Founding Recruiting Lead

What is SilkTalent?

SilkTalent is an AI native recruiting firm. We back the best recruiters with best-in-class recruiting tools and custom-built products proven to drive higher response rates and faster fills.

This is a unique opportunity to join as a founding partner and shape an entirely new HR Tech product from scratch, - built around your needs and perspective. Run more searches, close more clients, and keep the upside of the business you build. In short: your book, your clients, our technology and capital behind you.

Why Join?

• Top investors: Raised $5M+ from top investors including Y Combinator, SoftBank, and top execs from Instacart, Twitter, General Catalyst, Asana, and Ramp

• Rare seat in recruiting tech: you're the industry behind a new platform built to supercharge recruiter impact - what you'd fix about recruiting is what we build.

• Rapid growth: We’ve doubled revenue monthly since launch, and are already profitable

• Team quality: Our team has built and scaled products at Meta, Amazon, Instacart, Twitter, Microsoft, and Squarespace, and studied at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale.

Why this Role is Different

• Directly shaping the products we build. As the first user, the products you shape come back to you as leverage: more searches run, more clients served in the same hours, more revenue on your desk.

• You're building a book on top of a platform, not from scratch: venture backing and a brand behind your name, demand channels we're investing in - marketing, VC ecosystem relationships, referral loops - so your network is one engine of growth, not the only one.
• Clients you originate earn you revenue share for the life of the account. Outsized product impact, durable upside, none of the feast-or-famine.

What You’ll Get

• Guaranteed base salary + uncapped performance pay. The stability of a salary without giving up the economics of running your own desk. No more zero-income quarters.

• Revenue share on every client you bring. You earn a cut of account revenue on top of placement fees.

• Exclusivity on every search. No marketplace races, no competing recruiters on your roles.

• Founding-level equity. Real ownership in the firm you're helping build.

• Tools and tech, on us. We pay for top recruiting tools and build custom products for you - proven to lift response rates and fill rates - so your time goes to clients, candidates, and closing.

What You'll Do

• Win clients. Convert your existing book and open new accounts - fast-growing, VC-backed startups hiring for hard-to-fill technical roles.

• Own those accounts end to end: relationships, expansion, renewals.

• Run full-cycle searches with our tools multiplying your output - your job is judgment, negotiation, and closing.

• Shape the product - Work directly with the founder and engineers to build tools that streamline your workflows and increase your billings

Requirements

You currently make your living winning clients and filling their roles - on contingency, retained, or embedded - at an agency, on your own desk, or as the founder of your own shop. This is a business development role as much as a recruiting role: you bring in clients, own those accounts, and earn a share of the revenue they generate.

• Agency, freelance, or founder background - 5+ years of full-cycle technical recruiting at an agency, on your own desk, or running your own firm.

• Relationships with partners at top VCs and experience sourcing clients through portfolio referrals

• Startup + technical depth - you've placed founding engineers, AI/ML and deep tech talent, or early GTM hires at Series A-C startups and know what great looks like at that stage.

• Proven BD ability - founders and hiring managers respond when you reach out, and $500K+ in annual billings you personally generated. You're as comfortable selling a search as running one.

Nice to Have

• Retained or executive-search experience and strong client relationships from this work
• A network of strong independent recruiters who would want to work with you again
• Bay Area based - not required, but a plus

NOTE: This is not a role at SilkChart, and it is not an in-house talent acquisition position. SilkTalent is a new, separate company (currently in stealth) built by the SilkChart founders and backed by $5M+ in venture funding. This role is for recruiters who have run their own book of business - at an agency, as a freelancer, or as founders of their own firm.