Founding Recruiting Lead

Title: Founding Recruiting Lead

Location: San Francisco, CA, US / Remote (US)

### **What is SilkTalent?**

[SilkTalent]( is an AI native recruiting firm. We back the best recruiters with **best-in-class recruiting tools and custom-built products proven to drive higher response rates and faster fills**. \

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This is a unique opportunity to join as a founding partner and shape an entirely new HR Tech product from scratch, — built around your needs and perspective. Run more searches, close more clients, and keep the upside of the business you build. In short: **your book, your clients, our technology and capital behind you.**

### **Why Join?**

• **Top investors**: Raised $5M+ from top investors including Y Combinator, SoftBank, and top execs from Instacart, Twitter, General Catalyst, Asana, and Ramp
• **Rare seat in recruiting tech:** you're the industry behind a new platform built to supercharge recruiter impact — what you'd fix about recruiting is what we build.
• **Rapid growth:** We’ve doubled revenue monthly since launch, and are already profitable
• **Team quality:** Our team has built and scaled products at Meta, Amazon, Instacart, Twitter, Microsoft, and Squarespace, and studied at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale.

### **Why this Role is Different**

• **Directly shaping the products we build.** As the first user, the products you shape come back to you as leverage: more searches run, more clients served in the same hours, more revenue on your desk.
• You're **building a book on top of a platform, not from scratch: venture backing** and a brand behind your name, demand channels we're investing in — marketing, VC ecosystem relationships, referral loops — so your network is one engine of growth, not the only one.
• Clients you originate earn you revenue share for the life of the account. Outsized product impact, durable upside, none of the feast-or-famine.

### **What You’ll Get**

• **Guaranteed base salary + uncapped performance pay.** The stability of a salary without giving up the economics of running your own desk. No more zero-income quarters.
• **Revenue share on every client you bring.** You earn a cut of account revenue on top of placement fees.
• **Exclusivity on every search.** No marketplace races, no competing recruiters on your roles.
• **Founding-level equity.** Real ownership in the firm you're helping build.
• **Tools and tech, on us.** We pay for top recruiting tools and build custom products for you — proven to lift response rates and fill rates — so your time goes to clients, candidates, and closing.

### **What You'll Do**

• **Win clients.** Convert your existing book and open new accounts — fast-growing, VC-backed startups hiring for hard-to-fill technical roles.
• **Own those accounts** end to end: relationships, expansion, renewals.
• **Run full-cycle searches** with our tools multiplying your output — your job is judgment, negotiation, and closing.
• **Shape the product -** Work directly with the founder and engineers to build tools that streamline your workflows and increase your billings

### **Requirements**

You currently make your living winning clients and filling their roles — on contingency, retained, or embedded — at an agency, on your own desk, or as the founder of your own shop. **This is a business development role as much as a recruiting role:** you bring in clients, own those accounts, and earn a share of the revenue they generate.

• **Agency, freelance, or founder background** — 5+ years of full-cycle technical recruiting at an agency, on your own desk, or running your own firm.
• **Relationships with partners at top VCs** and experience sourcing clients through portfolio referrals
• **Startup + technical depth** — you've placed founding engineers, AI/ML and deep tech talent, or early GTM hires at Series A–C startups and know what great looks like at that stage.
• **Proven BD ability** — founders and hiring managers respond when you reach out, and $500K+ in annual billings you personally generated. You're as comfortable selling a search as running one.

### **Nice to Have**

• Retained or executive-search experience and strong client relationships from this work
• A network of strong independent recruiters who would want to work with you again
• Bay Area based — not required, but a plus

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> **NOTE:** **This is not a role at SilkChart, and it is not an in-house talent acquisition position.** SilkTalent is a new, separate company (currently in stealth) built by the SilkChart founders and backed by $5M+ in venture funding. **This role is for recruiters who have run their own book of business — at an agency, as a freelancer, or as founders** of their own firm.