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People · San Francisco

Head of Recruiting

San Francisco Permanent
Careers / Open roles / Head of Recruiting

— About the role

The shape of the work

About the Role

We’re looking for a Head of Recruiting to build, lead, and own our talent acquisition function from the ground up. In this role, you’ll define the hiring strategy, oversee full-cycle recruiting, and work closely with leadership to attract exceptional talent across engineering, product, sales, and operations.

You’ll shape our employer brand, implement the processes and tools needed to scale efficiently, and ensure every candidate has a high-quality, human experience. This is a high-impact strategic role for someone who thrives in fast-growing environments and loves building systems, teams, and pipelines that drive company-wide success.

What You’ll Do

  • Build and lead the recruiting function across technical, product, and business roles.

  • Develop a company-wide hiring strategy aligned with long-term headcount plans and business goals.

  • Manage and improve full-cycle recruiting: sourcing, screening, interviewing, closing, and onboarding.

  • Partner with founders and executives to define role requirements and refine hiring processes.

  • Build a strong employer brand and lead initiatives that increase candidate pipeline quality.

  • Implement scalable recruiting processes, tools, and reporting systems.

  • Track key metrics (pipeline health, conversion rates, time-to-hire) and guide decisions with data.

  • Ensure a consistent, inclusive, and exceptional candidate experience.

  • Hire, mentor, and manage internal recruiters or external partners as the team grows.

  • Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and operational excellence in the hiring process.

What We’re Looking For

  • 6–10+ years of recruiting experience, including 2+ years managing recruiting functions.

  • Proven experience hiring across multiple disciplines (engineering, product, go-to-market, operations).

  • Strong track record building pipelines and closing candidates in competitive markets.

  • Experience designing or scaling recruiting processes at a high-growth startup or tech company.

  • Comfort working closely with senior leadership on headcount planning and organizational design.

  • Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills.

  • A data-driven approach paired with strong intuition and judgment.

  • High ownership mindset — proactive, resourceful, and comfortable working autonomously.

Nice-to-Haves

  • Experience as the first or early recruiting leader at a startup.

  • Familiarity with ATS systems, recruiting analytics tools, and sourcing automation.

  • Background in employer branding, talent marketing, or university recruiting.

  • Experience hiring internationally or across multiple time zones.

  • A passion for building diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

  • You’ll own the recruiting strategy at a company entering a major growth phase.

  • High trust and autonomy — your work directly shapes the future of the company.

  • A collaborative, low-ego team that cares deeply about people and long-term culture.

  • Competitive compensation, equity, and benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Statement

We are committed to equal employment opportunity in both principle and as a matter of policy. We will recruit, hire, train, promote, compensate and provide benefits to all applicants and employees without regard to ancestry, sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender, age, religion, religious creed, mental and/or physical disability, medical condition, military and/or veteran’s status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state and local laws. This policy applies to all recruiting, hiring, promotions, upgrades, layoffs, compensation, benefits, terminations and all other privileges, terms and conditions of employment. The firm complies fully with all federal, state and local equal employment opportunity laws.

— Package

What we offer

Salary band

Competitive

Public band. Same rate for the same role.

Equity

Meaningful

10-year exercise window from leaving date.


Plus 36 days off, six months fully paid parental leave, £2,000 learning budget, climate sabbatical every five years, private health, pension matched 8%, and a rail-first travel policy across our European studios. Read the full package →

— Process

How hiring works

  1. i

    Intro call · 30 min

    With our Head of People. Mutual scoping — your story, the role, package, anything you need to know up front.

  2. ii

    Deep-dive conversation · 60 min

    With the hiring manager. Real work in your domain, no trick puzzles. We share material 24 hours ahead so you can come prepared.

  3. iii

    Take-home · ~3 hours, paid

    A real task from our backlog. We pay £250 for your time, regardless of outcome.

  4. iv

    Onsite · half day

    London studio (or video). Walk through your take-home with the team, meet engineering and product, finish with a no-pressure lunch.

A bit about the team

You'll join a group spread across our European studios — academic backgrounds mixed with industry, peer-reviewed and opinionated. Quarterly we close ranks for a "field week"; recent ones included a co-op cocoa supplier in Ghana and a vertical farm in Lyon.

Mossroot team field work

Mossroot is committed to building a team as diverse as the supply chains we work on. We particularly welcome applications from groups under-represented in climate science.

© 2026 Mossroot · B-Corp Certified

Photography via Unsplash — ThisisEngineering, National Cancer Institute. Fictional brand, demonstration only.