About Inworld
Inworld is a research lab and inference provider focused on realtime AI for consumer-facing applications. We build first-party speech models, serve LLMs, and run the inference behind modular APIs designed for high-volume, realtime workloads.
Hundreds of millions of users interact with Inworld powered apps every day and we serve over 10 trillion LLM tokens per month. Our models and infrastructure support consumer applications across companions, healthcare, fitness, education, media, and more. Our work spans model research, realtime inference, large-scale serving infrastructure, and the APIs developers use to bring these capabilities into production.
We’ve raised more than $125M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Section 32, Kleiner Perkins, Microsoft’s M12 venture fund, Founders Fund, Meta, Stanford, and others. Our technology has powered experiences from companies including NVIDIA, Microsoft Xbox, Niantic, Logitech Streamlabs, Wishroll, Little Umbrella, and Bible Chat. Inworld has also been recognized by CB Insights as one of the 100 most promising AI companies globally and named one of LinkedIn’s Top 10 Startups in the USA.
We are looking for a Recruiting Lead to fuel our growth with extraordinary talent. This is a senior, high-ownership role: you'll act as a true talent partner to our founders and leadership across engineering, research, and business hiring as we scale. You'll own searches end to end, raise the bar on how we hire, and help shape the recruiting function itself.
What you'll be doing
Own our most critical and senior searches end to end, operating as an executive search partner to our founders, from talent strategy and market mapping through offer and close
Act as a strategic advisor to hiring managers and leadership: shape role definitions, calibrate expectations, and design search strategies and execute them
Build deep pipelines of exceptional AI, engineering, research, and business talent through creative sourcing and long-term relationship building with passive candidates
Use data to drive decisions, track funnel health, diagnose bottlenecks, and report on hiring progress with rigor
Apply AI to recruiting: use assistants like Claude and AI-native sourcing and automation tools to automate workflows and build tooling that makes the whole team faster, while keeping candidate touchpoint personal and high-touch
Elevate our recruiting practice: improve processes, sharpen interviewer quality, ensure an exceptional candidate experience, and mentor others on the team
Represent Inworld in the market as a compelling, credible ambassador for our mission and culture
What you'll bring
8+ years of full-cycle technical recruiting experience, including several years supporting senior and hard-to-fill technical roles
Deep understanding of technical roles, experience hiring in AI/ML, infrastructure, or research environments strongly preferred
Versatility to run GTM, marketing, or business searches alongside your core technical focus
A track record of closing exceptional senior talent in highly competitive markets
Fluency with recruiting data, you use metrics to drive strategy, influence stakeholders, and hold searches accountable
A builder's mindset, you love creating tools, automation, and processes, you prototype fast and improve as you go
Hands-on fluency with AI assistants, you already use them daily, and you're always finding new ways to work smarter while maintaining a human-centered approach
Proficiency with a modern AI-native recruiting stack
Experience partnering directly with executives and hiring managers as a trusted advisor
Experience in retained executive search, or as a strategic search partner to founders and executives, is a strong plus
You're a fit for our team if
You operate with high ownership, you don't wait for direction, you set it
You thrive in a fast-moving startup environment and stay effective amid ambiguity and shifting priorities
You love optimizing workflows and constantly look for ways to improve how the team works
You hold a high bar, for candidates, for process quality, and for yourself
You're organized, prioritize ruthlessly, and communicate clearly with stakeholders at every level
The base salary range for this full-time position is $160,000 - $260,000 + bonus + equity + benefits. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location, level, and additional factors, including competencies, experience, and business needs. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.
Inworld Jobs Privacy
Skills Required
- 8+ years of full-cycle technical recruiting experience, including senior and hard-to-fill roles
- Deep understanding of technical roles; experience hiring in AI/ML, infrastructure, or research environments
- Versatility to run GTM, marketing, or business searches alongside technical focus
- Track record of closing exceptional senior talent in highly competitive markets
- Fluency with recruiting data and use of metrics to drive strategy and hold searches accountable
- Builder's mindset: create tools, automation, and processes; prototype and iterate
- Hands-on fluency with AI assistants (e.g., Claude) and daily use of AI tools
- Proficiency with a modern AI-native recruiting stack
- Experience partnering directly with executives and hiring managers as a trusted advisor
- Experience in retained executive search or strategic search partnership to founders/executives
What We Do
Inworld AI is a realtime voice AI research lab and platform. It builds the voice layer for consumer AI, the speech that powers companions, tutors, coaches, customer-service agents, and creative and content applications. Inworld's flagship product is text-to-speech, top-ranked on the independent Artificial Analysis Speech Arena, and around it the company offers a full realtime voice stack. That stack includes text-to-speech (Realtime TTS-2, with over 100 languages and natural-language voice steering), speech-to-text, and an LLM router that reaches 200+ models from every major provider with no markup. Developers can call any product on its own, for example Realtime TTS through a single API call, or combine speech-to-text, an LLM, and text-to-speech into one live conversation through the Realtime API. Dedicated GPUs are available for the largest workloads. Inworld serves developers and founders building consumer AI products. As voice quality becomes commoditized, the company's focus is realtime conversation at scale: voice agents that respond in roughly 200 milliseconds for thousands of simultaneous users, at a cost that stays efficient as usage grows. Inworld is a product-oriented research lab. Its founding team pioneered conversational AI and generative models at API.AI (acquired by Google and renamed Dialogflow), Google, and DeepMind, with expertise spanning language models, speech synthesis, multimodal interaction, and design. Inworld has raised more than $125M from investors including Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, CRV, Intel Capital, BITKRAFT Ventures, Section 32, Meta, Microsoft's M12, and LG Technology Ventures. The company was one of six selected for the 2022 Disney Accelerator.
