ABOUT SLATE
At Slate, we’re building safe, reliable vehicles that people can afford, personalize and love—and doing it here in the USA as part of our commitment to reindustrialization. The spirit of DIY and customization runs throughout every element of a Slate, because people should have control over how their trucks look, feel, and represent them.
Who We Are Looking For
As a Sr. Talent Acquisition Partner, you will be responsible for identifying, attracting, and hiring top-tier technical talent for Slate's Technology organization to support our company's growth and innovation. You will serve as a true talent advisor — one who brings deep fluency in modern software development disciplines, from frontend and backend engineering to UX/UI design — enabling you to engage authentically with both candidates and hiring teams at a technical level. You will partner closely with Engineering and Product leadership to understand staffing demand signals from production environments and translate them into hiring strategies that move with urgency and precision. Beyond sourcing and selection, you will own the accountability framework for interview teams, driving structured, consistent evaluation processes that keep quality high and time-to-fill aligned with the pace of business need. **This position will be located in Seattle, WA**
What You Get To Do
Strategic Partnership & Technical Fluency
- Conduct deep-dive intake meetings with hiring managers across Engineering, Product, and Design to align on role requirements, technical scope, team context, and hiring timelines, going beyond job descriptions to understand the actual architecture, tools, and problems the candidate will be hired to solve.
- Demonstrate working knowledge of the full software development lifecycle (SDLC), including frontend frameworks (React, TypeScript, Next.js), backend systems (Node.js, Python, Java, REST/GraphQL APIs), cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP), and UX/UI design principles, enabling you to evaluate candidate profiles with genuine technical discernment.
- Partner with Engineering leads to understand production demands, sprint cadences, and team capacity gaps, using that context to establish hiring timelines that reflect real-world urgency rather than arbitrary benchmarks.
- Stay current on evolving tech stacks, architectural patterns, and emerging tools across frontend, backend, and design disciplines so you can credibly represent roles to senior technical candidates and assess fit beyond surface-level keywords.
Interview Team Accountability & Process Integrity
- Build and enforce a structured interview accountability framework across all hiring teams, defining clear roles, evaluation criteria, and feedback SLAs for every interviewer involved in a loop.
- Hold hiring managers and interview panels accountable to timely, calibrated, and bias-aware feedback, using data and direct conversation to address delays or inconsistencies that create bottlenecks or risk losing top candidates.
- Facilitate post-interview debrief sessions that drive decisive, structured decision-making, ensuring panels assess candidates against agreed-upon technical and behavioral competencies rather than gut instinct or unstructured impressions.
- Proactively identify when interview panel composition, question quality, or evaluation rigor is creating false negatives on strong candidates, and implement corrective calibration sessions to sharpen team judgment.
- Champion a hiring culture that balances speed with quality, setting expectations with stakeholders that velocity should never come at the cost of bar, while also ensuring that perfect does not become the enemy of good when production needs are pressing.
Sourcing, Recruiting & Candidate Experience
- Develop and execute multi-channel recruitment strategies to identify and attract qualified candidates through job boards, social media, professional networks, employee referrals, and targeted outreach.
- Utilize modern sourcing technologies, AI-enabled recruiting tools, CRM platforms, and talent intelligence solutions to identify and engage passive candidates, particularly senior engineers, UX leads, and full-stack developers who are not actively on the market.
- Conduct thorough interviews - both technical screening and behavioral - to assess candidates' qualifications, architectural thinking, design sensibility, and cultural alignment, and synthesize findings into clear hire/no-hire recommendations.
- Build and maintain a living pipeline of passive prospects and warm leads across frontend, backend, and UX disciplines so that when headcount opens, time-to-pipeline is measured in days, not weeks.
- Deliver an exceptional candidate experience by ensuring transparent communication, timely feedback, and a process that reflects the technical credibility of the team they are joining.
Operations & Metrics
- Manage the ATS end-to-end, including job postings, candidate tracking, pipeline reporting, and data hygiene, with required proficiency in Workday.
- Monitor and report on Talent Acquisition KPIs including time-to-fill, time-to-offer, pipeline conversion rates, offer acceptance rates, and interview-to-hire ratios — using data to surface inefficiencies and drive continuous process improvement.
- Identify and escalate patterns where demand is outpacing pipeline capacity, and work with leadership to adjust sourcing investment, scope, or timeline expectations accordingly.
- Foster engagement with a diverse talent pool, leveraging inclusive sourcing strategies and structured evaluation practices that expand the quality of the candidate slate.
What You Bring to the Team
- Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, or a related field.
- 10+ years of recruiting and sourcing experience with a strong focus on high-volume technical hiring for e-commerce and software product companies, spanning Software Engineering (frontend, backend, mobile, full-stack), Technical Product Management, Data Science, UX/UI Design, and Systems Engineering across multiple seniority levels.
- Demonstrable technical literacy across modern software development stacks, including but not limited to React, TypeScript, Node.js, Python, Java, REST/GraphQL APIs, AWS, Salesforce, and UX/UI design systems — sufficient to engage meaningfully with engineers and evaluate candidate profiles with real judgment.
- Proven track record of building and enforcing interview accountability structures that improve panel consistency, reduce time-to-decision, and protect hiring quality under production pressure.
- Demonstrated ability to align hiring pace with engineering demand signals — balancing urgency with rigor and managing stakeholder expectations across both dimensions.
- 5+ years of advanced sourcing with LinkedIn Recruiter; familiarity with additional sourcing and talent intelligence platforms strongly preferred.
- Proficiency with Workday ATS required; experience with additional recruiting technology, AI sourcing tools, and CRM platforms strongly preferred.
- Exceptional interpersonal, communication, and influence skills, with a track record of holding hiring teams accountable without damaging the partnership.
- Ability to manage multiple competing priorities simultaneously in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.
- Knowledge of employment laws and regulations.
SALARY RANGE
The compensation for this position is the range Slate reasonably and in good faith expects to pay for the position taking into account the wide variety of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including job-related knowledge; skillset; experience, education and training; certifications; work location; and other relevant business and organizational factors.
Annual Base Pay Range: $105,875 to $158,813 USD
ADDITIONAL COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS
Slate offers a wide range of competitive benefits, including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability insurance, vacation, and 401k. The successful candidate may also be eligible to participate in the equity program and/or a discretionary annual incentive program, subject to the rules governing such programs.
WORK AUTHORIZATION REQUIREMENT
Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a permanent basis. We are unable to offer visa sponsorship at this time.
WHY JOIN TEAM SLATE?
At Slate, we’re fueled by grit, determination, and attention to detail. The start-up spirit of ingenuity and resourcefulness move our business forward. Team Slate fosters a culture of excellence, innovation, and mutual respect, and is motivated by shared principles.
WE WANT TO WORK WITH PEOPLE THAT REFLECT THE COMMUNITIES IN WHICH WE OPERATE.
Slate is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, parental status, cultural background, organizational level, work styles, tenure and life experiences. Or for any other reason.
Slate is committed to providing reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at
slate-talent_acquisition@slate.auto.