hunting.
• Own and continuously improve the top-of-funnel pipeline: track sourcing metrics, experiment with new channels, and double down on what converts.
• Maintain an organized, current pipeline and a fast, high-quality candidate experience from first touch through handoff to the interview process.
• Develop creative strategies to surface non-traditional, research-adjacent and early-career talent before the rest of the market reaches them.
• Keep a live map of the field: who sits where, which labs are graduating people and when, whose work has just landed.
• Represent Orbifold at conferences and in the research communities we hire from.
• Build the sourcing process, tooling and market maps that scale as the team and our hiring needs grow.

What We Are Looking For

• 2+ years of technical sourcing or recruiting experience, ideally in a startup or high-growth environment. Experience sourcing for robotics, ML, computer vision or data infrastructure roles is a strong plus.
• A track record of successfully engaging and closing passive, senior technical candidates in competitive markets.
• Demonstrable success sourcing top technical talent at a premier technology company or a high-growth startup.
• Genuine curiosity about the technical work itself. You should be comfortable learning enough about robotics, ML and infrastructure to speak credibly with engineers and identify strong‑fit candidates.
• Excellent written communication. You can craft outreach that gets a reply from someone who receives a dozen recruiter messages a week.
• Ability to drive multiple complex searches in parallel while maintaining a high quality bar and an exceptional candidate experience.
• High ownership and self‑direction, and comfort building process from scratch rather than working within an established playbook.
• A passion for the research and mapping components of sourcing. It is a long game.

Nice to Have

• Sourcing for a robotics, autonomous vehicle, or frontier AI research team.
• Sourcing from academic communities: conference author lists, PhD cohorts, lab alumni networks.
• An existing network in the Bay Area robotics or physical AI ecosystem.
• Sourcing tooling or automation you built yourself.
• Experience with Ashby, Gem, or comparable sourcing and applicant tracking tools.

Why This Role

• Every hire is visible. Low volume and a very high bar, so each person you bring in measurably changes what the company can do.
• Direct work with founders and research leads on calibration, rather than a requisition handed over a wall.
• You learn a field while it is being invented. The people you spend your days reading and writing to are the ones defining it.
• Room to grow into a broader talent function as we scale.