Coastal OS

Careers

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Coastal OSCareersYour next chapter, with Coastal

Coastal careers · Join our team

Your next chapter.
Our shared future.

Build a recruiting desk, lead a team, or shape a practice. Help exceptional people find the companies they will change.

Remote (US)Full time

Boutique by design. Ambitious by nature.

Coastal Recruiting is a tech-enabled search firm placing top engineering and GTM talent at the hottest VC-backed AI companies in SF, NY and remote. We work with 100+ Tier 1 venture-backed companies, from Seed to Series C, and we are built on relationships: founders trust us to move fast, and candidates trust us to tell them the truth.

Find your lane

Four practices. A world of opportunity.

Explore each recruiting track, from hands-on searches to practice leadership.

Recruiting — Engineering

Principal / Director / VP, based on experience

Recruit the engineers who build the hottest AI companies: infra, ML research, backend, full-stack, forward deployed. You will work directly with founders and heads of engineering, assess technical depth yourself, and turn a hot market into placements.

What you will do

  • Run full-cycle engineering searches for Tier 1 VC-backed clients, from intake and calibration to offer close.
  • Source with LinkedIn, Gem and Juicebox agents, then personalize outreach at volume. Strong recruiters here send hundreds of tailored messages a week.
  • Screen candidates on real technical signal: scale, slope, stack, and what they actually shipped. Know the difference between a Staff engineer and a title.
  • Write sharp submissions to clients, and adapt to each client's bar (for example S-tier only, or talent-dense backgrounds).
  • Cross-match candidates to other clients so no strong engineer is only sent once.
  • Coach clients on process: fast loops, founder involvement, and how to sell against bigger offers.

What we are looking for

  • Recruiting experience in the VC-backed startup world, Seed through Series C, with engineering and AI/ML a clear focus.
  • Proven placements of senior, Staff and research-level engineers.
  • High EQ. This job is 50% judgment and 50% relationships.
  • Comfortable with volume: daily outreach, daily calls, daily submissions.
  • For Director and VP: experience coaching or leading recruiters.

Nice to have

  • Agency or in-house recruiting at a high-growth startup
  • Technical background, ML or infra fluency
  • A network of engineering leaders in SF or NYC

Room to grow. Space to lead.

Three levels, based on experience. Annual on-target earnings (OTE).

Own your desk

Principal

$400K+ OTE

Owns a personal desk of engineering searches. Sets the bar on quality in their lane, with a steady stream of submissions and placements.

Lead your team

Director

$600K+ OTE

Everything a Principal does, plus owns a client portfolio and a small team. Runs calibration with founders, coaches recruiters weekly, and is accountable for pipeline and placements across the Engineering desk.

Build your practice

VP

$1M+ OTE

Owns the Engineering practice. Builds the recruiting team, defines the playbook, and leads client strategy with the founders. Works directly with Founders on hiring, comp structure and growth.

Base salary plus commission on every placement you make. Specifics depend on experience and are discussed in the first conversation. OTE is a target, not guaranteed salary.

The Coastal way

Independent ownership.
One connected team.

Own your searches

Whoever submits a candidate owns them and the credit. You run your own searches end to end.

Founder-level calibration

Each client gets a real intake: what they approve, what they reject, what wins their candidates. The client's Slack channel tells us more than the JD does.

Fast, honest submissions

Strong profiles, clear write-ups (stack, comp, location, motivations), and a point of view on fit. We would rather send three great candidates than ten maybes.

Real calls, real notes

Every candidate gets a call, and the notes go into Metaview and Gem so the whole team can use them.

One team, shared pipeline

Cross-submitting candidates to other clients is how we win, and our matching tools surface options daily.

Sell all the way through

Three fast steps, founder time, a coffee instead of another round. We coach clients to run that process and we close candidates who hold multiple offers.

A conversation, not a complicated application

Tell us about your best search.

Send your LinkedIn and one line on the best search you have ever closed to the Coastal team.

Role level and compensation details are discussed in the first conversation.