Talent Engineer

Description

You will build the hiring system for an agentic AI company.

The bar does not move. Every candidate meets at least 2 founders and completes a trial day, a paid day inside the company on a real problem the team faces now. Candidates are scored on prioritisation and reasoning, not on how polished the output looks. There are no puzzles, no take-home tasks and no performance for its own sake.

Founder time currently carries the process. You take it over, speed it up, sharpen it and automate most of it without lowering the standard. You own hiring for engineering, product and GTM roles across 2 jurisdictions and build the tools that do the work, such as sourcing agents, enrichment pipelines, scoring rubrics and ATS automation.

About 80% of the team has a technical background and 100% are AI-native. You hire those people, so you need to work the way they work.

Responsibilities

• Own the full hiring funnel, from defining roles and writing job descriptions through sourcing, screening, founder interviews, trial days, references, offers and signature. You are accountable for time-to-hire and offer-accept rate and do not simply coordinate other people's decisions.
• Build the sourcing engine: agentic sourcing pipelines, enrichment and scoring over the Ashby API, and outbound messages that read as if a person wrote them, using a system you have taught how the company talks. Manual sourcing is the backup.
• Create demand for the company as an employer. Work out where strong engineers, product people and operators in Europe and beyond pay attention, then put the company in front of them through founder content, communities, events, hiring campaigns and referral loops. You are responsible for raising inbound quality on purpose.
• Run trial days. The hiring manager writes the task and you run the day. Then combine the team's feedback into one clear assessment, follow up with anyone late, and push for a decision within 48 hours.
• Handle compensation conversations within the internal bands. Explain the equity story, the Beckham Law calculations for Madrid relocations, and why P50 to P75 cash plus meaningful early equity suits this stage. Keep the bands intact while still closing the offer.
• Track stage conversion, source quality, interviewer calibration drift and rejection-to-referral rate. Cut what does not convert and report findings in the daily so founders can act on them.

Requirements

• You work with AI as part of your daily process, not as a side tool. You have rebuilt your workflow around agents, scripts, API integrations and workflow automation, and you have shipped this work within the last month, faster than before. This makes you high-leverage and lets you hold a real technical conversation with candidates.
• You have run full-cycle recruiting under a high bar for at least 3+ years...
• You have hired engineers, product people or GTM staff at a startup or at a highly selective company. You have turned down people you liked and closed people who had better-paying offers.
• You have a network you can call on. You have real relationships across European startups, venture firms and engineering communities, and you can make warm introductions.
• You judge talent quickly and put your view in writing. It holds up under founder scrutiny, and you can separate original thinking from AI-generated polish by reading the reasoning rather than the formatting.
• You care about candidate experience. Candidates thank you for rejections, and the feedback you give is honest and specific. You treat the hiring funnel as a marketing channel.
• You turn ambiguity into a default proposal with an owner and a deadline. You are comfortable being measured on hires closed rather than on activity.
• You have worked as more than an HR specialist, such as a generalist, founder's associate, engineer, product or GTM person, so you understand the work you hire for.
• You have deep admin experience with Ashby, or with another ATS you have adapted well beyond its intended use.
• You have hired ML, LLM or agentic AI engineers and can discuss what they build.
• You have hired across Spain and Germany and understand EOR versus local entity setups, contractor misclassification risk, notice periods and what changes a candidate's net pay.
• You write fluent English. Spanish or German is useful.
• Treat this list as a wishlist rather than a checklist. If the role excites you but you do not match every point, apply anyway.

Conditions

The role covers hiring in Spain and Germany.

The company keeps the trial-day and founder-interview steps in place for every candidate.

Benefits

• Pay is set at P50 to P75 cash, plus meaningful early equity.
• The company offers Beckham Law support for relocations to Madrid.