Product Engineer

**Squad** Product Engineer; $170K - $250K + equity; In-person in NY

**About Company** Squad is using AI to accelerate how the world's best talent finds the right problems to solve.

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 Candidate data is poor and getting noisier (self-reported, outdated, now AI-inflated).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.

**Why you should join us**

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.**

**About the Role** As the first engineers at Squad, you'll own our product end-to-end - the tools recruiters use to find and submit candidates, the experience companies have when reviewing and hiring, and everything in between.

We've already solved the cold start problem. We have hundreds of users generating thousands of data points every day. The foundation is there. Now comes the fun part: endless room to build, and you'll shape what that looks like.

You'll take full ownership of the product at Squad - what we build, how it works, and how it feels. This isn't a role where you inherit a roadmap. You'll collaborate directly with the founder to figure out what to build, how to build it, and who else we need on the team.

The role will roughly split into: - ~70% core recruiter product (dashboard, flows, UX iteration) - ~20% adjacent internal tools / light ops‑enabling features - ~10% growth engineering (signups, activation, retention, SEO, billing)

**Responsibilities** - Creating the product layer that makes our AI useful and usable - Turning complex, manual workflows into flows that feel instant and effortless - Building the platform recruiters run their entire business on - and shipping features that directly increase their placements and earnings - Designing the experience companies use to review candidates and give feedback - Talking to users frequently - Building new product surfaces as we expand to new user types and verticals - And much more which you'll define

**Required Skills** A. 4+ years of full-stack experience building products end-to-end - you thrive when you own a codebase top to bottom B. A product mindset: you care deeply about the customer and the business, not just the code C. Obsessive attention to detail in design and interaction - you push for experiences that feel easy and delightful D. Strong programming fundamentals and fluency across modern full-stack web technologies E. Engineering experience at fast-growing, product-driven companies where you had to figure things out without a playbook (ideally at early-stage companies)

**Logistical Info** - **Location:** New York, Flatiron office (in-person) - **Compensation:** $170K - $250K + equity - **Number of openings:** 1-2 hires across varying levels of seniority - **Other:** Health insurance; Unlimited PTO; Lunch daily and dinner after 7pm (usually fresh healthy food from Eataly)

**Ideal Background** - Founding engineer at a seed/Series A startup who built the core product and talked to customers regularly - Technical founder whose startup may or may not have succeeded but who clearly has the 0→1 and customer-obsession muscle - Product engineer at a product-led growth company (e.g., Figma-/Notion-/Vercel-type environments) who shipped user-facing features end-to-end and cares about craft - Forward Deployed Engineer-type profiles who are high-agency, customer-facing, and figure out what to build on the fly

**Examples Companies:** - _Recruiting / HR Tech:_ Engineers here already understand recruiter workflows, ATS/CRM patterns, and the pain points Squad is solving. E.g. Ashby (Series C), Gem (Series C), Dover (Series B), Pave (Series C), Findem (Series B), Juicebox (Series A) Handshake (Series F) - _CRM / Dashboard-Heavy:_ Squad's core product is a recruiter dashboard/CRM. Engineers from these companies know how to build power-user interfaces with complex workflows. Attio (Series B), Clay (Series B), Affinity (Series C), Scratchpad (Series B), Lavender (Series A), Koala (Series A), Unify (Series A) - _Unsexy B2B (Legal, Accounting, Fintech Infra):_ Elite engineers building for power users in less glamorous verticals, more likely to be excited about building in recruiting. Pilot (Series C), Puzzle (Series B), Pulley (Series B), Harvey (Series C), EvenUp (Series C), Merge (Series B), Finch (Series B), Vanta (Series C), 11x (Series A), Sierra (Series B), Linear (Series B)

**Example Candidates** - [Rajat Raghuwanshi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajat-raghuwanshi-10/) — Good progression at a high growth startup; seems to have an inclination towards product - [Elliott Chartock](https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-chartock-47aab182/) — Stanford + has founding experience **Green Flags** - Has launched something from 0→1 (startup, internal product, or substantial side project) - Has worked in environments without dedicated PMs (or with very light PM support) and is comfortable owning the problem end-to-end - Has talked to users/customers directly and changed what they built based on feedback - Experience in a high-intensity, high-velocity environment (seed or Series A/B startup, high-growth tech company, 0→1 product team)

**Red Flags** - Pure backend/infra or pure frontend engineers at big companies who haven't touched product - Anyone who's only worked with detailed specs and dedicated PMs—they'll struggle with ambiguity here - Only worked at large companies with heavy process and detailed specs - Mobile-engineering-only backgrounds (this is web/full-stack) - Slow career progression (e.g. one promotion in 8+ years)

**Interview Process** 1. Intro Call (30 min): High-level screening and getting them excited about Squad 2. Technical Interview (60 min): Open-ended product challenge assessing problem breakdown and solution thinking 3. Behavioral Deep-Dive (60 min). In person. 4. On-Site (full day): Work through real problems together in person, and get a feel for how we collaborate