What You’ll Own
- Own full-cycle recruiting for AI research and engineering roles, from sourcing through close
- Build deep, high-signal pipelines across AI labs, research universities, startups, and frontier engineering teams
- Proactively source for hard-to-fill roles, including ML researchers, multimodal modeling specialists, ML systems engineers, infrastructure leads, and research fellows
- Develop genuine relationships with candidates long before they are actively interviewing
- Run fast, thoughtful, respectful interview processes that reflect the quality and seriousness of the team
- Partner with founders and hiring managers to calibrate role requirements, interview loops, scorecards, and hiring bars
- Drive debriefs, references, offer strategy, and close plans for high-priority candidates
- Help candidates understand Nuance’s technical ambition, stage, equity story, and long-term upside
- Build the recruiting operating layer over time, including ATS hygiene, sourcing systems, pipeline reporting, interview kits, and process improvements
- Raise the talent bar while keeping the process warm, human, and candidate-centered
What We’re Looking For
Required
- Strong full-cycle technical recruiting experience in a high-bar environment, such as an AI lab, top-tier technology company, or fast-moving technical startup
- Demonstrated success hiring ML researchers, research scientists, ML engineers, infrastructure engineers, or similarly technical talent
- A track record of sourcing and closing candidates directly, not just coordinating an existing process
- Evidence of winning competitive candidates against larger companies, stronger brands, or higher-cash offers
- An existing network in AI, ML, research, or deep technical engineering communities
- Excellent candidate judgment: you can quickly understand someone’s background, identify real signal, and separate substance from surface-level credentials
- Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to represent Nuance clearly and credibly to senior technical candidates
- High ownership, urgency, and follow-through — you treat hiring outcomes as your responsibility
What makes someone great in this role
- You are warm, curious, and genuinely interested in people. Candidates remember talking to you because they felt seen, not processed.
- You understand enough about modern AI systems to have informed conversations with researchers and engineers. You do not need to be a researcher, but you should be able to read a candidate’s background and ask thoughtful questions.
- You have strong closing instincts. You know when to push, when to listen, when to involve a founder, and how to build conviction over time.
- You are comfortable selling an early-stage opportunity: ambiguity, equity, technical ambition, and the chance to help define a company from the ground up.
- You care about process, but you are not process-bound. You know when a tool helps, when a spreadsheet is enough, and when the right answer is to pick up the phone.
- You are energized by building the recruiting function itself, not just filling requisitions.
Bonus Points
- Prior in-house recruiting experience at a frontier AI lab, AI startup, or highly selective engineering organization
- Experience hiring PhDs, research scientists, or candidates coming out of top academic programs
- Familiarity with AI research hiring cycles, including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, lab-leaving moments, and faculty-to-industry transitions
- Experience recruiting international candidates, including visa support, relocation, and compensation normalization
- Experience building or scaling a recruiting function from early stage through Series B or beyond
- Comfort with tools such as Greenhouse, Gem, Ashby, LinkedIn Recruiter, or similar recruiting systems
Compensation
$200,000 – $300,000 base salary, plus meaningful equity.
Benefits
- Health: HSA plan with ~$2,000 in annual company contributions
- Time off: 15 days of PTO plus public holidays, and we close the office for a full week at year-end
- Food: Lunch, drinks, and snacks on us every workday
- Commuter benefits
- 401(k): In the works
Nuance LabsSeattle, WA
