---
title: 'Independent Talent Sourcer (Contract, Contingent) at Pensive'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/independent-talent-sourcer-contract-contingent-pensive-remote-1y3xfnryww8w'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-29'
---

# Independent Talent Sourcer (Contract, Contingent) at Pensive

- **Company:** Pensive
- **Location:** Remote
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-29
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/pensive/8b91e4bf-0c54-4f10-a3e3-46cac6f57f54

## Job description

## About Builders

[Builders](https://builders.cv/) is a talent agency for people building ambitious careers in AI startups. We get to know what someone has done and what they want next, then introduce them directly to founders and hiring managers, instead of leaving them in an application pile. In the AI era the definition of a builder is expanding, so we do not only place engineers. Design, product, growth and go-to-market, and non-technical roles like chief of staff, marketing and operations, all come through us. We work with companies like Ramp, Greptile, Blockit and Circleback, from sourcing through close. We are a team of ex-founders, engineers, designers and PMs from fast-growing startups ourselves.

## The role

This is for people who know how to find strong candidates for early-stage (seed through Series B) AI startups. Most of the roles are engineering, though product, design, growth and go-to-market, and operations come up too. This is a fully remote contract role, open anywhere you can work legally. Put in as much or as little time as you want. There are no minimum hours, no quotas and no exclusivity in either direction, so this can run alongside whatever else you do, and you can keep working with other agencies and placing people directly. There is no non-solicit in the agreement either: nobody in your network becomes off limits because you signed with us.

## Responsibilities

- Find people who are open to a move, in any of the roles we brief you on. You can choose what roles, companies and archetypes to source for
- Get them to sign up to Builders through your referral link
- We screen them, introduce them to companies, and run the process through to the offer

## Compensation

- A flat fee for every person who signs up through your link and meets with a company. Paid monthly.
- A share of our placement fee when someone you referred is hired. This is the largest placement share of any track we run, because you carry all of the risk. Paid once the guarantee period has passed and the company has paid us. Nothing is clawed back after that.
- There is a path onto our hourly track. If the candidates you send are consistently strong, we can offer you our https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/pensive/8c18da49-5e3f-453b-974b-eef3a87b1f7f role, where we pay for your time on an hourly basis plus performance bonuses. It is decided on the quality of what you have sourced, not on volume and not on how long you have been with us.

How attribution works. Through a tracked referral link that is specific to you. Attribution is decided based on first sign-up from a referral link. The meeting that makes a signup qualified can happen any time in the twelve months after they sign up, so you still earn on someone who takes a while to move. Platform visibility. You see your own candidates, the stage each one has reached, and the status of every payout. You do not see other sourcers' candidates and they do not see yours. If you ever stop working with us, you keep access to payout status and candidate stages, so you can follow anything still in flight to the end.

## How you work

Source however works for you. Whatever tools or automation you already use are fine by us. No one else can see your candidates. You can check whether a specific person is already in the system by looking up their LinkedIn or email, so you know before you spend time on someone. You see the companies and roles by name, with a brief on each: what they do, what they pay and who they want. Where a company shares it, the brief also covers who they have already passed on. General guidelines

- One-to-one outreach needs no sign-off. Sequenced, bulk or automated outreach needs approval, both that you are running it and the copy. Usually approved once per campaign or template.
- Nothing about a role or company in a public post, job board, newsletter or group message without asking first.
- Some companies are marked restricted. One-to-one only, never in a sequence. A few of them would drop us the same day their name showed up in mass outreach.
- Do not source candidates out of our own client companies. You can see the full client list in the platform, so check it before you build a target list.
- On work authorization, ask two things only: are you authorized to work in the US, and will you need sponsorship now or in the future. Nothing about which visa.
- Please do not forward a brief to a candidate. Use what is in it to write your own outreach and to answer their questions.

