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.

About the role

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.

What you'll do

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.

What will make you successful

• 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.

Working with us

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).

Working with us

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)

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.