Founding Recruiter, Series A, AI Scale-up in Slough

London | On-site (5 days per week) | Full-time

Salary £80,000 – £120,000 base +(£40,000 bonus OTE) + equity

The Opportunity:

This is a confidential opportunity to join a VC-backed AI business building something genuinely new - digitising critical workflows, data and decision-making across the physical world. The long-term vision is highly ambitious: to build a proprietary dataset that can help automate increasingly complex field-based work over time, including through AI, robotics and natural language interfaces. Backed by Index Ventures, the company has recently raised a major funding round and is scaling rapidly, with strong revenue growth, high customer expansion, and a global enterprise client base. With significant runway and ambitious growth plans, hiring is now one of the company’s most important strategic priorities.

As the Founding Recruiter, you will work directly with the founders to build the talent function from first principles. The immediate mandate is clear: hire exceptional engineers and commercially-minded deployment talent at pace, while creating the systems, processes and candidate experience that allow the business to scale without compromising on quality. This is not a pure process role. It is a hands-on, high-ownership opportunity for someone who wants to be close to the company-building journey - sourcing exceptional people, shaping the employer value proposition, raising the bar, and helping build the team that will define the next chapter of the business. Over time, this role has the potential to grow into a broader Talent and People leadership position as the company scales. This role is fully office-based, with a five-day-per-week presence in their London office. The team believes strongly in the pace, energy and camaraderie that comes from building together in person.

What you'll do:

• Build and own the hiring engine across engineering, deployment, product and GTM roles
• Partner directly with the founders on hiring strategy, prioritisation and execution
• Deliver against ambitious near-term hiring goals across technical and commercial functions
• Personally source, engage and close high-calibre passive candidates
• Shape a compelling employer value proposition for candidates choosing between top-tier AI startups
• Design and improve interview processes, scorecards, feedback loops and hiring decision frameworks
• Own hiring metrics including time-to-hire, conversion rates, source quality and candidate experience
• Maintain a fast, thoughtful and high-touch candidate journey from first contact to close
• Build long-term talent pipelines ahead of future hiring demand
• Help embed a consistently high bar for talent across the organisation
• Contribute to early people foundations, including onboarding, salary bands and evaluation processes as the company scales

You will bring:

• 5+ years’ experience hiring technical talent, particularly engineers
• Experience in early-stage or high-growth startup environments
• Strong direct sourcing capability and confidence engaging top passive talent
• A track record of hiring high-calibre candidates in competitive markets
• Strong judgement on technical quality, motivation, culture fit and growth potential
• Experience building or improving hiring processes from an early-stage foundation
• A hands-on mindset, with the appetite to source directly and operate at pace
• Strong founder partnership skills and confidence working with senior stakeholders
• A clear view on how Talent should evolve in an AI-first company
• High ownership, urgency and ambition, with the desire to grow into a broader leadership role

We recognise how challenging this current job market is for candidates, and Hawkwood are therefore striving to provide the best candidate experience we can. If you are interested in this opportunity, we kindly request that you apply via this LinkedIn advert, as opposed to sending us an email or LinkedIn direct message. We are eager to ensure that each candidate application is considered fairly, and receives a consistent experience. Unfortunately, we cannot ensure this standard if you inquire about a role via email or LinkedIn message, as it falls outside of our established process.