Founding Recruiter & People Operations
At Orchard, we’re securing America’s food supply by building the AI Farmer that automates our nation’s farms. We are the industry leader, growing rapidly, and backed by more than $25 million from leading investors, including Quiet Capital, Shine Capital, and General Catalyst.
Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars in crop value are lost because critical farming decisions are made using incomplete and imprecise data. We’re building the technology to change that.
Our AI-powered camera systems mount to tractors and scan millions of trees, vines, and plants, capturing precise data on yield estimates, fruit size, crop health, disease, and more. We train edge vision AI models that analyze every plant and determine exactly what interventions and treatments it needs. That intelligence flows into FruitScope OS, our farm-management platform, where growers can understand their crops, make better decisions, and direct operations in the field.
Today, Orchard’s technology is trusted by some of our nation’s largest farms. They use our products to grow higher-quality crops while reducing chemical use and operating costs, helping them farm more profitably and sustainably than ever before.
Our Culture:
Unshakeable Resilience – Our customers feed millions of people, and our customers depend on us. We are ultra-hardworking, never give up, and we do whatever it takes.
Always Keep Moving – We move fast, waste no time, and have an extreme bias towards action. Progress compounds every day, and our impact is measured in decades.
Improve Everything – At 1% success, we save millions of pounds of food from going to waste. If we are 100% successful we will impact the lives of billions of people across the world.
Farmers First – Every team member spends at least a few days in the fields with our farmers each month.
No Job Beneath Us – We’re low ego, own every outcome, and are all working towards the same goal.
The Role:
Orchard is entering its most ambitious period of growth yet. The quality and pace of our hiring will determine how quickly we can serve more farmers, and the systems we build now will shape the company for years.
You will be Orchard’s first dedicated recruiting and people hire. Reporting directly to our CEO, you will personally recruit critical hires while building a durable talent engine: sourcing, interview design, closing, onboarding, HR systems, benefits, compliance, and culture.
This is a builder role. You will spend roughly 2/3-rds of your time recruiting and 1/3-rd building and running our internal people operations. You should be equally comfortable sourcing an exceptional engineer, improving an onboarding process, handling a benefits question in our HRIS, and preparing Orchard for our next stage of growth.
What You’ll Own
Lead full-cycle recruiting for critical technical and operations roles.
Build repeatable sourcing channels and an exceptional recruiting brand.
Create and own an exceptional candidate experience.
Partner with leaders to define roles precisely, calibrate talent bars, move candidates quickly, and close exceptional hires.
Own the employee lifecycle, including new hire onboarding, HRIS, benefits, leave administration, and day-to-day people operations.
Maintain practical, compliant employment policies.
Protect and strengthen Orchard’s culture as the company scales.
What We Look For
3-7+ years of experience recruiting, with real ownership in a fast-growing startup or high-performance environment.
A track record of personally recruiting and closing exceptional technical talent.
Experience helping an organization scale from 10's of employees to 100+.
Strong sourcing instincts and the creativity to reach candidates who are not actively applying.
Strong operating rigor across recruiting funnels, headcount plans, and people systems.
Comfort owning all processes around creating a stellar work environment for our team.
Hands-on experience with HRIS, benefits, onboarding, and other core people operations.
About the Opportunity
Full-time role, five days a week at our San Francisco office.
Medical, dental, and vision coverage with 100% of employee premiums covered.
The opportunity to build Orchard’s Recruiting and People function from the ground up.
Our team is close-knit and highly driven. You’ll work directly with our CEO and every functional leader.
We move fast, and sometimes this means staying late or working weekends.
We’re deeply motivated by the impact we’re making – every system we build and deploy means less food that goes to waste, and more people who are fed.
As published by ashby
Name, Email, Resume
- Current Location
- LinkedIn Profile URL
- Current/Most Recent Company Name
- Current/Most Recent Job Title
- Work Authorization choose one
- Tell us about the most exceptional work you have done written answer
- How many hires have you personally sourced, recruited, and closed in the last 12 months? Tell us about the candidate you were the most proud of closing and why. written answer
- Who are two founders / company leaders you look up to the most in terms of their ability to recruit exceptional talent, and why? written answer
- Describe a real part of your work where AI changed your process. How did you make use of it, and where did you still have to do the work yourself? written answer
- Why do you want to work at Orchard? What excites you most about us and this role? written answer
- How would you pitch joining Orchard in 3-4 sentences to a prospective Robotics Software Engineer candidate who is looking for a new role? written answer
- This role may involve a few days of travel each month (1-2 hour drives) to our customer farms, where you meet our farmers and see our technology in action. Is this something you are comfortable with? yes / no
- What is your timeline for starting a new job? choose one
- We work 5 days a week in office. Are you currently located near our SF office (or are willing to relocate or commute)? choose one
- What is your favorite fruit?
- Decode the following text, find the answer, and type it below: aHR0cHM6Ly9kb2NzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20vZG9jdW1lbnQvZC8xZ2dyNzFVQzktem1hWjVnVWphV0F0bUZIVmR3NERyQ28xZm02RFh4QVJWSS9lZGl0P3VzcD1zaGFyaW5n