Founding Recruiter

Founding Recruiter ABOUT ARCHITECT Architect is a frontier AI lab for chip design. We build AI models and tools for on-demand custom ASICs at scale. Our goal is to co-design custom ASICs alongside evolving ML workloads, and enable a new era of domain-specific chips that unlock capabilities impossible with current hardware paradigms. Born out of Stanford Research, our team blends AI with Silicon with a founding team from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta SuperIntelligence, xAI, Apple and Intel. WHAT YOU'LL DO As the Founding Recruiter at Architect, you'll build the recruiting function from the ground up and own the entire hiring pipeline end-to-end — from sourcing to close. You'll be embedded in the technical community, attending conferences like NeurIPS, DAC, ISSCC, and Hot Chips to identify and build relationships with world-class talent before they ever hit the market. You'll partner directly with the founders to define hiring strategy, build sourcing playbooks for deeply specialized roles across hardware and AI, and close candidates against offers from top labs and big tech. This is not a coordination role, you'll be a hands-on, full-cycle recruiter who can credibly engage with research engineers, chip architects, and ML researchers, understand what they work on, and sell them on the mission. You'll shape the team that shapes the company. WHAT WE'D LIKE TO SEE - Experience: 4+ years of full-cycle technical recruiting, with a strong track record closing hardware engineers (RTL, DV, physical design, chip architecture, compilers) and/or ML/AI research engineers. - Technical Fluency: Ability to have substantive conversations with candidates about their work — you know how to screen researchers and engineers. - Sourcing: Expert-level sourcing skills. You don't wait for inbound — you mine conference proceedings, GitHub, Google Scholar, LinkedIn, and niche communities to build pipelines for roles that most recruiters can't fill. - Community Presence: Willingness and ability to represent Architect at top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, DAC, ISSCC, Hot Chips, MICRO, ISCA) and research meetups. You build real relationships, not just collect badges. - Closing Ability: Proven experience closing candidates in competitive markets against FAANG, top AI labs, and well-funded startups. You understand equity, comp structuring, and how to sell a early-stage opportunity. - Startup DNA: You've recruited at an early-stage company before (or desperately want to). You're comfortable building processes from scratch, operating without an ATS on day one, and wearing multiple hats. BONUS: - Previous recruiting experience in the semiconductor or AI industry. - Existing network in the chip design or ML research communities. - Experience recruiting for hardware-software co-design, compilers, or systems roles. - Background in technical roles before moving into recruiting. WHAT WE OFFER - Competitive salary and equity - Fast-paced startup with autonomy and visible impact - Cutting-edge AI-driven chip design challenges