--- title: 'Senior Technical Recruiter at Goodfire' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-technical-recruiter-goodfire-san-francisco-wzp26p0epa23' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-08' --- # Senior Technical Recruiter at Goodfire - **Company:** Goodfire - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Posted:** 2026-01-05 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/goodfire/jobs/5055191008 ## Job description ## About Goodfire Goodfire is a research company using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI systems. Our mission is to build the next generation of safe and powerful AI—not by scaling alone, but by understanding the intelligence we're building. Scaling has proven powerful, but today's approach is fundamentally limited: we can't meaningfully understand, debug, or shape what models learn. Every engineering discipline has been gated by fundamental science and AI is at that inflection point now. We're advancing the science of how AI systems actually work. Treating models as black boxes is an unnecessary handicap—we have access to the structures inside them, and understanding those structures lets us steer what models learn, make them safer and more useful, and extract the vast knowledge they contain. Our goal is to make AI that can be understood, debugged, and shaped like software. Goodfire is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a team of the world’s top interpretability researchers and engineers from organizations like OpenAI and DeepMind. We're backed by over $200M from B Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, Eric Schmidt, and others. ## About the role We're hiring a Senior Technical Recruiter to build our entire talent acquisition function as we scale. You'll be a hands-on, strategic partner to our founders, owning all hiring across AI/ML research engineering, product, and go-to-market roles. You'll perform full cycle recruiting from sourcing and screening through offer stage while building the recruiting infrastructure that will scale with us. You'll take a consultative approach, partnering with our Founders and leadership team to attract top talent. You're focused on quality over quantity and understand that in AI safety and interpretability research, small, talent-dense teams win. You'll stay embedded in the SF AI scene, maintain a warm pipeline of standout talent, and help shape who joins Goodfire as we scale. ## What you’ll do - Own end-to-end recruiting across AI/ML research scientists, research engineers, ML infrastructure, security, and non-technical roles (ops, GTM, etc) as needed - Build and maintain a proactive pipeline of top AI talent so we're never starting from zero when a role opens - Stay embedded in the AI community: actively participate in SF/Bay Area AI events, networking meetups, and conferences; maintain relationships that generate warm intros - Design interview loops, ensure bar alignment, and build recruiting infrastructure that will scale with the company while executing all IC recruiting work yourself - Protect the bar: You default to skepticism, looking for reasons candidates won't work. You're comfortable with rigorous evaluation processes (work trials, deep reference checks, behavioral interviews) and high rejection rates. ## What you’ll bring Required experience - 5-10 years of recruiting experience, with 3+ years in early-stage startup or research-intensive environments - 2+ years recruiting specifically for AI/ML, research engineering, or ML infrastructure roles (strongly preferred) - Proven ability to recruit across both technical (engineering, research) AND non-technical (GTM, product, ops) roles - Sole operator experience: You've been THE recruiting function or founding recruiter before & are comfortable operating independently - Quality over quantity mindset: You measure success by quality of hires, not speed or volume. You protect the bar aggressively ## Preferred qualifications - Experience recruiting for frontier AI labs, LLM startups, or research heavy engineering orgs. - STEM degree (BS/MS/PhD) or equivalent technical background/fluency. - Existing network in the SF / Bay Area AI ecosystem ## Our values Goodfire is looking for individuals who embody our values and share our deep commitment to making interpretability accessible. We are building a team first and foremost. Put mission and team first All we do is in service of our mission. We trust each other, deeply care about the success of the organization, and choose to put our team above ourselves. Improve constantly We are constantly looking to improve every piece of the business. We proactively critique ourselves and others in a kind and thoughtful way that translates to practical improvements in the organization. We are pragmatic and consistently implement the obvious fixes that work. Take ownership and initiative There are no bystanders here. We proactively identify problems and take full responsibility over getting a strong result. We are self-driven, own our mistakes, and feel deep responsibility over what we’re building. Action today We have a small amount of time to do something incredibly hard and meaningful. The pace and intensity of the organization is high. If we can take action today or tomorrow, we will choose to do it today. Where we work We are hiring for this position in our San Francisco HQ. We are in person 5 days a week, with one company-wide remote week per month. ## What we offer This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits. The expected salary range for this position is $120,000–$280,000 base salary + equity (no bonus). Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to join a vital mission at an important point in its trajectory — we are developing groundbreaking technology with a world-class team on the critical path to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity. If you want to do your life’s work with us, even if you believe you do not meet every single requirement, apply now. ## About Goodfire ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Goodfire is an AI interpretability research company and public benefit corporation that builds tools to understand, debug, and intentionally design neural networks. