Talent Operations Coordinator, R&D

About The Role

As Talent Operations Coordinator supporting R&D, you're the reason candidates leave every interaction feeling genuinely taken care of—and the person our researchers, engineers, and R&D leadership count on when they need something to just work. Part calendar guru, part host, part quiet fixer of whatever's about to go sideways, you make sure hiring never becomes the bottleneck.

The people you help bring on now will shape what Cognition's R&D team looks like for years. This role fits you if you get a kick out of solving logistics puzzles fast, don't mind things changing under you week to week, and actually enjoy the chaos of meeting new people all day.

Key Responsibilities

Talent Coordination for R&D

• Run point on scheduling and interview logistics for the R&D team, juggling calendars, time zones, and last-minute changes so nobody's ever caught off guard

• Greet and host candidates onsite, reading the room and adjusting so each person feels comfortable, whether they're a first-time interviewer or a seasoned researcher

• Keep everyone in the loop. Candidates, interviewers, hiring managers with updates that are clear, timely, and never robotic

• Work shoulder-to-shoulder with recruiters and hiring managers, flagging issues before they become problems and adjusting plans on the fly

• Own our ATS data (Ashby) so the pipeline stays clean and nothing slips through

Operational Excellence

• Poke at how the R&D team hires and runs meetings, and fix what's clunky before anyone has to ask

• Pull together numbers on hiring pace, time to hire, and team growth for leadership

• Help pull off team events, offsites, and research show-and-tells

• Spot the cracks in the process early and build something more scalable before they turn into real problems

You May Be a Fit If

• You've spent 2+ years doing recruiting coordination, recruiting ops, or talent ops somewhere fast and technical

• You're the person who double-checks a calendar invite's time zone before it goes out, every time

• A clunky process bugs you enough that you just go fix it—nobody has to ask

• You genuinely care whether the interview went well for everyone involved: the candidate, the hiring manager, the interviewer squeezing this in between meetings

• You can hold a dozen moving pieces at once without losing your cool

• People trust you to follow through, every time, no reminders needed

• You like people, all kinds of people, and it shows

• You know how to keep sensitive information sensitive

• Bonus points if you've supported a technical or research team before, or already know your way around Ashby

• You're based in San Francisco or ready to be

Why Join Cognition

• Real partnership with R&D and Talent leadership, not just admin support

• A shot at scaling something from the ground floor

• Plenty of room to grow the role as the R&D Talent team grows

• Small, sharp team where your work is genuinely felt