Founding Recruiter
Icarus
Founding Recruiter
Icarus
Solar-powered stratospheric aircraft for ISR
From first principles, it is the obvious place to build. Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites move rapidly hundreds of kilometers above Earth. Our vision is an autonomous solar-powered bird operating around 20 kilometers, or 65,000 ft, above most clouds and weather. Much closer to Earth. Persistent by flying in circles. Effectively a Cell Tower in the Sky. That persistence is priceless. That is the promise of Skylink.
The first product of Icarus is a small, affordable solar-powered Stratospheric bird. A platform designed to be light, simple, and built under constraints. Affordability is the foundation. More importantly, it solves a real use case now. A wedge into the market through intelligence and communications. A beachhead that proves the model, attracts customers who need it so badly they’ll use it even before it’s perfect, and opens the path to market disruption at scale.
The vision goes further than building one plane or even one fleet. The goal is Skylink: a persistent Stratospheric grid delivering continuous intelligence, uninterrupted communications, and global connectivity. A new layer of infrastructure. The next backbone of how we see, sense, and connect the world.
Our mission at Icarus is to re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere. We asked ourselves: what is the fastest and best way to execute this? The answer was not to start with a massive, billion-dollar program. It was to start with affordable birds, scale endurance step by step, and build upward into Skylink.
Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the Forgotten Frontier and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere. Getting there requires exceptional engineers, technicians, and operators. You will help bring them here.
Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.
As a Founding Recruiter, you will own recruiting from the first outbound message to the signed offer. You’ll work directly with the CEO and hiring managers to understand what we need, find exceptional people, and convince them to build with us. You should love the search: finding the engineer behind an impressive project, getting a response from someone who wasn’t looking, and turning a first conversation into a hire. You’ll build the recruiting systems that help Icarus grow while staying close to the work yourself.
$130,000 - $170,000 USD
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are considered part of Icarus' total compensation package.
We’re an equal opportunity employer. We welcome all applicants without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.
Icarus builds APOLLO, a solar-powered autonomous aircraft that aims to fly continuously in the stratosphere (above 60,000 feet) for weeks without landing. It covers more than 1,000 square miles with ultra-high-resolution, real-time sensing and delivers high-throughput, low-latency connectivity directly to ground devices. This platform is positioned as a cost-effective, rapidly deployable alternative to satellite constellations for persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and resilient communications, with a primary focus on defense and security customers. Founded in 2023 and based in Los Angeles, Icarus was part of Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch.
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