Align-A
Final-round-ready senior hires in days, not weeks - for 50-250 person startups
What we are building
Align-A is a conversational AI recruiter that runs real phone screens and structured conversations with candidates and hiring managers, then delivers final-round-ready shortlists. It replaces the entire first round of recruiting with consistent, high-signal conversations.
The problem
For 50-250 person startups hiring senior engineers or product designers:
- Time to qualified candidates is 3-5 weeks
- Founders and engineers burn hours on low-signal screen calls
- Candidates drop off due to slow, fragmented processes
Recruiters are expensive, ATS tools do not actually screen, and most AI hiring tools only touch one side of the funnel.
The solution
Align-A replaces the first round of recruiting - not just chatbots or scheduling.
- AI conducts live phone screens with candidates
- AI runs structured discovery conversations with hiring managers
- Every conversation is summarized, scored, and structured
- You get final-round-ready shortlists in days, not weeks
Who it is for (initial wedge)
- 50-250 person U.S. startups
- Hiring senior IC engineers or product designers
- No full-time recruiter on the eng/product team
- Hiring speed directly impacts product velocity
Current status
- Core platform live; AI can already place and receive real candidate calls
- End-to-end structured interview extraction and scoring working in internal tests
- First design-partner pilots kicking off now (senior eng/product roles at 50-250 person startups)
- We are raising a $500k angel round to fund these pilots and convert proven results into our first paying customers
Design Partners
We are onboarding 3-5 design-partner startups to run an upcoming senior engineering or product design role through Align-A.
Design partners will:
- ✓Use Align-A for a real, active senior hire
- ✓Help validate time-to-final-round and candidate quality
- ✓Give direct feedback that shapes the product
No long-term commitment - this is a pressure test, not a contract.
Over the next 60-90 days, prove we can:
Consistently cut time-to-final-round from ~4 weeks to ~3-4 days
for senior engineering and product roles.
About the Founder
Kiarash - MIT-trained AI engineer who has shipped production AI systems and hired technical talent firsthand. Align-A sits at the intersection of real-time voice AI, structured evaluation, and recruiting pain lived from both the hiring and engineering side.
Next Steps
If you are hiring senior engineers or designers: