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Founding Technical Recruiter

Astera Institute· Foundation
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Emeryville HQ$140k - $160kFull-timePosted 3w ago

About the role

Founding AI-fluent Technical Recruiter focused on building and operating agentic recruitment workflows using AI tools to scale recruiting while maintaining high candidate experience and hiring quality. Reports to COO; collaborates with leadership to define and improve AI-assisted people infrastructure.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and maintain AI agent and automation workflows that handle scheduling, candidate communication, pipeline tracking, and reporting across the hiring lifecycle.
  • Own the toolchain end-to-end: configure and extend the ATS (Ashby/Rippling), connect it to LLM-based agents and automations, and integrate with calendars, email, and internal systems.
  • Continuously evaluate new AI tools and techniques (agent frameworks, prompt/workflow design, LLM-based sourcing and screening aids) and pilot them against real hiring needs.
  • Build guardrails, review checkpoints, and escalation paths so agentic systems fail safely and a human is always in the loop where judgment or empathy is required.
  • Monitor the end-to-end interview process for both candidates and internal stakeholders, stepping in personally wherever automation isn't the right tool for the moment.
  • Ensure agent-driven scheduling and communication reflect Astera's tone and values at every touchpoint, not just its speed.
  • Prepare interviewers with relevant materials, context, and rubrics, sourced and assembled with the help of your own tooling.
  • Maintain accurate, agent-assisted candidate records and pipeline data in Ashby/Rippling.
  • Build living dashboards and automated reporting on pipeline health, bottlenecks, and operational risk for the COO and hiring managers.
  • Turn one-off processes into reusable, documented, AI-assisted templates so hiring quality doesn't depend on any one person's bandwidth.
  • Partner with the COO and hiring managers to identify top-of-funnel sources for unique technical and scientific roles, using AI-assisted research to surface nontraditional candidates.
  • Build and/or configure agentic sourcing/outreach flows for residents, operators, scientists, and other high-potential candidates, with a clear human review step before anything reaches a candidate.
  • Support coordination with external recruiters or advisors as needed.
  • Extend agentic workflow thinking to adjacent People & Operations needs — e.g., onboarding, candidate-day logistics, or communications during peak hiring cycles.
  • Flex to "unknown unknowns" across the People & Operations stack, and step in to support the office manager, people operations lead, or other teammates during high-volume periods.

Qualifications

  • 3-6+ years of experience in recruiting or people operations — ideally with hands-on experience building or configuring automations, agents, or AI-assisted workflows.
  • Deep experience with ATS systems (e.g., Lever, Greenhouse, Ashby, Rippling) and their APIs or automation surfaces.
  • Demonstrated comfort with AI tools beyond chat: prompt design, agent frameworks, no-code/low-code automation platforms (e.g., Zapier, Make, n8n), or scripting against APIs.
  • Ability to translate a messy, high-complexity people/recruiting process into a well-designed, reliable system — and to know where automation should stop and a human should step in.
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with high attention to tone and detail (agentic systems inherit your voice — you have to get it right).
  • Comfort navigating highly ambiguous environments and adapting to shifting priorities.
  • Strong project management skills, including tracking work across multiple simultaneous hiring processes and tooling builds.

Skills

Required:AI-assisted workflow designATS (Ashby/Rippling) configurationPrompt design & agent frameworksNo-code/low-code automation

Benefits

  • Competitive compensation package (base: $140K – $160K)
  • Likely benefits typical of private foundation roles (not explicitly listed)
Last updated Oct 1, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Astera Institute

The future, faster.

We empower visionary, high-leverage science and technology projects with the capacity to create transformative progress for human civilization.

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