---
title: 'Associate Recruiter, University Hiring at Persona AI Inc'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/associate-recruiter-university-hiring-persona-ai-inc-houston-c9seg17kd772'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-08'
---

# Associate Recruiter, University Hiring at Persona AI Inc

- **Company:** Persona AI Inc
- **Location:** Houston, TX
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-10-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/persona.ai/3ac0b4ef-674f-458c-b0e1-98d2df36c834

## Job description

Job Title: Associate Recruiter, University Hiring Department: Talent Acquisition Employment Type: Full-Time Location: Houston, TX (fully onsite, five days a week) Travel: Periodic, for campus events and conferences, primarily during fall and spring recruiting seasons

## Who We Are

Persona is building humanoid robots for the most demanding environments in heavy industry — shipyards, steel mills, fabrication facilities, and offshore platforms — performing welding, grinding, maintenance, inspection, and material-handling work that is dangerous, physically demanding, and increasingly difficult to staff. We are backed by leading strategic and financial investors and engaged with global industrial leaders across Korea, Japan, the United States, and Singapore. Korea is the center of gravity for our early commercial strategy, anchored by relationships with the world’s leading shipbuilders and steelmakers. Our work spans both the robot platform itself and the systems, partners, and playbooks required to deploy it at scale.

Why Join Persona?

- We offer competitive compensation, a performance-based bonus, 100% employer covered medical benefits for most healthcare plans, early-stage equity, competitive PTO, and company-wide paid winter break between December 24th and January 2nd.
- You’ll shape technology that’s redefining the possibilities of robotics and human interaction.
- Work alongside passionate teammates who value creativity, and continuous learning.

## About the Role

The next generation of humanoid robotics talent is in university labs, competition teams, and research groups right now. We want to find them early, give them meaningful work, and turn our best interns into full-time engineers. The Associate Recruiter, University Hiring is the person who makes that happen. Reporting to the Head of Talent, this is a hybrid role. Roughly half your time, you'll own Persona's internship hiring and university programs end to end: building campus relationships, running intern recruiting across engineering, robotics, manufacturing, and corporate teams, and delivering an internship experience that makes students want to come back. The rest of your time, you'll own interview scheduling for our recruiting team, keeping loops moving across technical, manufacturing, and corporate searches. This is an ideal role for an early-career recruiter who wants real ownership of a program, loves working with students, and has the organization to keep a busy interview calendar running smoothly at the same time. As our intern pipeline matures, this role has a clear path toward full-cycle early-career and technical recruiting. This position is fully onsite at our Houston corporate office, five days a week.

## What You Will Be Doing

University Programs and Internship Hiring

- Own Persona's internship program end to end, from headcount planning with hiring managers through offer, onboarding, and end-of-summer conversion to full-time.
- Run full-cycle recruiting for intern and new-grad roles across disciplines such as mechanical, electrical, software, robotics, controls, manufacturing, and corporate functions.
- Build and maintain a target school strategy, developing relationships with career centers, engineering faculty, research labs, and student organizations.
- Source standout students beyond career fairs: robotics competition teams, hackathons, student research, GitHub projects, and engineering societies.
- Plan and represent Persona at career fairs, info sessions, tech talks, lab tours, and conferences, both on campus and at our Houston facility.
- Screen candidates for technical fundamentals, hands-on project experience, and genuine excitement about building robots.
- Design the intern experience in partnership with hiring managers and People Operations, including onboarding, cohort events, mentorship, and final project showcases.
- Track program results such as applicant flow, offer acceptance, intern satisfaction, and return-offer conversion, and use them to make each cohort better than the last.

Interview Scheduling

- Own interview scheduling for the recruiting team, including phone screens, multi-panel onsite loops, and debriefs across technical, manufacturing, and corporate searches.
- Manage calendars across hiring managers, interviewers, time zones, and production shift schedules, and handle last-minute changes calmly.
- Coordinate onsite interview logistics, including conference rooms, interviewer coverage, candidate arrival, and day-of adjustments.
- Partner with recruiters on panel composition, interviewer prep, and fast debrief turnaround so momentum never slips.
- Deliver a warm, professional candidate experience at every touchpoint, from the first scheduling email to the moment they walk onto our floor.
- Keep ATS data accurate and current so reporting, compliance, and process consistency hold up as we grow.
- Build the templates, workflows, and documentation that let both university recruiting and interview scheduling scale, and flag bottlenecks before they cost us a hire.

What We Are Looking For:

- 1–3 years of experience in recruiting, university relations, recruiting coordination, or a closely related role. Experience in an in-house recruiting team is preferred.
- Hands-on experience with campus or early-career recruiting, such as running career fairs, managing intern hiring, or building school relationships.
- Exceptional organization and follow-through, with the ability to manage a busy interview calendar and a program pipeline at the same time without letting anything drop.
- Comfort managing calendars across multiple stakeholders, time zones, and production shift schedules, with sound judgment about when to solve something yourself and when to escalate.
- Clear, warm written and verbal communication with students, faculty, candidates, hiring managers, and cross-functional teams.
- Confidence presenting to groups and representing a company on campus.
- A proactive, service-minded approach and genuine care for the experience of everyone who moves through our process.
- Comfort working in ambiguity where processes are still being built, and eagerness to help build them.
- Discretion and experience handling confidential and sensitive information.
- Willingness to travel periodically for campus events and conferences, primarily during fall and spring recruiting seasons.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.

