Leads and develops a high-volume recruiting team, optimizing hiring processes, tools, and KPIs while partnering with stakeholders to deliver scalable hiring and a strong candidate experience.
Director of Technical Recruiting
📜 Description
- Lead and scale recruiting across Engineering, Research, Product, Forward Deployed Engineering, and Applied AI Engineering.
- Build, develop, and manage a high-performing team of technical recruiters, sourcers, and recruiting leaders.
- Own recruiting strategy, workforce planning, sourcing, candidate experience, closing, and capacity planning.
- Partner with technical leaders to translate business priorities into hiring plans and coach teams on structured assessment and interviewing.
- Use recruiting metrics to identify bottlenecks, forecast outcomes, and improve hiring effectiveness.
- Build scalable recruiting processes while staying hands-on and representing the company to technical talent.
🛠️ Requirements
- Experience building and leading technical recruiting teams in a hyper-growth startup environment, ideally at a company scaling from approximately 100 to 1,000 employees.
- Deep experience recruiting for technical functions such as Engineering, Research, Product, Machine Learning, AI, Infrastructure, Data, Applied AI, or similar areas.
- Strong knowledge of the Bay Area technical talent market and competitive AI/startup hiring landscape.
- A track record of building recruiting teams, developing recruiters, and creating scalable recruiting practices.
- Experience partnering directly with senior technical and business leaders on hiring strategy, prioritization, tradeoffs, and execution.
- Strong data orientation, with the ability to use recruiting metrics to diagnose problems, drive decisions, and communicate progress.
- Demonstrated creativity in sourcing, pipeline generation, talent mapping, and candidate engagement.
- Strong executive presence and communication skills, with the ability to influence across technical and non-technical audiences.
- Comfort operating in ambiguity and building systems, processes, and teams where they may not yet exist.
- A high bar for talent, candidate experience, and operational excellence.
Full job description
About Snorkel
Snorkel AI is the frontier AI data lab, helping teams build the data and environments behind high-performing frontier and agentic AI. We combine technology with research-driven AI data development to create datasets, benchmarks, evals, and custom solutions for real-world AI systems. Founded out of the Stanford AI Lab in 2019, Snorkel works with leading AI labs and enterprises to move from better data to better outcomes.
Excited to help us redefine how AI is built? Apply to be the newest Snorkeler!
About the Role
Snorkel AI is looking for a Director of Technical Recruiting to build and lead the technical recruiting engine that will support our next stage of growth. This leader will own the strategy, team, operating model, and execution required to hire exceptional talent across Engineering, Research, Product, Forward Deployed Engineering, and Applied AI Engineering.
This is a high-impact leadership role for someone who has built and scaled technical recruiting teams in hyper-growth startup environments, ideally from roughly 100 to 1,000 employees. We are looking for a builder: someone who knows how to design a recruiting function from the ground up, develop a high-performing team, partner deeply with technical leaders, and compete creatively for scarce talent in one of the most competitive markets in the world.
The ideal candidate has operated in the Bay Area technical talent market, understands the pace and ambiguity of high-growth startups, and brings strong instincts for hiring in AI, infrastructure, data, machine learning, developer tools, or other deeply technical domains.
What You’ll Do
- Lead and scale Snorkel AI’s technical recruiting function across Engineering, Research, Product, FDE, and Applied AI Engineering.
- Build, develop, and manage a high-performing team of technical recruiters, sourcers, and recruiting leaders as the company scales.
- Own the overall technical recruiting strategy, including workforce planning, pipeline development, sourcing strategy, candidate experience, closing strategy, and capacity planning.
- Partner closely with Engineering, Research, Product, and other technical leaders to understand business priorities and translate them into actionable hiring plans.
- Create a world-class recruiting operating model that balances speed, quality, rigor, and an exceptional candidate experience.
- Develop creative sourcing strategies for highly competitive technical and AI talent markets.
- Use data to identify bottlenecks, improve conversion, forecast hiring outcomes, and drive accountability across the recruiting process.
- Establish and track key technical recruiting metrics, including pipeline health, pass-through rates, time to fill, offer acceptance, source effectiveness, candidate experience, and quality of hire indicators.
- Coach hiring managers and interview teams on effective assessment, structured interviewing, calibration, and closing.
- Build scalable processes while remaining hands-on and close to the work where needed.
- Represent Snorkel AI externally as an employer of choice for world-class technical talent.
What We’re Looking For
- Experience building and leading technical recruiting teams in a hyper-growth startup environment, ideally at a company scaling from approximately 100 to 1,000 employees.
- Deep experience recruiting for technical functions such as Engineering, Research, Product, Machine Learning, AI, Infrastructure, Data, Applied AI, or similar areas.
- Strong knowledge of the Bay Area technical talent market and competitive AI/startup hiring landscape.
- A track record of building recruiting teams, developing recruiters, and creating scalable recruiting practices.
- Experience partnering directly with senior technical and business leaders on hiring strategy, prioritization, tradeoffs, and execution.
- Strong data orientation, with the ability to use recruiting metrics to diagnose problems, drive decisions, and communicate progress.
- Demonstrated creativity in sourcing, pipeline generation, talent mapping, and candidate engagement.
- Strong executive presence and communication skills, with the ability to influence across technical and non-technical audiences.
- Comfort operating in ambiguity and building systems, processes, and teams where they may not yet exist.
- A high bar for talent, candidate experience, and operational excellence.
Locations
San Francisco - Hybrid (3x a week in office)
Compensation range is $170,000 - $300,000. Our compensation ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.
Actual compensation will be determined based on factors including skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location.
Be Your Best at Snorkel
Joining Snorkel AI means becoming part of a company that has market proven solutions, robust funding, and is scaling rapidly—offering a unique combination of stability and the excitement of high growth. As a member of our team, you’ll have meaningful opportunities to shape priorities and initiatives, influence key strategic decisions, and directly impact our ongoing success. Whether you’re looking to deepen your technical expertise, explore leadership opportunities, or learn new skills across multiple functions, you’re fully supported in building your career in an environment designed for growth, learning, and shared success.
Snorkel AI is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and is committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. Snorkel AI embraces diversity and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment. Snorkel AI prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, performance, merit, and business need.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
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