Coastal OS

Careers

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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.

Values

The Coastal Values

  1. Win together.

    Winning together > winning alone. Play as a team.

  2. Integrity.

    Do the right thing when nobody is watching. Be honest with clients, teammates, leadership, and yourself. Keep your word, protect your reputation, and never compromise trust for a short-term win.

  3. Stay curious.

    Seek to understand, we’ll never know it all. Obsession always wins in the long run.

  4. Short memory, long game.

    Loosen the grip. This is supposed to be fun. Next one up mindset.

  5. Celebrate loudly.

    Big wins, small wins, and everything in between.

  6. Don't need to be right, want to win.

    Own the mistake, learn from the rep, go again.

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).

Principal

$350K+ OTE

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

Director

$500K+ OTE

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

VP

$750K+ OTE

Everything a Director does, plus owning a pod of recruiters. Works directly with founders, practice leads and pod leads on strategy, from clients and candidates to hiring and strategic initiatives.

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.