About Liquid AI

Spun out of MIT CSAIL, we build general-purpose AI systems that run efficiently across deployment targets, from data center accelerators to on-device hardware, ensuring low latency, minimal memory usage, privacy, and reliability. We partner with enterprises across consumer electronics, automotive, life sciences, and financial services. We are scaling rapidly and need exceptional people to help us get there.

The Opportunity

Recruiting at Liquid is a growth lever, not a support function: the people you hire build our models and our product. You will own a swim lane of technical searches start to finish, across product, applied ML, inference and infrastructure, and research-adjacent roles, with no layers between you and hiring managers, technical leadership, and founders.

This is an owner-operator seat on a small Talent team. You source your own pipeline, run the process with hiring managers, and close candidates against competing labs, making the case for Liquid person by person. You will help build the function, not just run it.

What We're Looking For

We need someone who:

• Operates as a talent partner, not just a recruiter: You measure yourself by what is best for the business, not seats filled, and you say so when the two diverge.

• Loves the craft: You still get energy from finding and closing people, and can say why you recruit the way you do.

• Builds in ambiguity: You are energized by undefined problems and create structure where there is none, from role definition to the evaluation loop.

• High agency, with grit: Given a role or a problem, you run with it without step-by-step direction, act on real blockers, and stay on a search through the bad stretch.

The Work

• Own full-cycle hiring across engineering, product, solutions architecture, GTM, and G&A, running onsites and closing senior and executive hires face-to-face in San Francisco.

• Partner with senior leaders and the C-suite to define brand-new roles before they kick off, and coach hiring managers, including first-timers, through the process.

• Source beyond LinkedIn and build the evidence for why a candidate is the best, not just best available.

• Build rigorous, role-specific evaluation from scratch: define what good looks like, assess for the attributes and values that predict success, and make the process itself a reason candidates want to join.

• Win competitive closes by sharpening the value proposition and total-compensation narrative, then run a clean operation behind it: quality-of-hire measurement, hire look-backs, market intel, reportable Ashby data, and process documented in Notion.

Desired Experience

Must-have:

• Proven depth in full-cycle recruiting for research, engineering, or other deeply technical roles, with the seniority to own complex searches end-to-end.

• A track record of winning competitive closes: competing offers, equity education, total-compensation narrative, creative engagement, and in-person closes.

• Experience defining roles, rubrics, and evaluation processes from scratch and coaching hiring managers, including first-timers.

• Strong ATS discipline (Ashby or comparable) and recruiting-data rigor: structured screens, scorecards, calibrated loops, and accurate, reportable metrics such as time-to-fill, pass-through, and quality of hire.

• Based in San Francisco, able to work from the office 4+ days per week and host candidate onsites.

Nice-to-have:

• AI / ML or deep-tech recruiting experience.

• Early-stage (seed to Series C) team-building experience, where you helped build the motion rather than execute a mature playbook.

• Experience building quality-of-hire and retention loops: onboarding check-ins, hire look-backs, and calibration back into evaluation.

• Demonstrated range across product, GTM, G&A, and customer-facing technical roles, or clear evidence you can flex into them.

What Success Looks Like (Year One)

• You own and close a full book across engineering, product, solutions architecture, GTM, and G&A end-to-end.

• You run independently, trusted with judgment calls, while sustaining hiring quality and pace.

• New and ambiguous roles get clear, role-specific rubrics and evaluation loops, and hiring managers are measurably better at hiring because of how you coach them.

• Priority roles close faster, and quality-of-hire and look-back loops are running and feeding back into how we evaluate.

What We Offer

• Ground-floor ownership: You own a swim lane end to end, work directly with technical leadership and founders, and help build the function rather than inherit a process.

• Compensation: Competitive base salary plus equity. Final offers reflect skills, experience, and location.

• Time Off: Unlimited PTO, plus company-wide Refill Days, long weekends when the whole company rests together.

• Health & Wellbeing: Comprehensive health coverage, with details varying by location.

• Paid Leave: Paid leave for pregnancy, parenting, medical needs, and caring for family.

• Equity & Ownership: Equity is part of every offer, so you share in what we build.