Talent Engineering and Operations
It's time...
Last year, I wrote down what I called “Talent Engineering” - the idea that recruiting should be rebuilt like a product, not managed like a mess of duct-taped tools.
The thesis was simple: Modern LLMs, MCPs, and open APIs mean we can finally build recruiting systems that don’t suck. Instead of wrestling with ATS + CRM + Slack + Airtable + Zapier + Notion, we can ship intelligent workflows that make recruiters faster and hiring feel magical.
I knew it was inevitable. But when I came into this role, there was so much foundational work to do first - interview processes to build, pipelines to get flowing, basic systems to stand up. In an ideal world, I’d do both: lay the foundation and ship the AI tooling. But as one person, that’s just not possible.
And the hiring needs can’t wait. We need those sourcing bots generating pipeline now, not after I’ve finished building everything else.
Three things converged this weekend that made it clear: it’s time to hire for this.
1. Diversifying our Top of Funnel
Coming into AirOps, we’ve relied heavily on agency partners and referrals, with some outbound and inbound mixed in. To scale our hiring, we need every channel firing on all cylinders.
The foundation is working: my early sourcing has been well-received, the team collaborates on referrals, and our agency partners are crushing it. Now we need someone who can build on that foundation and turn our underutilized channels into reliable pipeline generators.
2. Ben, our new GTM Engineer, showed me this over the weekend:
Seeing what he could build in his spare time confirmed what I already knew: the right builder with recruiting context is be absolutely goated.
3. I finally accepted that I’ll never have the bandwidth to be that builder
As Head of TA, my time goes to hiring managers, pipeline reviews, and fire drills. The strategic projects that could 10x our recruiting efficiency? They’ll never get built if I’m the one building them.
So we’re hiring a Talent Engineering and Operations Lead.
This person will own the projects I’ve been dreaming about:
Sourcing bots that generate qualified pipeline at scale
A market intelligence system that tracks competitor moves and candidate activity
An internal referral and backchannel database that captures institutional knowledge
AI-powered candidate prep and personalization that doesn’t feel robotic
You’re the right person if:
You have the technical chops
You can whiteboard how you’d implement each project above
You started vibe coding a solution halfway through this post
You’ve built point solutions before and swore you’d never make that mistake again
You understand recruiting operations
You’ve spent 1+ years as a full-time sourcer or recruiter
You’ve felt the pain of wrestling with broken systems daily
You know what good candidate experience actually requires
You think like a product builder
You approach problems with the user at the center
You ship small, iterate fast, and measure what matters
You get excited about building leverage through systems, not headcount
Why AirOps is the place to build this:
We build products for growth teams. Creative growth solutions are literally in our DNA. You won’t spend six months convincing leadership that experimental recruiting systems make sense. You’ll be surrounded by people who already think this way.
Plus, you’ll have Ben (our GTM Engineer) to collaborate with on the recruiting use case.
If this sounds like the job you’ve been thinking about since GPT-4o, DM me. Let’s make it a reality.