Recruiting Manager, Engineering

Divergent is building the new industrial age. Every day, our teams design, manufacture, and assemble advanced systems for some of the world’s most demanding industries. Our integrated engineering and manufacturing platform transforms complex designs into production-ready solutions, helping customers move faster, build smarter, and deliver critical systems when they matter most. Divergent is a qualified Tier 1 supplier to global automotive OEMs and supports leading U.S. aerospace and defense companies. Join us and help push the boundaries of what can be built. Purpose Divergent is seeking a Recruiting Manager, Engineering to lead and develop the recruiting team responsible for hiring exceptional engineering and technical talent across the organization. This is a hands-on, player-coach role that combines people leadership with full-cycle recruiting. In addition to managing and developing a team of engineering recruiters, you will personally own a portfolio of engineering requisitions and be responsible for sourcing, screening, managing candidates through the interview process, and closing hires. The ideal candidate is an experienced recruiting leader who enjoys both leading a team and recruiting. You understand how to identify and engage highly specialized engineering talent and can operate effectively in a fast-paced hardware, manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, robotics, or deep-tech environment. The Role Lead & Develop the Engineering Recruiting Team

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of recruiters supporting engineering and technical hiring across Divergent.
• Establish clear expectations for recruiter performance, pipeline management, candidate experience, hiring-manager partnership, and recruiting execution.
• Conduct regular 1:1s, pipeline reviews, and performance discussions with recruiters.
• Develop recruiter capabilities in technical sourcing, candidate assessment, stakeholder management, closing, and data-driven recruiting.
• Allocate requisitions and recruiting resources based on business priorities, hiring volume, role complexity, and recruiter capacity.
• Create accountability around recruiting commitments, follow-up, data accuracy, and results.
• Provide hands-on coaching and support on difficult searches, candidate situations, and hiring-manager challenges. Own & Recruit Engineering Requisitions
• Maintain an active requisition load while managing the engineering recruiting team.
• Personally own full-cycle recruiting for assigned engineering positions, including critical, senior-level, specialized, and difficult-to-fill searches.
• Partner directly with hiring managers to conduct intake meetings, define candidate profiles, establish interview processes, and develop recruiting strategies.
• Proactively source and engage passive engineering talent through LinkedIn Recruiter, Greenhouse, referrals, targeted research, networking, and other sourcing channels.
• Review applicants and conduct recruiter screens to assess technical alignment, relevant experience, career motivations, compensation expectations, location or relocation considerations, timing, and applicable employment requirements.
• Build and maintain strong candidate pipelines for current and anticipated engineering needs.
• Manage candidates throughout the interview process, maintaining consistent communication and driving timely decisions and feedback.
• Partner with hiring managers, Compensation, People Operations, and leadership to develop offer strategies and successfully close candidates.
• Maintain a high-quality candidate experience from initial outreach through offer acceptance and onboarding handoff. Drive Engineering Recruiting Strategy
• Partner with Engineering leadership and hiring managers to understand workforce plans, hiring priorities, technical requirements, and anticipated talent needs.
• Translate business priorities into clear recruiting strategies and execution plans.
• Help leaders prioritize requisitions based on business criticality, hiring timelines, available recruiting capacity, and talent-market conditions.
• Develop sourcing strategies for difficult-to-fill and highly specialized engineering positions.
• Identify relevant talent pools, companies, industries, and geographic markets for priority searches.
• Build scalable talent pipelines for recurring and future engineering needs. Drive Recruiting Performance
• Establish and monitor recruiting performance metrics, including time to fill, aging requisitions, pipeline health, time in stage, sourcing activity, offer acceptance, and hiring-manager responsiveness.
• Regularly review individual recruiter pipelines and performance to identify where additional support, coaching, or recalibration is needed.
• Use recruiting data to identify bottlenecks, resource constraints, and opportunities to improve hiring outcomes.
• Communicate recruiting progress, risks, capacity constraints, and recommendations to Recruiting and Engineering leadership.
• Ensure the team maintains accurate and timely candidate, requisition, and activity data within Greenhouse.
• Balance the manager's own requisition workload with team capacity and changing business priorities. Partner With Hiring Leaders
• Serve as a trusted recruiting partner to Engineering leaders and hiring managers.
• Lead recruiting intake and calibration discussions to ensure alignment on technical requirements, candidate profiles, interview plans, and hiring timelines.
• Coach hiring managers on effective candidate evaluation, interview practices, timely feedback, and competitive hiring processes.
• Identify situations where hiring criteria, compensation, interview processes, or market conditions are limiting the candidate pipeline and recommend appropriate adjustments.
• Provide talent-market insights and help leaders understand tradeoffs involving candidate availability, experience, compensation, location, and hiring timelines.
• Escalate recruiting roadblocks and recommend solutions when hiring progress is at risk. Improve Recruiting Operations
• Continuously evaluate recruiting workflows and identify opportunities to improve speed, quality, scalability, and visibility.
• Develop consistent recruiter and hiring-manager practices across intake, sourcing, screening, interviewing, feedback, and offer management.
• Leverage recruiting technology, automation, and AI-enabled tools to improve recruiter productivity and candidate identification while maintaining appropriate human oversight.
• Partner across Recruiting, People Operations, Finance, Compensation, and business leadership to support workforce planning and hiring execution. Basic Qualifications
• Ability to lawfully access information and technology that is subject to US export controls
• 8+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with significant experience recruiting engineering or highly technical talent.
• 2+ years of experience directly managing, leading, or formally developing recruiters.
• Demonstrated success personally sourcing and closing difficult-to-find engineering talent.
• Experience simultaneously managing recruiters and carrying an active requisition workload strongly preferred.
• Experience supporting engineering organizations within industries such as aerospace, automotive, advanced manufacturing, robotics, hardware, defense, industrial technology, or other deep-tech environments.
• Strong technical sourcing skills with demonstrated success engaging passive candidates.
• Experience managing multiple hiring priorities and allocating recruiting resources based on business needs.
• Demonstrated ability to use recruiting metrics and data to identify problems and drive decisions.
• Strong stakeholder-management skills with the ability to partner effectively with senior leaders and technical hiring managers.
• Experience with applicant tracking systems and recruiting technology; Greenhouse and LinkedIn Recruiter exper