San Jose anchors Silicon Valley's south end, where tech talent concentration remains high despite remote-work shifts and rising cost of living that compress margins on candidate acquisition. The city hosts major operations for semiconductor, enterprise software, and cloud infrastructure firms, alongside growing healthcare and advanced manufacturing sectors. Time-to-hire tends to extend 4–6 weeks for technical roles due to competitive talent flows and candidate leverage; non-technical roles move faster. Salary expectations run 15–25% above US median for equivalent roles, and commute tolerance has shifted—many candidates now factor in flexibility or remote-first arrangements into their decision calculus. Raffi, an agentic AI recruiter, handles the screening and interview scheduling for candidates who apply to your San Jose roles through your ATS, reducing recruiter overhead and cutting interview-to-offer cycles. You retain control over your hiring bar and final decisions; Raffi eliminates the manual triage work that stalls pipelines when you're fielding high applicant volume. Connect Raffi to Workable and your Google Calendar, then focus your team on closing offers instead of screening resumes. If you're hiring engineers, product managers, or operations roles in San Jose, the math shifts when your team reclaims 5–10 hours per week.
<60 sec
Application to first contact
10-15 min
Per applicant interview
$0
Hire fees, ever
Raffi calls every applicant for a 10-15 min structured interview. Not just the top 5 résumés — every one. Result: nobody good slips through.
Conversational AI interview, rubric-anchored scoring, transcripts you can read. You get a top 3-5 shortlist while competitors are still scheduling first-rounds.
SaaS pricing from $199/mo. No 15-25% of first-year salary, no per-hire kickback. Cancel anytime.
Demand remains steady for senior backend and full-stack engineers, DevOps specialists, and product roles across both established firms and mid-stage startups. Semiconductor design and manufacturing talent is tight; supply hasn't kept pace with recent capex expansion. Conversely, early-stage VC funding has cooled, so junior engineering and business operations roles see longer cycles and softer candidate urgency. Healthcare tech and biotech hiring is accelerating—talent pools are smaller and less obvious, extending time-to-hire by 2–3 weeks. Remote-first hiring expands your addressable talent pool beyond San Jose proper, but local candidates still expect equity and mission alignment alongside salary. Overall, expect 28–35 day cycles for technical roles, 18–24 for operations and support.
San Jose hiring demands fluency in distributed-team norms—most candidates assume hybrid or remote options, not office-centric roles. Salary benchmarks are set against regional FAANG and late-stage startup comp; a mid-level engineer expecting $180K–$220K base is standard, and candidates will compare your offer against Workday, Adobe, or Cisco before deciding. Language diversity is real—assess whether roles require English fluency or can accommodate bilingual Spanish/Mandarin teams. The 880 freeway commute is brutal, so remote or flexible schedules become a retention lever. Top sectors (semiconductor, cloud, enterprise SaaS, healthcare tech) have overlapping talent pools; you're competing for the same people across multiple industries.
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Yes. Raffi operates in 30+ languages and supports candidate calls in any timezone via self-booking — there's no per-city integration. If you can post a role from San Jose, you can run Raffi from San Jose.
Raffi is calibrated against the major AI-in-hiring frameworks (EU AI Act + NYC Local Law 144) and discloses AI use to every candidate before the call. For San Jose-specific work permits and right-to-work checks, those happen outside Raffi — we screen, you verify eligibility before extending an offer.
Plan for 28–35 days from job post to offer acceptance. Senior and specialized roles (semiconductors, ML infrastructure) often extend to 45+ days due to candidate scarcity and competing offers. Faster decisions and clear-eyed feedback loops—like automated screening from an agentic AI recruiter—can trim 1–2 weeks off that timeline.
Yes. Most tech talent in the region assumes some level of flexibility. Office-only roles face candidacy friction and longer cycles; hybrid or remote-first models attract broader pipelines. Clarify remote policy early in your job posting to avoid misaligned applications.
San Jose salaries run 20–30% above national averages for equivalent roles, reflecting high housing costs and regional comp bands. A mid-level software engineer earning $180K–$220K base is market-standard, and candidates will leverage multiple offers. Transparent comp and equity details help you close faster.
Agentic recruiting is recruiting done by an AI agent that takes action on your behalf — not a chatbot or résumé summarizer. Raffi calls every applicant for a structured 10-15 minute interview, scores them against your rubric, and hands you a ranked top 3-5. The work happens autonomously.
Most agencies charge 15-25% of first-year salary as a placement fee — a $90k hire runs $13-22k. Raffi is SaaS at $199-599/mo plus per-action credits, typically landing under $10k/year for a team hiring 12 people. Same shortlist quality, no placement contract.
About 25 minutes to onboard, post your first role, and have Raffi ready to interview applicants. No engineering work, no integration project. Connect your work email, paste a JD, you're live.
Free $25 starter credit. No credit card. Screening live by tonight.