Founding Recruiter
About the role
About Feanix Bio
Feanix is rebuilding animal breeding from the genome up.
We’re a YC-backed startup using whole-genome sequencing and custom ML models to help dairy farmers make better breeding and herd management decisions. Our technology is genuinely novel: we can sequence a full genome from a single hair at a fraction of traditional industry costs, our models achieve ~90% prediction accuracy on traits where existing approaches sit closer to ~30%, and we’re pioneering farm-specific genomic predictions that turn genetics into practical, actionable decisions.
That technology is translating into real adoption. In a short time, we’ve grown to serve roughly 1% of the U.S. dairy industry — and reached $10M+ in ARR, with significant demand still ahead of us. We’re backed by Initialized Capital, General Catalyst, Collaborative Fund, Overwater Ventures, North South Ventures, and Y Combinator.
We started with dairy because our founders grew up on dairy farms and understand firsthand the problems we’re solving. But genetics is foundational to every agricultural industry, and dairy is only the beginning.
We’re building Feanix with a small, high-caliber team where people have meaningful ownership and work end to end. There are no unnecessary layers and very little room for busywork — just difficult problems at the intersection of biology, data, and software that haven’t been solved before.
If you’re exceptional at what you do and want your work to have a measurable impact on an entire industry, we’d love to build it with you.
About the Role
We’re looking for our first internal Founding Recruiter to help us build the team that will take Feanix through its next stage of growth.
This is a broad, high-ownership recruiting role. You’ll own searches across engineering, product, revenue, customer success, lab/scientific, and operations, from individual contributors through senior leadership.
We aren't looking for someone who simply manages open requisitions and inbound applicants. We need someone who can take a difficult hiring problem, figure out what exceptional looks like, find those people, engage them, and help us close them.
You’ll work directly with founders and hiring managers to define roles, build candidate profiles, develop sourcing strategies, run searches, and continuously improve how we hire.
What You’ll Do
- Own full-cycle recruiting across technical and non-technical roles, from initial role definition through accepted offer
- Proactively source and engage exceptional candidates rather than relying primarily on inbound applicants
- Recruit across engineering, product, revenue, customer/farm success, lab/scientific, and operations roles
- Lead searches ranging from individual contributors to senior leaders
- Partner closely with founders and hiring managers to define role scope, level, requirements, and what great looks like before launching a search
- Build creative sourcing strategies for difficult-to-find and highly specialized talent
- Identify strong candidates from adjacent industries whose skills translate to the problems we're solving
- Translate complex or unconventional roles into compelling candidate narratives
- Build and maintain strong pipelines for both immediate and anticipated hiring needs
- Own candidate engagement and experience from first outreach through offer and close
- Advise leadership on talent markets, compensation, candidate availability, and hiring strategy
- Help create structured interview processes, scorecards, and evaluation criteria
- Own recruiting operations and ensure searches move quickly and candidates don't get lost in the process
- Track pipeline health, conversion rates, sourcing effectiveness, time-to-hire, and other recruiting metrics
- Improve our recruiting systems and processes as we scale without adding unnecessary bureaucracy
- Help build Feanix's employer brand and tell our story to candidates who may have never considered working in agriculture
What We’re Looking For
- 4+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with meaningful in-house recruiting experience preferred
- Experience recruiting in an early-stage startup environment, ideally Seed through Series A
- Proven ability to recruit across multiple functions rather than exclusively within one specialty
- Strong experience recruiting software engineers and other highly technical talent
- Demonstrated success proactively sourcing and engaging high-quality passive candidates
- Experience recruiting senior individual contributors, managers, and functional leaders
- Ability to quickly understand unfamiliar, complex, or highly specialized roles
- Strong judgment about candidate quality and the ability to distinguish an impressive résumé from genuine fit
- Ability to turn ambiguous hiring needs into clear candidate profiles and actionable searches
- Comfortable challenging assumptions and advising hiring managers when requirements, compensation, or search strategy need to change
- Strong candidate communication, relationship-building, and closing skills
- Highly organized with excellent attention to detail and follow-through
- Comfortable managing multiple searches with very different candidate profiles and priorities
- Able to operate effectively in a fast-moving environment where priorities and hiring needs can change quickly
Nice to Have
- Experience hiring for AI/ML, data, biotech, scientific, hardware, agriculture, or similarly specialized industries
- Experience recruiting candidates into industries or problem spaces they hadn't previously considered
- Experience partnering directly with founders and executives on critical hires
- Experience with Greenhouse and LinkedIn Recruiter
The Recruiting Environment
Our hiring needs are unusually broad for a company our size.
At any given time, you might be searching for a senior software engineer, an engineering manager, a product leader, a revenue executive, a scientist, or an operations hire working directly with dairy farms.
Many of our best candidates won't come from agriculture. Part of your job will be finding exceptional people in adjacent industries, understanding how their experience translates to our problems, and getting them excited about applying it here.
You also won't always be handed a perfectly defined requisition. You'll be expected to work with hiring managers to clarify what they actually need, identify the most important qualifications, and build a search strategy that gets us there.
Why This Role Matters
Hiring is one of the most important things we'll do as Feanix grows.
As our first internal recruiter, you'll have significant ownership over not only who joins Feanix, but how we hire. You'll work directly with leadership, influence the shape of the organization, and build a recruiting function that can scale with the company.
Compensation and Benefits
Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship or transfers at this time.
Actual starting pay for this role is determined by a variety of factors including but not limited to qualifications, experience, relevant skills, education, and geographic location. Employees are offered a variety of benefits to empower them with the resources and flexibility they need to enjoy success on the job and to live a healthy life.
We offer a flexible, remote-friendly work environment for most roles, along with a growing benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision coverage; retirement savings support through CalSavers for California-based employees; flexible paid time off; and paid parental leave, including up to four weeks of paid leave and/or supplemental pay coordination with applicable state benefits.
Pay Transparency$120,000—$150,000 USDApplicants must be authorized to work in the United States. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship or transfers at this time.
Compensation is based on factors including experience, skills, qualifications, and location. Benefits include equity options, medical, dental, and vision coverage; 401(k); flexible PTO; paid parental leave; and pet insurance.
Feanix Biotechnologies is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on any characteristic protected by applicable law. Reasonable accommodations are available throughout the application and interview process.
By applying, you consent to Feanix Biotechnologies processing your personal information for recruitment purposes in accordance with applicable privacy laws.
