Talent & Operations

The bottleneck in recruiting isn't sourcing. It's data. Candidate data is poor and getting noisier (self-reported, outdated, now AI-inflated). But recruiters hold high-quality, real-time signal because they talk to candidates every day. That's why companies spend >$800B/year on recruiting. The problem is this signal is fragmented and unusable at scale.

Squad's first product aggregates signals from hundreds of recruiters and uses AI to instantly match their candidates to roles, giving companies unprecedented reach without the usual pain of managing external partners.

We give recruiters a business-in-a-box that lets them earn more while doing what they do best: building relationships and knowing their candidates deeply. In return, we get proprietary data. Our AI structures signal from real recruiter-candidate context that doesn't exist on LinkedIn or resumes. Every submission, every rejection, every hire feeds a self-improving AI matchmaking engine.

We believe the future of recruiting is human authenticity paired with AI efficiency. Great recruiters have a critical role to play, and Squad is built to empower them.

Long-term, Squad becomes the infrastructure layer for how talent meets opportunity.

Squad is a generational opportunity to rethink how recruiting works, and our path to doing so is significantly de-risked. We have:

• Exponential growth: We have product-market fit and are growing rapidly. Squad supports hundreds of candidates, recruiters, and employers every day. We've grown 10x in under a year with a 3-person team.

• AI-first business model. Our approach is distinctly enabled by AI, and our business gets stronger as foundation models improve. We're building durability through cross-sided network effects that compound over time. Every submission, rejection, and hire feeds a self-improving matchmaking engine.

• Real ownership. It’s still ‘day 0’. You'll shape what Squad looks like and how far we get. Your input will define our vision, product, team, and execution. What you build now becomes the foundation for everything that follows.

• Top tier investors: We've raised over $5M from FJ Labs (Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox), Link Ventures (Mercor, Liquid AI), Golden Ventures (Faire, Boardy), and angels.

• Massive ceiling: The recruiting industry is >$800B and broken. We're building the infrastructure layer for how talent meets opportunity. The scope is as big as you want it to be.

Market demand is pulling us forward. We're looking for people who are excited about high ownership, high velocity, and high impact.
There's an enormous amount to build - and the scope only gets bigger. You will never be bored.
If we succeed, every company finds the right people the moment they need them. Every person finds meaningful work without friction. And the pace of innovation changes forever.

The biggest bottleneck to innovation is getting the right people working on the right problems. Hiring is still slow, manual, and full of noise — and we’re building the infrastructure to fix that.

Squad is a generational opportunity to rethink how recruiting works. We have:

• Exponential growth: Squad supports hundreds of candidates, recruiters, and employers every day, and we’ve grown rapidly with a very small team.

• An AI-first business model: Our approach is enabled by AI and becomes more durable as foundation models improve, with network effects compounding over time.

• Top-tier backing: We’ve raised significant funding from leading investors to build an exceptional team of operators, recruiters, and product builders.

Our number-one priority is scaling to meet demand while keeping quality high. This role sits at the heart of that: you’ll shape how recruiting is actually run on Squad — both in the product and in our day-to-day operations.

As Squad’s Talent & Ops hire, you will set the gold standard for how we run recruiting processes on our the platform. You’ll sit at the intersection of recruiting, operations, and product, owning:

• The last-mile quality bar on candidates and pipelines.

• Feedback loops between recruiters, clients, and our internal team.

• Translating what works in practice into product features and internal playbooks.

You’ll split your time between recruiting work (reviewing candidates, supporting weak pipelines, running a small number of critical searches) and product/ops work (improving workflows, tagging, matching, and defining how we use AI within the marketplace).

Over time, the workflows you define will become the “default” way Squad runs recruiting - for our own internal roles and for key client searches.

Candidate quality & pipelines

• Own the review of candidates for roles on Squad, increasing the matchmaking quality

• Catch strong profiles that may have been misclassified by the system

Pipeline diagnosis & client process

• Diagnose “weak” pipelines: analyze where drop-offs happen and identify issues in role definition, messaging, process, or comp.

• Run intake and calibration conversations with hiring managers (internal and selected clients) to clarify must-haves and tradeoffs.

• Capture clear, structured feedback from candidates and clients so we can continuously tighten shortlisting criteria and processes.

Product & ops feedback loop

• Turn your daily recruiting workflows into concrete product feedback on search, matching, workflows, and automation opportunities.

• Partner with Product and Engineering to test new features, pressure-test matching logic, and surface real-world edge cases.

• Help design and refine tagging, candidate review flows, and internal dashboards so the team can make better decisions, faster.

Playbooks & enablement

• Develop and maintain internal playbooks for candidate review, pipeline rescue, and client launch so others can replicate what works.

• Share best practices with our external recruiter network, helping them get more value from Squad and improving their submissions over time.

• 3–7+ years of full‑cycle recruiting or embedded talent experience in high‑growth environments (startup, RPO, or agency partnering closely with fast‑moving teams).

• Proven track record turning ambiguous or “hard‑to‑fill” roles into successful hires and rescuing underperforming pipelines.

• Strong sourcing and screening chops, plus a sharp eye for candidate quality and fit across multiple signals (experience, skills, stage, context).

• Experience partnering directly with founders or senior hiring managers, pushing back when needed and guiding them toward realistic, high‑signal processes.

• Excellent written and verbal communication; you’re clear, candid, and can synthesize feedback from candidates, clients, and recruiters into crisp insights.

• High bias toward action: you move quickly, experiment, and are willing to get into the weeds of candidate review and process details.

Squad is based in New York, with our team working out of a beautiful office in Flatiron. We work in person because it lets us move faster, collaborate more deeply, and iterate on products and operations in real time.

• Lunch at the office every day and dinner at the office after 7 pm.

• Competitive compensation with meaningful equity; everyone on the early team is a major contributor to our success.

• Salary range: $110K – $150K + equity (depending on experience and level).​

Squad is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our company’s size and industry, and are one part of the total compensation package that also includes equity, benefits, and other opportunities at Squad (for full-time employees). Individual pay decisions are ultimately based on a number of factors, including qualifications for the role, experience level, skillset, geography, and balancing internal equity.

Squad is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

Squad is based in New York, with our team working out of a beautiful office in Flatiron.

We run a high-trust environment with real autonomy and ownership. We provide competitive compensation with meaningful equity to reflect that. Everyone who joins early will be a major contributor to our success.

We also provide benefits to ensure you can focus on creating impact:

• Health insurance

• Unlimited PTO

• Lunch at the office every day and dinner after 7pm (usually fresh healthy food from Eataly)

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Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our company's size and industry, and are one part of the total compensation package that also includes equity, benefits, and other opportunities at Squad (for full-time employees). Individual pay decisions are ultimately based on a number of factors, including qualifications for the role, experience level, skillset, geography, and balancing internal equity.

Squad is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.