Bonus Skills:

- Experience recruiting engineering students for robotics, aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing, or deep-tech hardware companies.
- Existing relationships with engineering programs, career centers, or robotics student organizations, especially in Texas and at top engineering schools nationally.
- Familiarity with student-focused platforms such as Handshake, and ATS platforms such as Ashby, Rippling, Greenhouse, or similar.
- Experience with Google Workspace or Outlook scheduling tools.
- Experience building or running an internship program from scratch at a startup or high-growth company.
- Interest in robotics, AI, or advanced manufacturing.

Persona is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

## About Persona AI Inc

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Persona AI develops industrial humanoid robots designed for skilled physical work in complex environments like shipyards, construction sites, and energy infrastructure.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Pre-Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: Houston, Texas, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Nicolaus Radford (CEO), Jide Akinyode (COO), Dr. Jerry Pratt (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Industrial Robotics, Humanoid Robotics, AI, Manufacturing, Construction, Energy, Shipbuilding
- **Target customers**: B2B / Enterprise — heavy industrial sectors including shipbuilding, construction, energy (oil & gas, utilities), manufacturing, and defense.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To build industrial humanoid robots that perform skilled physical work in complex environments, addressing labor shortages, improving safety, and increasing operational efficiency across heavy industry. The company focuses on the "4D jobs" — dull, dirty, dangerous, and declining — so that humans don't have to perform them.

## Products & Services
- **Persona AI Humanoid Platform**: A modular industrial humanoid robot designed for real-world applications in shipyards, construction sites, energy infrastructure, and manufacturing facilities. The system is engineered for skilled physical work in complex environments and supports tasks such as welding, grinding, inspection, material handling, fabrication, and equipment maintenance. The modular design allows integration with standard industrial tools and adaptation to different workflows.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $30M (oversubscribed Pre-Seed round, closed June 2025)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Tides Ventures, Unity Growth Fund, POSCO DX, GOOSE Capital, SGH Capital, Embedded Ventures, and 19 other investors. Partners include Under Armour (performance materials), ABS (shipyard safety), and the State of Louisiana (pilot program at SSE Steel Fabrication).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of ~65 employees (as of mid-2025) with a monthly growth rate of +3.9%. Active job postings have grown +13.3% monthly and +54.5% quarterly. The company has announced key hires including Brian Davis (Head of Global Manufacturing) and Michael Perry (Head of Commercial Strategy). It has secured a pilot program with the State of Louisiana and a partnership with ABS for shipyard applications.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Deep domain expertise**: The leadership team has contributed to 15+ humanoid projects and published impactful robotics research, giving them a strong technical foundation.
- **Modular, task-focused design**: The robot platform is built to integrate with standard industrial tools and adapt to different workflows, making it practical for real-world deployment rather than being a general-purpose humanoid.
- **Early mover in a critical niche**: Persona AI is specifically targeting the skilled industrial labor gap in sectors like shipbuilding, construction, and energy, which face acute labor shortages and high demand for automation.
- **Strong government and industry partnerships**: Early pilot programs with the State of Louisiana and a partnership with ABS (American Bureau of Shipping) demonstrate real-world traction and validation.

## Strategic Focus
- **Productization and deployment**: Moving from R&D to deploying humanoid robots in real industrial environments, with a focus on welding, fabrication, and maintenance tasks.
- **Scaling the team**: Aggressively hiring across robotics engineering, machine learning, mechanical design, and commercial strategy roles to build out the organization.
- **Building commercial partnerships**: Establishing relationships with major industrial players (e.g., POSCO, HD Hyundai affiliates, Under Armour) and government entities to secure pilot programs and long-term contracts.
- **Expanding use cases**: Targeting shipbuilding, construction, energy infrastructure, and defense as primary verticals.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: The company is tackling a tangible, high-impact problem — the skilled labor shortage in heavy industry — by building robots that perform dangerous, dirty, and physically demanding tasks.
- **Strong technical team**: The leadership includes veterans from NASA, the robotics research community, and major defense/industrial companies. The CTO, Dr. Jerry Pratt, is a well-known figure in humanoid robotics.
- **Early-stage growth**: As a 2024 startup with $30M in funding and a headcount of ~65, new hires can have significant impact on the product and company direction.
- **Diverse, hands-on roles**: Open positions range from Welding Engineer and Robotics Technician to Machine Learning Engineer and XR Rendering Engineer, offering a variety of technical challenges.
- **Houston-based**: Headquarters in Houston, Texas, with a growing international presence. The company appears to be on-site or hybrid given the nature of hardware development.
- **Notable perks/culture**: The company emphasizes a "build" culture, with a focus on putting "tough humanoids to work." The team includes veterans from Anduril, Nauticus Robotics, and NASA, suggesting a high-caliber, mission-driven engineering environment.

## Sources
1. [persona.ai](https://persona.ai/)
2. [LinkedIn - Persona AI](https://www.linkedin.com/company/persona-humanoids-at-work)
3. [CB Insights - Persona AI](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/persona-ai)
4. [Ashby Careers - Persona AI](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/persona.ai)
5. [Persona AI - The Team](https://persona.ai/the-team/)

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