Lead Technical Recruiter at Tolan (San Francisco, CA)
Tolan· San Francisco, CA· $140k–$200k·
Role details
Equity
Summary
The Lead Technical Recruiter partners with engineering and product teams to source, sell, and close top-tier engineers and designers. This role involves building recruiting operations infrastructure, leveraging AI tools, and managing third-party resources in a fast-paced startup environment.
Job description
Tolan is building personal AI that helps people think, reflect, and take action in their real lives. We're an experienced team that previously founded Even, acquired for $300M in 2022. Tolan is backed by the designers and founders behind Instagram, Retro, Behance, Vimeo, and Notion.
The Role
We’re hiring a Lead Technical Recruiter to partner with our engineering & product teams, as well as our founders, to source, sell, and close the best engineers and designers in the world. This will be a low-volume, high-craft effort that drives tremendous impact for our organization. The right person for this role cares deeply about the art & science of recruiting and works well in ambiguous, fast-paced startup environments.
What You'll Do
- Source and hire top-tier engineering and design talent.
- Leverage AI as a force multiplier (you will have an unlimited token budget).
- Build recruiting ops infrastructure, tooling, and programming in partnership with executives.
- Procure and manage third party resources (agencies, embedded firms) to supplement your efforts.
Who We're Looking For
- Relevant experience. You have 2+ years of experience hiring technical roles at growth stage startups.
- High-stakes operator. The hires you’ve made accelerated the trajectories of companies and created real enterprise value.
- Elite stakeholder management. You’ve supported best-in-class founders, executives, and other hiring managers.
- AI-curious. You have experience (or a deep interest in) using the latest AI tools to execute recruiting work at scale.
- Thrives in ambiguity. You have the “just figure it out” quality that is essential for any recruiter in startups.
A Note about the Tolan Recruiting Team Together with our Head of Talent, this person will form the nucleus of the Tolan Recruiting org. This person will own all of Tech & Design hiring and will have a direct line into our Founders (CEO Quinten and CTO Evan).
Why work at Tolan
- Culture: Described as “the calmest culture I’ve ever seen” – direct, low-ego, drama-free, with a focus on doing great work quickly (nextplayso.substack.com)
- Work environment: In-person in San Francisco; small, veteran team (~38 people) where every hire makes a significant impact (tolans.com; linkedin.com)
- Engineering philosophy: AI tools are fully embraced – candidates are evaluated on how they use AI to build, and daily work is heavily AI-augmented. Engineers are expected to own the output, not just the code (tolans.com/relay)
- Perks/Notes: Not explicitly listed; the focus is on meaningful work, long hours when needed but a marathon mindset, and a fun, intelligent team (nextplayso.substack.com)