Founding Technical Recruiter

About Astrocade

Astrocade is a user-generated content gaming platform that lets people turn an idea into a playable, shareable game in a matter of days rather than months. The company has surpassed 20 million users only a few months after launch and is still in an early growth phase. It is supported by Sequoia, NVIDIA, and Google, and was started by Amir Sadeghian (Stanford PhD), Ali Sadeghian (formerly at Google Research), and Fei-Fei Li (Godmother of AI). The team is creating the foundation for a new era of interactive entertainment.

About the Role

Astrocade is hiring a Founding Technical Recruiter to help assemble one of the strongest engineering teams in AI. In this role, you will work closely with founders and engineering leaders to bring in top talent across infrastructure, AI/ML, recommendation systems, data, and platform engineering. The position is a full-cycle recruiting role, with outbound sourcing as the main focus. A large part of the job is discovering hard-to-find candidates, developing relationships with elite engineers, and helping the company succeed in highly competitive searches.

In addition to recruiting, you will develop deep knowledge of the AI talent market by mapping companies, studying technical organizations, and building the market insight that informs hiring decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the complete recruiting process for technical positions, from initial sourcing through offer acceptance
• Create outbound talent pipelines for high-caliber engineering candidates
• Work in close partnership with founders and hiring managers to shape hiring plans and strategy
• Study companies, engineering organizations, and talent markets to uncover strong candidates
• Develop competitive talent maps and recruiting intelligence to support decision-making
• Provide a strong and positive candidate journey throughout the hiring process
• Improve recruiting operations with AI and automation wherever it adds meaningful leverage

Requirements

• 3 to 10 years of experience recruiting technical talent
• Background sourcing and closing senior software engineers at startups or top-tier technology companies
• Ability to assess technical experience across infrastructure, distributed systems, AI/ML, recommendation systems, backend, and platform engineering
• Strong interest in outbound recruiting and in building relationships with exceptional talent
• High drive, strong urgency, and comfort working through challenging hiring problems
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to build trust with candidates and hiring managers
• Ownership mindset and the ability to thrive in a demanding early-stage environment

Bonus Qualifications

• Prior recruiting experience for AI, ML, recommendation systems, or infrastructure engineering teams
• Experience building market maps, competitive intelligence, and talent research from the ground up
• Working knowledge of modern AI tools and how they can enhance recruiting workflows
• Experience hiring engineers from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google DeepMind, NVIDIA, xAI, Roblox, TikTok, or similar leading AI and consumer tech organizations

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive base pay with equity and bonus potential
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Daily lunch provided

Additional Information

This is a full-time onsite role in Palo Alto, California. The compensation range for this position is $150,000 to $200,000.

Join the team that is helping build the future of interactive entertainment.