Principal Recruiter

Role Overview

The Principal Recruiter will specialize in managing the most challenging hiring requisitions that have defied conventional recruitment efforts. You will independently handle searches requiring rare skill combinations, working with highly demanding executive stakeholders who may have lost confidence in traditional skills-first hiring processes.

Main Responsibilities

• Successfully close difficult job searches involving limited talent availability, process exceptions, or conflicting stakeholder demands.
• Facilitate alignment among senior executives to unify differing hiring criteria and rebuild trust where it has been lost, while maintaining thorough documentation.
• Improve recruitment processes by addressing flaws in assessments, updating AI evaluation mechanisms, and refining job postings to attract the right candidates.
• Create rapid, practical solutions using AI tools such as Claude Code, Skills, Lovable, and MCPs; escalate broadly applicable fixes to engineering for formal deployment.
• Provide executives with timely pipeline insights, salary comparisons, and market sizing analyses to inform strategic decisions on the same day these are requested.
• Resolve ambiguous inquiries by identifying candidates and maintaining accountability for all outstanding commitments during the hiring process.

Responsibilities Excluded

• You will not be responsible for screening resumes or conducting initial candidate interviews.
• Proactively update stakeholders without awaiting their requests.
• Manage teams, conduct performance evaluations, or oversee headcount.
• Repeat the same recruitment workarounds for each new opening.
• Approve hiring requests that pose compliance or risk issues without challenge.
• Operate under close supervision or follow detailed step-by-step instructions.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• At least eight years of experience in recruiting, talent acquisition, or executive search, with a strong focus on difficult-to-fill or executive-level searches.
• A consistent track record of independently managing challenging searches from intake to completion.
• Demonstrated success in filling roles which previous recruiters or agencies failed to close, creating original strategies rather than relying on preset playbooks.
• Experience working closely with executive decision makers, confidently defending hiring decisions with documented evidence when disagreements arise.
• Designing or revising recruitment assessments grounded in candidate outcome data rather than merely administering existing tests.
• Regular daily use of AI-powered recruitment tools, including building custom solutions using Claude Code, low-code platforms, or automated workflows.
• Experience delivering compensation benchmarking and market sizing reports directly to executives.
• Personal accountability for identifying legal hiring compliance risks in the US such as pay bands, worker classification, or pay transparency.
• Contribution of written process materials (SOPs, documentation, post-mortems) utilized by others.
• Availability for a minimum of 6 hours per weekday overlapping with US business hours.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience iteratively improving recruitment systems based on performance or retention metrics rather than single-round implementations.
• Background in talent acquisition or executive search within private equity, venture-backed companies, or multi-business holdings.
• Recognition as the go-to recruiter for escalated, difficult searches within an organization.

About the Employer

A long-established pioneer in remote work since 2014, the company offers full-time, permanent remote roles. Their hiring process emphasizes objective skills assessments that form 90% of the decision-making criteria. Remote employees can work from anywhere while receiving standardized, competitive salaries.

Additional Terms

• This is a full-time position requiring 40 hours per week and commitment to an independent contractor agreement.
• Compensation is $100 USD per hour, totaling approximately $200,000 USD annually based on 50 working weeks per year.
• Payments are issued weekly.