Who would be a good fit Operators with a network in AI. People already doing outbound who want more companies to send their candidates to. It is a harder fit if you need guaranteed income in month one, or if you would rather be handed a list than build one. If you already know you want to be paid for the time rather than the outcome, apply to our https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/pensive/8c18da49-5e3f-453b-974b-eef3a87b1f7f role instead. It pays whether or not anyone signs up, and the bar for output per hour is higher.

## About Pensive

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Pensive provides an AI-powered grading and tutoring platform for STEM courses at colleges and universities, automating assessment creation, grading, and personalized student feedback.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2024 (implied by funding timeline and early milestones)
- **Founders**: Yoonseok Yang (CEO, Co-founder), MinJune Kim (CTO, Co-founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Educational Technology (EdTech), specifically AI in higher education
- **Target customers**: B2B – colleges, universities, and individual instructors teaching STEM courses (e.g., computer science, engineering, math)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To transform teaching and learning at scale by providing instructor-led AI tools that save time on grading and deliver richer, more personalized feedback to students.

## Products & Services
- **Pensive AI Grader**: AI-powered grading assistant that creates rubrics, grades assignments 10x faster, and provides personalized feedback to students. Designed for large STEM courses.
- **Pensive AI Tutor**: A scalable small-group tutoring system that uses AI to facilitate tutoring sessions, demonstrated in a paper accepted at SIGCSE 2025.
- **Pensive Discuss**: A research-driven tool (presented at SIGCSE 2025) enabling scalable small-group CS tutoring with AI.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $6.8M–$6.9M (Seed Round led by Mayfield Fund, closed ~February 2026). Includes a prior Grant led by WGU Labs.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Mayfield Fund (lead), Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Reach Capital, Bass Investment, Anti Fund, WGU Labs. Partnership with Anthropic (for AI models).
- **Growth Signals**: 1,000+ instructors across 100+ institutions (as of Feb 2026); 64% of workforce in the US with small teams in Philippines and South Korea; cited by top institutions like Columbia University and UC Berkeley; paper accepted at SIGCSE 2025; active presence at ASEE 2025 conference.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Instructor-led AI**: Unlike fully automated grading tools, Pensive emphasizes instructor control and oversight, reducing concerns about cheating and academic integrity.
- **STEM specialization**: Deep focus on STEM courses (CS, engineering, math) where grading is complex and time-consuming.
- **Research-backed**: Academic papers at top conferences (SIGCSE) validate their approach and pedagogy.
- **Partnership with Anthropic**: Leverages cutting-edge AI models (likely Claude) for robust and reliable feedback.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling adoption**: Expanding beyond early-adopter institutions into broader higher education markets.
- **Product depth**: Enhancing the AI grader and tutor with richer feedback capabilities and new features.
- **Sales & GTM**: Hiring Founding Account Executives to drive enterprise sales to universities and colleges.
- **International growth**: Presence in South Korea and Philippines signals potential expansion into Asia.

## Why Work Here
- **High-impact mission**: Directly improve the experience of millions of college students and free up instructors from tedious grading work.
- **Tight-knit, early-stage team**: ~10 employees, offering significant ownership and influence for early hires.
- **Remote-friendly location**: HQ in San Francisco (1 Brady Street, Suite A-725) with hybrid flexibility implied by distributed team (US, Philippines, South Korea).
- **Competitive compensation**: Salary ranges for open roles are $135K–$300K (estimated), typical for well-funded Bay Area startups.
- **Strong investor backing**: Backed by top-tier VCs (a16z, Sequoia, Mayfield) and a partnership with Anthropic, providing stability and resources.
- **Culture of innovation**: Active in academic research and conferences, encouraging a learning-oriented engineering culture.

## Sources
1. [pensive.com - Careers Page](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/pensive)
2. [CB Insights - Pensive Company Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/pensive)
3. [LinkedIn - Pensive Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/pensiveai)
4. [Basin - Pensive Open Roles & Salary Data](https://basin.cv/companies/pensive)
5. [pensive.com - Terms of Service](https://www.pensive.com/schools/terms-of-service)

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