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Destro AI is building the intelligence layer for robotics—a system that coordinates robots, humans, and workflows across complex real-world operations. Founded by former leaders from HAI Robotics, Dexterity, and Matic, the company is backed by investors who previously backed Brex, Figma, Notion, and Instacart. Destro recently closed its Seed round at one of the highest valuations for a robotics company at this stage and is already deploying in production with large enterprise operators.
You will be hired as a Founding Recruiter—one of the first ten employees—to build and run Destro's talent engine end-to-end. As the company scales from its founding team to 20–30 new hires annually (mostly engineers), you will own full-cycle recruiting with direct access to founders and no existing playbook. Recruiting is not a service function here; you will have a seat at the table, shape hiring strategy, and be expected to speak up.
Key Responsibilities:
Recruiting: Own full-cycle recruiting for engineering and technical roles, including robotics, software, systems, and field deployment engineers. Proactively identify and engage top talent across robotics, ML, systems, and infrastructure rather than waiting for applicants. Build talent heatmaps of companies, labs, and teams where the best robotics engineers sit to guide sourcing strategy. Source and close passive candidates through LinkedIn, GitHub, research networks, university labs, and referrals. Build long-term relationships with candidates not ready to move today. Partner with founders and hiring managers to define role scope, tradeoffs, and urgency. Design interview processes tailored to each role and talent market, and run structured interviewer calibration. Act as the expert on compensation and competitive positioning. Design bespoke closing strategies and tell the Destro story with clarity and conviction. Treat every candidate with care and respect, including those rejected. Manage offers, negotiations, and closing directly with founders.
Operations and Tools: Own and administer the hiring stack, including ATS (Breezy), sourcing tools, scheduling, and reporting. Build repeatable systems: job description templates, outreach sequences, interview scorecards, and pipeline dashboards. Evaluate and adopt AI-powered recruiting tools and automation workflows. Track hiring metrics such as time-to-fill, pipeline conversion, and source effectiveness. Support onboarding logistics and basic HR operations for new hires.
Most of your time goes to recruiting and headhunting. The rest supports the business side: keeping hiring and people tools running, handling basic HR operations, and helping the sales team with outreach and pipeline tracking.
Requirements:
4 to 8 years of full-cycle recruiting experience with a strong track record hiring engineers. Headhunting or agency background is a plus. Direct experience recruiting robotics, hardware, or deep-tech engineering talent, or the ability to quickly become credible with that community. Startup experience, comfortable being the only recruiter with no team or process handed to you. Proven ability to source and close passive candidates independently. Urgency: best candidates are rarely on the market and often gone within days, so you act fast. Resilience in a competitive, shifting talent market. Analytical and data-driven approach, backing recommendations with evidence. Process-minded: you have built tracking, templates, and pipelines. Genuinely curious about robotics and AI in the physical world. Direct, organized, and comfortable moving fast with founders.
Must-Have: Full-cycle recruiting experience including sourcing, screening, closing, and offer negotiation. Hands-on experience with an ATS (Breezy, Greenhouse, Lever, or similar) and LinkedIn Recruiter or equivalent sourcing tool. Experience hiring technical roles at a startup or high-growth company. Creative, structured sourcing approaches beyond job boards and InMail. Strong written communication for outreach and candidate-facing messaging.
Strongly Preferred: Experience recruiting for robotics, AI, or hardware companies. Prior experience as a first recruiter or Head of Talent. Experience with CRM or outreach tools such as Apollo, HubSpot, or Salesforce. Experience supporting sales or business operations. Familiarity with basic HR operations, onboarding, and payroll tools.
Nice to Have: Executive recruiting experience. Experience hiring across multiple US states. Experience with technical assessment design and structured interview scorecards. Existing network in the robotics, warehouse automation, or autonomy community.
