Director, Talent Acquisition

About the Role

Fieldguide is entering a rapid stage of growth where talent acquisition isn't a support function, it's a competitive advantage. Partnering closely with the Senior Director, People, you will scale a global recruiting function that supports rapid, high-quality growth from 150 to 600+ employees across engineering, go-to-market, and every function in between.

This role is both strategic and deeply hands-on. You will design scalable hiring systems from the ground up, support building an employer brand that resonates in the most competitive talent markets in the world, and develop a recruiting team that raises the bar on every hire. You will shape how we hire, who we hire, and how our culture shows up throughout the candidate experience.

This is a defining leadership role for someone who has built durable recruiting infrastructure at a high-growth AI or SaaS company, knows what great looks like across the full hiring lifecycle, and is energized by the challenge of making Fieldguide the most sought-after employer in the space. It sits at the intersection of hiring strategy, operational excellence, and AI-native execution.

What You'll Do
Team Leadership and Development

• Build, coach, and lead a high-performing, globally distributed talent acquisition team
• Create a culture of ownership, data-driven continuous improvement, and high standards across the recruiting function, balancing speed and quality as the company scales
• Act as a trusted advisor to founders, executives, and hiring managers, guiding hiring decisions and tradeoffs with sound judgment, market knowledge, and data
• Use AI to synthesize pipeline data, team performance signals, and market intelligence into clear leadership briefings, freeing your time and your team's time for the high-judgment work that shapes hiring outcomes

Employer Brand and Talent Marketing

• Contribute to the build of a compelling employer brand that clearly articulates Fieldguide's mission, culture, and value proposition to attract top talent in the most competitive markets in the world, starting with San Francisco and expanding globally
• Design candidate experiences that reflect who Fieldguide is: technically rigorous, values-driven, and genuinely differentiated from the AI companies candidates are comparing us to
• Partner with Marketing and People Ops to bring the Fieldguide story to life across channels, including LinkedIn, job boards, community events, campus programs, and more

Systems, Tooling, and AI-Powered Operations

• Continuously improve recruiting processes, tools, and vendor relationships to support growth and efficiency, with AI as a default accelerant, not an afterthought
• Partner with People Operations on live recruiting dashboards that give leaders real-time visibility into pipeline health, hiring velocity, offer conversion, and quality of hire, and use that data to make decisions fast
• Define and track meaningful recruiting metrics that surface bottlenecks, inform tradeoffs, and demonstrate the function's business impact
• Stay current on market trends, particularly in technical, AI, and hard-to-hire talent areas, and translate that intelligence into sourcing and positioning strategy

Your First Year
30 Days: Learn the terrain

• Develop a deep understanding of Fieldguide's business, product, culture, and competitive position in the talent market
• Build strong relationships with founders, executives, People Ops, Finance, and hiring managers
• Stabilize execution on open roles and immediate pipeline gaps so no hiring momentum is lost during the transition
• AI: Map 2-3 recruiting workflows where AI can meaningfully improve quality or throughput

30-60 Days: Start building

• Clarify team structure, responsibilities, and operating cadences, and partner with business leaders to sharpen hiring planning and intake
• Begin standardizing hiring practices and candidate experience across functions, and introduce early process or tooling improvements that reduce friction and increase predictability
• AI: Ship at least one repeatable AI-assisted recruiting workflow

60-90 Days: Drive impact

• Implement meaningful improvements to recruiting metrics, processes, and systems that measurably impact hiring speed and quality
• Align leaders on a scalable global hiring model and position talent acquisition as a proactive, strategic partner to the business
• Deliver a clear, data-backed talent acquisition roadmap aligned to business goals, covering near-term execution improvements and longer-term scale plans
• AI: Present your AI leverage map, what the function is using, what you've learned, and where you're taking it next

Ongoing

• Own the talent acquisition roadmap and continuously evolve it as the business scales
• Maintain operating credibility and trusted advisor status with founders and executive leadership on all things hiring
• Build Fieldguide's reputation as a destination employer in San Francisco and beyond
• Develop your team into the strongest recruiting organization in the industry

Who You Are

You're a senior talent leader who has built recruiting functions that become genuine competitive advantages, not just cost centers that fill seats. You know the difference between a hiring process that technically works and one that actually wins. And you've led your team to that higher bar.
Must-Haves

Recruiting Leadership at Scale: 10+ years of talent acquisition experience, including leading teams at high-growth AI or SaaS startups. You've scaled organizations from the early days to 600+ employees and built the infrastructure that made that growth possible without sacrificing quality.

Executive Influence: Proven ability to partner with and influence founders, executives, and senior leaders on hiring strategy and execution.

Global Hiring Expertise: Demonstrated success designing and executing end-to-end global recruiting strategies across geographies, time zones, and competitive labor markets. Bonus points for currently working in San Francisco.

Employer Brand Building: Experience building employer branding or talent marketing initiatives that moved the needle on candidate quality and offer acceptance. You understand that the brand you build in the market is a recruiting tool as much as any sourcing channel.

Team Development: Experience building, developing, and retaining high-performing talent acquisition teams, including developing people managers. You make your team better by design, not by accident.

Recruiting Systems and Tooling: Strong background in building scalable recruiting processes, AI tooling; hands-on experience with Ashby is a strong plus, as you know how to configure it to give hiring managers and leadership real visibility, not just recruiters.

International Expansion: Experience supporting new market entry and building recruiting infrastructure in regions new to the company.

AI-Native: AI is embedded in how you work, not something you use occasionally. You've built repeatable, AI-powered recruiting workflows with measurable impact in sourcing, screening, scheduling, market intelligence, or employer brand content. You critically evaluate what AI gets wrong, and you own the outcomes. You've also led your team's AI adoption: your team works differently because of you.

Comfortable with Ambiguity: You don't need a perfect brief to get started. You're energized by unclear problem spaces, make sound decisions with incomplete information, and create structure where none exists.

Adaptable: Fieldguide moves fast and priorities shift. You recalibrate quickly, bring others along without losing momentum, and treat pivots as information rather than setbacks.

Growth Mindset: You're motivated to get better at your craft, in recruiting, in leadership, and in how you leverage AI. You seek feedback, reflect honestly, and apply it.

Bias to Action: You launch, get feedback, and iterate. You create momentum and help others move faster too.
Bonus Points

• Experience hiring for technical AI/ML roles in a competitive San Francisco market
• Hands-on experience with AI sourcing or screening tools and a clear point of view on where they actually move the needle vs. add noise
• Experience using compensation benchmarking tools to build and defend offer strategies in competitive markets

Benefits

We offer competitive compensation and meaningful equity ownership because when Fieldguide wins, you win. Beyond that, we've built benefits around the idea that you do your best work when your life outside of work is taken care of: flexible PTO that people actually use, a 401(k), wellness support, and a technology and work-from-home reimbursement so your setup isn't a bottleneck.