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Head of Talent

Rhoda AI

Rhoda AI

People & HR
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Posted on Mar 17, 2026

Location

Palo Alto

Employment Type

Full time

Department

Business

At Rhoda AI, we're building the full-stack foundation for the next generation of humanoid robots — from high-performance, software-defined hardware to the foundational models and video world models that control it. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling scenarios unseen in training. We work at the intersection of large-scale learning, robotics, and systems, with a research team that includes researchers from Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and beyond. We're not building a feature; we're building a new computing platform for physical work — and with over $400M raised, we're investing aggressively in the R&D, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make that a reality.

What You'll Do

Own the Recruiting Function

  • Lead end-to-end hiring across research, engineering, hardware, and operations

  • Manage and develop a small team of recruiters as the company scales

  • Build and maintain a high-quality candidate pipeline with rigorous bar-raising standards

  • Own offer strategy, closing, and candidate experience from first touch to day one

Compete for Top Research Talent

  • Develop and execute a talent strategy specifically targeting PhD researchers and ML scientists in robotics, CV, and foundation models

  • Design and host events — PhD mixers, research talks, lab visits — that position Rhoda as a destination for frontier researchers

  • Build relationships with top academic programs at Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, MIT, and others

  • Partner with research leadership to articulate what makes Rhoda's research environment compelling and differentiated

Drive Quality and Standards

  • Define and maintain a consistent hiring bar across all roles and functions

  • Build structured interview processes, rubrics, and feedback loops that reduce bias and improve signal

  • Serve as a quality check on candidates — pressure-test assessments and push back when the bar isn't met

  • Establish recruiting metrics and reporting to give leadership clear visibility into pipeline health and hiring velocity

Build the Employer Brand

  • Craft a compelling narrative about why top talent should choose Rhoda

  • Partner with marketing and leadership on presence at key conferences (NeurIPS, ICRA, RSS, CoRL, etc.)

  • Develop content and outreach strategies that make Rhoda visible and attractive to passive candidates

Leverage AI to Move Faster

  • Use AI-powered sourcing tools to identify and engage passive candidates at scale

  • Automate repetitive recruiting workflows — screening, scheduling, follow-ups, pipeline reporting — to free up time for high-signal human interactions

  • Build AI-assisted outreach sequences that feel personal, not automated

  • Continuously evaluate and adopt new tools that improve recruiter efficiency and candidate quality

  • Use data and AI-generated insights to identify pipeline gaps, drop-off points, and sourcing channel performance

  • Treat your recruiting stack as a product — always iterating, always optimizing

Build the Function

  • Inherit a lite foundation (Ashby) and build on top of it — this is a molding role, not a maintenance role

  • Establish recruiting processes, tooling, and workflows with an automation-first mindset

  • Create onboarding frameworks that set new hires up for success

  • Hire and develop the talent team as headcount grows

What We're Looking For

  • 6–10+ years of experience in technical recruiting or talent leadership, with at least 2 years managing a team

  • Proven track record hiring world-class engineers and researchers in AI, ML, or robotics

  • Deep understanding of what top research talent cares about and how to speak their language

  • Operationally strong — you can run a tight process while keeping the candidate experience warm and genuine

  • Fluent with modern recruiting tools and AI-powered workflows; you're always looking for leverage

  • Entrepreneurial and agency-driven — you'll be building process, not following it, and you own your outcomes

  • Natural curiosity about technology; comfortable spending time with engineers and researchers and genuinely interested in what they're building

  • Creative and competitive — you have a point of view on how a Series A startup wins against the best-resourced organizations in the world

Nice to Have (But Not Required)

  • Experience recruiting PhDs or researchers from top academic programs

  • Existing network in the robotics, CV, or foundation model research community

  • Experience at a high-growth hardware or deep-tech startup

  • Familiarity with the humanoid robotics or embodied AI landscape

Why This Role

  • The intelligence of our robots is a direct function of the people we hire — this role sits at the center of that

  • Rare opportunity to build a talent function from scratch at a well-funded, technically ambitious company at the intersection of physical AI and humanoid robotics

  • Every great hire you make compounds — you'll see your work come alive in the researchers and engineers building the next generation of humanoid robots