{"id":3251897,"url":"https://alion.io/job/pocket-founding-recruiter-2","title":"Founding Recruiter","company":{"id":2237730,"name":"Pocket","domain":"pocket.watch","url":"https://alion.io/company/pocket-watch","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"HR","role_family":"HR","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"OpenSearch","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":true}],"status":"closed","first_seen_at":"2026-10-20T23:48:51Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-20","last_verified_at":"2026-11-02T16:11:02Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":"2026-11-02T16:11:02Z","days_open":12,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":12},"description":"About the role\nPocket has passed $100M ARR and 300,000+ devices sold with a very small team. We're YC W26, backed by Accel, and we've hit the point where hiring is the bottleneck.\nWe have 25+ roles to fill in the next two quarters across Engineering, Research, Marketing, Ops, Finance, GTM, and Support. Right now the founders run every search themselves. We want you to take that over and build how Pocket hires.\nThis is not an HR role and not an agency-management role. You source, you screen, you close.\nLocation: SF (hybrid / on-site)\nCompensation: $150K-$250K (open for top people) + meaningful equity\nType: Full-time\nYour first 90 days\nDay 30: You own every open search. ATS is live, every role has a scorecard and an interview plan, and the 5 highest-priority roles have active pipelines.\n\nDay 60: First 5+ offers signed. Founders spend time on final interviews only.\n\nDay 90: Hiring runs on a weekly rhythm with funnel numbers. You've told us what's broken in how we hire and fixed the worst of it.\n\nWhat you'll own\nFull-cycle recruiting for every open role: intake, sourcing, screening, offer, close\n\nOutbound sourcing for the hard roles, from ML researchers to a Controller, not just inbound review\n\nTurning a founder's vague \"we need someone for X\" into a clear role, scorecard, and interview plan\n\nOffers and closing, including salary and equity conversations, together with the founders\n\nHiring across the US, Europe, and India: full-time, contractors, and interns\n\nThe ATS, the funnel numbers, and how Pocket shows up to candidates everywhere\n\nWhat we're looking for\n4-6+ years of full-cycle recruiting, at least part of it in-house at a fast-growing startup\n\nYou've closed both technical and business roles, and you can show the numbers\n\nYou source every week, personally, and you're good at it\n\nYou can run 10+ searches in parallel without dropping candidates\n\nYou can tell a strong candidate from a polished one, and you'll push back on us when a role is badly defined or the bar is slipping\n\nYou can explain startup equity to a candidate clearly and honestly\n\nNice to have\nFirst or early recruiter at a seed or Series A company\n\nExperience hiring ML / speech / LLM researchers\n\nConsumer tech, DTC, e-commerce, or hardware background\n\nInternational hiring (Europe, India), EOR and contractor setups\n\nYou already use AI tools to move faster on sourcing and outreach\n\nWhy this role\nYou build the team of a company scaling from hundreds of thousands to millions of customers\n\nYou work directly with the founders and every team lead, with no layers in between\n\nYou define how Pocket hires. There is no legacy process to inherit\n\nA clear path to Head of Talent / People as the function grows\n\nCompetitive salary and meaningful equity through Pocket's stock option plan\n\nInterview process\nIntro call (15 min): experience, motivation, comp expectations, location\n\nRecruiting deep dive: your best searches, your process, your funnel numbers\n\nPractical exercise on a real Pocket role: intake, sourcing strategy, sample outreach\n\nConversations with the hiring managers you'd partner with\n\nFounders interview\n\nReferences and offer\n\nWe move fast. Expect the whole process to take under two weeks.\nAbout Pocket\nPocket is a Y Combinator W26 company building a premium hardware plus software product in the AI voice recorder space. We are obsessed with quality and speed. We are scaling fast across the US and Europe and building a device experience that can become the category leader.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3488,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-25T22:14:01Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-11-02T16:11:02Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":null,"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":250000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/pocket-founding-recruiter-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/pocket-founding-recruiter-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-04T12:16:37Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":18468,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-05T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":2237730},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=2237730"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fpocket-founding-recruiter-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fpocket-founding-recruiter-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fpocket-founding-recruiter-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/pocket-founding-recruiter-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fpocket-founding-recruiter-2"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3251897}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"pocket.watch","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3251897},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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