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series B, $207M total funding) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States (Telegraph Hill office) - **Founded**: 2024 - **Founders**: Eric Ho (CEO) and Daniel Balsam (CTO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: AI interpretability, software development, artificial intelligence research - **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises building or deploying AI models, particularly in life sciences (Arc Institute, Mayo Clinic), robotics, and large language model applications - **Mission**: To advance humanity's understanding of AI to build safe and powerful AI systems – making AI that can be understood, debugged, and shaped like software. ## Products & Services - **[Silico for LLMs](https://www.goodfire.ai/)**: A platform that uncovers hidden representations inside neural networks, enabling users to debug hallucinations, steer model behavior, and train with less data. Uses feature-based interpretability and steering vectors. - **[Silico for Life Sciences](https://www.goodfire.ai/)**: Applies interpretability to genomic and epigenetic models (e.g., Evo 2) to discover novel biomarkers and biological insights. - **[Silico for Robotics & Vision](https://www.goodfire.ai/)**: Reverse-engineers causal mechanisms in vision and robotics models to inspect latent policy structure and improve reliability. - **Research Division**: Publishes foundational interpretability research (e.g., steering along manifolds, interpreting language model parameters, performative chain-of-thought detection). ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company) - **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$207M** across three rounds: - Seed (Aug 2024): $7M led by Lightspeed Venture Partners - Series A (May 2025): $50M led by Menlo Ventures - Series B (Feb 2026): $150M led by B Capital - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, B Capital, Anthropic; customers include Arc Institute, Mayo Clinic, and Rakuten. - **Growth Signals**: Headcount of 46 employees (+231% YoY); LinkedIn followers 8,604 (+180% YoY); expanding to a New York office; published research in Nature (Evo 2 interpretation). ## Competitive Advantages - **Deep interpretability expertise**: Team includes pioneers of sparse autoencoders, automated feature interpretation, and knowledge extraction from superhuman models – founding members of interpretability efforts at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and academic labs. - **Platform approach**: Silico works across LLMs, life sciences, and robotics, offering a unified interface for debugging and intentional design. - **Scientific track record**: Demonstrated reduction of hallucinations by 58% at ~90x lower cost than LLM-as-judge, and discovered novel Alzheimer's biomarkers via model interpretation. - **Public benefit corporation**: Mission-driven structure reinforces focus on safe, beneficial AI development. ## Strategic Focus - **Intentional design agenda**: Moving AI development from guess-and-check to closed-loop control by using interpretability to guide training directly. - **Research-to-product pipeline**: Rapidly translating cutting-edge interpretability research into robust, usable product features for customers. - **Expanding verticals**: Life sciences and robotics are key growth areas, with partnerships at top research institutions. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: High-intensity, fast-paced, mission-driven environment. Team values include "take action today," ownership, and kindness. All roles are in-person 5 days a week at the San Francisco (Telegraph Hill) or New York office, with one company-wide remote week per month. - **Compensation**: Competitive salary ($200,000 – $400,000 USD range for many roles), equity, and benefits. - **Team**: Work alongside world-class researchers and engineers from OpenAI, DeepMind, Stanford, and Harvard. Small team (~46 people) with high ownership and direct impact on foundational AI science. - **Perks**: Opportunity to do "life's work" on the critical path to safe AI; involvement in groundbreaking research published in top venues. ## Sources 1. [goodfire.ai](https://www.goodfire.ai/) – Company website, product descriptions, research 2. [goodfire.ai/company](https://www.goodfire.ai/company) – About page, team background 3. [goodfire.ai/careers](https://www.goodfire.ai/careers) – Careers overview 4. [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/goodfire) – Job listings, salary ranges, location policy 5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/goodfire-ai) – Funding details, headcount, growth metrics, key executives ## Other roles at Goodfire - [Head of Recruiting](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-recruiting-goodfire-san-francisco-a1tp009k7wb7) — San Francisco, CA - [Research Scientist (London)](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-london-goodfire-london-1t9ssxtvrbev) — London, United Kingdom - [Executive Assistant](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-assistant-goodfire-san-francisco-h2r7hqzef7gy) — San Francisco, CA - [Research Lead, Training](https://feeny.ai/job/research-lead-training-goodfire-san-francisco-774dyv8fr343) — San Francisco, CA - [Account Executive, LLMs](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-llms-goodfire-san-francisco-zd1gscyqeakn) — San Francisco, CA - [Product Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/product-engineer-goodfire-san-francisco-wd8kpngkrpws) — San Francisco, CA - [GTM Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/gtm-recruiter-goodfire-san-francisco-xedws5v0fntt) — San Francisco, CA - [Account Executive, Life Sciences](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-life-sciences-goodfire-san-francisco-vbcv2mbbggg8) — San Francisco, CA - [Sales Development Representative](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-representative-goodfire-san-francisco-kw59e1283w8p) — San Francisco, CA - [Strategic Events Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-events-lead-goodfire-san-francisco-wrw92krfww4s) — San Francisco, CA