Robotics and AI Recruiter

About The Role

We're hiring a Founding Recruiter to build and run Destro's talent engine. This is one of the first ten hires at the company, and you will own hiring end-to-end as we scale from a small founding team to 20 to 30 new hires a year, most of them engineers. You will be hands-on, sourcing, closing, and building the process as you go, with direct access to the founders and no existing playbook to inherit.

Recruiting here is not a service function. You will have a seat at the table, shape how we hire, and be expected to speak up. Most of your time goes to recruiting and headhunting. The rest goes to supporting the business side: keeping our hiring and people tools running, handling basic HR operations, and helping the sales team with outreach and pipeline tracking.

What You'll Do

Recruiting

Own full-cycle recruiting for engineering and technical roles, including robotics, software, systems, and field deployment engineers.
Be a hunter: proactively identify and engage top talent across robotics, ML, systems, and infrastructure, rather than waiting for applicants.
Build talent heatmaps of the companies, labs, and teams where the best robotics engineers sit, and use them to guide sourcing strategy.
Source and close passive candidates through LinkedIn, GitHub, research networks, university labs, and referrals.
Build long-term relationships with candidates who are not ready to move today, so they are warm when the right role opens.
Partner with founders and hiring managers to define role scope, tradeoffs, and urgency before a search begins.
Design interview processes tailored to each role and talent market, and run structured interviewer calibration so evaluation stays consistent.
Act as the expert on compensation and competitive positioning, advising the founders on what it takes to close and what we may be missing.
Design bespoke closing strategies and tell the Destro story with clarity and conviction, so candidates leave informed and energized.
Treat every candidate with care and respect, including those we reject, because how they feel afterward reflects on us.
Manage offers, negotiations, and closing, working directly with the founders.
Operations and Tools

Own and administer our hiring stack, including the ATS (Breezy), sourcing tools, scheduling, and reporting.
Build repeatable systems: job description templates, outreach sequences, interview scorecards, and pipeline dashboards.
Evaluate and adopt AI-powered recruiting tools and automation workflows that speed up sourcing, outreach, and scheduling.
Track hiring metrics such as time-to-fill, pipeline conversion, and source effectiveness, and report on them regularly.
Support onboarding logistics and basic HR operations for new hires in coordination with our payroll and HR tools.

Who You Are

4 to 8 years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with a strong track record hiring engineers. A headhunting or agency background is a big plus.
Direct experience recruiting robotics, hardware, or deep-tech engineering talent, or the ability to quickly become credible with that community.
Startup experience, comfortable being the only recruiter with no team or process handed to you.
Proven ability to source and close passive candidates on your own.
Urgency: the best candidates are rarely on the market and are often gone within days, so you act fast.
Resilience in a competitive, shifting talent market.
Analytical and data-driven: you back your recommendations with evidence, not just instinct.
Process-minded: you have built tracking, templates, and pipelines rather than only worked inside them.
Genuinely curious about robotics and AI in the physical world.
Direct, organized, and comfortable moving fast with founders.

Required

Full-cycle recruiting experience, including sourcing, screening, closing, and offer negotiation.
Hands-on experience with an ATS (Breezy, Greenhouse, Lever, or similar) and LinkedIn Recruiter or an equivalent sourcing tool.
Experience hiring technical roles at a startup or high-growth company.
Creative, structured sourcing approaches that go beyond job boards and InMail.
Strong written communication for outreach and candidate-facing messaging.

Strongly Preferred

Experience recruiting for robotics, AI, or hardware companies.
Prior experience as a first recruiter or Head of Talent.
Experience with a CRM or outreach tool such as Apollo, HubSpot, or Salesforce.
Experience supporting sales or business operations.
Familiarity with basic HR operations, onboarding, and payroll tools.

Nice to Have

Executive recruiting experience.
Experience hiring across multiple US states.
Experience with technical assessment design and structured interview scorecards.
Existing network in the robotics, warehouse automation, or autonomy community.