Founding Technical Recruiter

📍 San Francisco | Work Directly with CEO & Founding Team | OpenAI for Physics | 🏢 5 Days Onsite

Founding Technical Recruiter

Location: Onsite in San Francisco

Compensation: Competitive Salary + Equity

Who We Are

Engineering simulation is one of the last major categories of software that AI hasn't rebuilt. The tools used to design aircraft, ships, reservoirs, and medical devices still run on numerical methods that are decades old, and an engineer can wait a full day for a single answer. UniversalAGI is building foundation models that learn physics directly from data, and they are already running in early deployments on real computational fluid dynamics and reservoir engineering problems for some of the largest industrial and defense organizations in the world.

We are a team of 25 researchers and engineers in San Francisco backed by Elad Gil (#1 Solo VC), Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), Ion Stoica (Databricks Founder), Jared Kushner (former Senior Advisor to the President), David Patterson (Turing Award Winner), and Luis Videgaray (former Foreign and Finance Minister of Mexico).

About the Role

As a Technical Recruiter, you'll be in the arena from day one, building the talent engine that will power UniversalAGI's hypergrowth. This is your chance to take everything you've done in your career and use it to build a world-class team that will transform industrial engineering.

You'll work directly with the founding team to identify, engage, and build out UniversalAGI's technical teams, This isn't passive recruiting. This is strategic talent acquisition at the highest level - finding needles in haystacks, searching for people, like yourself, who want to have an outsized impact.

What You'll Do

Own hiring across our technical roles, which includes AI researchers, CFD engineers, physicists, applied mathematicians, and deep tech builders and beyond. You will partner directly with our functional leaders and our growing recruiting team to define hiring priorities, pressure test profiles, and close high impact talent in competitive markets. You will run point on many of the most critical hires at the company and help shape how it scales.

Recruiting is treated as a strategic function here. You will be expected to bring judgment, data, and clear recommendations to the table.

• Source, engage, and close individual contributors and leaders for a broad range of roles at UniversalAGI

• Build and execute creative sourcing strategies to identify talent in specialized niches like automotive/aerospace/maritime, computational physicists, applied mathematicians, and full stack engineers

• Own the entire candidate pipeline from initial identification through offer acceptance, managing 50+ active candidates simultaneously while maintaining exceptional candidate experience

• Partner directly with the CEO & Hiring Managers to understand role requirements, ideal candidate profiles, and competitive landscape- then execute with relentless urgency

• Build and maintain a robust talent pipeline that stays weeks ahead of hiring needs, ensuring we never slow down due to lack of qualified candidates

• Design and optimize recruiting workflows, tools, and processes that scale with our hypergrowth while maintaining quality- you'll build the playbook that future recruiters will follow

• Track, analyze, and optimize key recruiting metrics: pipeline conversion rates, time-to-hire, source effectiveness, offer acceptance rates, and candidate quality scores

• Represent UniversalAGI at conferences, and meetups, and relevant communities, building our employer brand and talent network in AI and deep tech circles

This is a role for someone who's ready to solve some of humanity's hardest recruiting challenges, build a world-class talent engine from scratch, and define what exceptional recruiting looks like in the age of AI.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with a strong track record of sourcing and closing exceptional Technical talent in high-growth or highly competitive environments.

• Demonstrated success recruiting senior individual contributors and leaders across functions such as AI/ML engineers, research scientists, software or systems engineers, simulation engineers, computational scientists, or similarly complex talent.

• Expertise in technical sourcing through tools and channels such as LinkedIn Recruiter, GitHub, Boolean and X-ray search, AI sourcing tools, research publications, conferences, professional communities, and referrals.

• Strong technical curiosity and the ability to quickly learn complex domains, translate technical requirements into effective search strategies, and have credible conversations with senior engineers and researchers.

• Exceptional partnership and communication skills, including experience working directly with founders and technical leaders to define roles, assess tradeoffs, share market intelligence, and drive hiring decisions.

• Deeply care about candidate experience. Managing candidate experience with a high bar for clarity, speed, and conviction

• Outstanding execution velocity and delivery. You move fast, manage multiple pipelines simultaneously, and consistently hit aggressive hiring targets.

• Exceptional communication and relationship-building skills. Capable of engaging passive candidates and building long-term talent networks.

• Data-driven mindset with strong analytical skills to optimize recruiting funnels and improve conversion rates.

• Comfortable working in high-intensity, fast-paced startup environments with evolving priorities, ambitious hiring goals, and tight deadlines.

Bonus Qualifications

• Prior experience recruiting for AI startups (Seed to Series C) during hypergrowth phases (0-100+ employees).

• Experience recruiting for an AI, deep-tech, industrial technology, or research-focused start-ups.

• Experience hiring candidates with advanced degrees from leading universities, research labs, or technical organizations.

• Familiarity with simulation software, scientific computing, computational physics, CFD, numerical methods, or other physics-heavy engineering domains.

• Experience building recruiting processes and infrastructure from scratch at early-stage startups.

• Existing talent network within AI research, scientific computing, simulation engineering, or related technical communities.

• Experience with employer branding initiatives and representing companies at conferences.

Cultural Fit

• Technical Respect: Ability to earn respect through deep technical curiosity and genuine understanding of what makes engineers tick

• Intensity: Thrives in our unusually intense culture - willing to grind when needed to close critical hires

• Mission Obsession: Passionate about finding the absolute best talent to solve real problems, not just filling seats

• Deep Work: Values long, uninterrupted periods of focused sourcing and candidate engagement over meetings

• High Availability: Ready to be deeply involved whenever critical candidates are in play—evenings, weekends when needed

• Communication: Can translate complex requirements into compelling narratives that attract top talent

• Growth Mindset: Embraces the compounding returns of building talent networks and continuous process improvement

• Startup Mindset: Comfortable with ambiguity, rapid change, and wearing multiple hats (sourcing, coordinating, closing, employer branding)

• Work Ethic: Always willing to put in the extra hours when needed to close game-changing hires

• Team Player: Collaborative approach with low ego and high accountability—you win when the team wins

What We Offer

• Opportunity to build the talent engine for a rapidly growing foundational AI company from the ground up.

• Work on cutting-edge talent acquisition challenges finding the world's most specialized technical talent.

• Direct collaboration with the founder & CEO and ability to influence company strategy and culture.

• Competitive compensation with significant equity upside.

• In-person first culture - 5 days a week in office with a team that values face-to-face collaboration.

• Access to world-class investors and advisors in the AI space who can open doors to top-tier talent networks.

Benefits

We provide great benefits, including:

• Competitive compensation and equity.

• Competitive health, dental, vision benefits paid by the company.

• 401(k) plan offering.

• Flexible vacation.

• Team Building & Fun Activities.

• Great scope, ownership and impact.

• AI tools stipend.

• Monthly commute stipend.

• Monthly wellness/fitness stipend.

• Daily office lunch & dinner covered by the company.

How We're Different

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly." - Teddy Roosevelt

At our core, we believe in being "in the arena." We are builders, problem solvers, and risk-takers who show up every day ready to put in the work: to sweat, to struggle, and to push past our limits. We know that real progress comes with missteps, iteration, and resilience. We embrace that journey fully knowing that daring greatly is the only way to create something truly meaningful.

If you're ready to join the future of physics simulation, build a world-class team from scratch, and deliver impact, UniversalAGI is the place for you.