Talent Lead

tl;dr Hiring is the single most important thing we do. The quality of every product, every customer relationship, and every dollar of ARR traces back to who we hire. We're looking for a Talent Lead to help us massively scale the team over the next year. You'll help with our recruiting efforts for technical and non-technical roles, work with our external recruiting partners, and help us us scale without lowering the bar. Learn more about us here (link).

Why we're hiring this role

We’re looking to 2-2.5x our team size this year. We have aggressive hiring goals to hit our aggressive growth goals, and recruiting is the single biggest lever on whether we can hit those. We need someone to help us expand upon our top 1% talent bar.

Why join us

• Early-stage, yet de-risked: We're a rare combo of early stage (high upside) but lower risk: 5XX paying customers, $Xm recurring revenue, profitable and cash-flow positive for over 2 years, hockey-stick growth. You get the benefits of an early stage startup without the risk you'll face at almost any other startup. Huge impact, direct exposure to the business, and interesting problems you won't see at bigger companies. We've eliminated key strategic risks you'll face elsewhere: unproven product, lack of market validation, lack of revenue, over-reliance on VC funding, co-founder disputes.
• Team is technical, diverse, young: You'll work with a formidable team that's experienced and ambitious. Our cofounders have worked together for 10 years, first at a startup that Amazon acquired, then at Amazon, and now at Agave. You'll learn a ton while having outsized ownership and a front-row seat to the good and bad of building a company from the ground up.
• Huge opportunity without direct competition: Startups are incredibly hard, so you want to join one that has a unique advantage. You don't want to spend years of your life on a company in a saturated market with tons of competition. We're seizing an opportunity that's massive (construction is the world's third-largest industry) but also overlooked by most people in startup land. We have a multi-year head start against potential competitors, increasing our odds of success significantly. We're backed by world-class investors (Accel, YC) and construction insiders (Procore and Autodesk executives, founders of the largest construction tech companies like PlanGrid).
• Recruiting is a strategic function: The companies that win in our space won't win on product alone, they'll win on the density of talent they can pull into one room. Hiring is the single highest-leverage function in the business: it compounds faster than code, faster than revenue, and determines the ceiling on everything else. A single great hire can change our trajectory. A single bad one can cost us a quarter. You'll sit closer to the founders than almost any other role, help decide who we bring in, and own the systems that determine how we grow. The next 30 people we hire will set the next 10 years of Agave, and you'll be the person responsible for finding them.
  
  

Responsibilities

Sourcing:

• Source candidates from schools, industries, and networks where skilled, ambitious people cluster
  
  

Hiring: contribute to and help scale company-wide hiring goals for technical and non-technical roles

• Assist in planning, creating, and releasing job descriptions and announcements
• Develop creative hacks that short-circuit traditional methods and give us an edge over other companies
• Partner with external recruiters to extend our network and add leverage to our hiring process
• Screen candidates to determine their motivation, preferences, and fit for our open roles
• Convert candidates efficiently, ensuring a thoughtful, personal touch at each step along the way
• Close candidates we want to join us, working alongside the co-founders and hiring managers
• Coordinate recruiting logistics, including on-site interviews
• Optimize our hiring processes, tools, and systems to ensure efficiency
• Note: this role will not include offer calls and negotiations with candidates. This is managed by the hiring manager.
  
  

External recruiter management: own relationships with the outside recruiters and agencies we work with

• Manage performance, pipeline, and communication with external recruiting partners
• Evaluate and onboard new partners where it makes sense to extend our reach
• Ensure external efforts stay aligned with our bar, our process, and our candidate experience
  
  

Requirements

Must have

• Previous recruiting or talent experience: 1 years of experience owning recruiting end-to-end at a fast-growing startup. You've sourced, screened, and built the systems that made it all repeatable.
• High ownership and conscientiousness: able to manage many threads at once without sacrificing quality. Hiring happens in parallel, not in series.
• Meticulous attention to detail: structured thinker who tracks every candidate, every touchpoint, every timeline. Missed follow-ups lose hires.
• Clear and concise communication: oral and written. You'll be the first voice candidates hear and the last one before they sign. You must love writing crisp outreach, scorecards, and internal docs.
• Uncanny ability to deliver results: get the job done consistently, doing any task needed to hit hiring targets on time.
• Comfortable operating independently: little upfront guidance, lots of room to figure it out.
• Data-driven: you use data to iterate and propose new ways of doing things.
  
  

Nice to have

• Experience sourcing technical hires (SWE, PM, etc.)
• Experience managing external recruiting agencies or contract recruiters
  
  

Compensation

Base salary ranges from $90,000 to $160,000, depending on experience. On top of base, you'll earn significant variable compensation for every hire you help bring in. There's no quota or target to hit first, you're rewarded on each hire from day one, and your upside grows as we scale the team.

Benefits

• Healthcare: we cover 90% of your healthcare costs with several plan options.
• 401k: we match 100% of your contributions, up to 4% of annual salary.
• Performance Bonuses: we offer annual performance bonuses when we hit company growth goals, which are a % of your base salary. These are large, meaningful rewards that scale with the amount we grow in a particular year.
• Relocation: sizable relocation bonus for folks currently located outside of the Bay Area, and a bonus for anyone (even within the Bay Area) who moves within a 15-minute walk of our office.
• Breakfast & Dinner, delivered: breakfast and dinner stipends through DoorDash. Plus a kitchen stocked with coffee, snacks, drinks, and more.
• Gym: on-site gym with Peloton, squat rack, Tempo, Yoga setup, and more.
• Visa: we sponsor Visas (H1B, TN, etc.) for candidates who are a good fit!
• Commuter benefits: employees can make pre-tax contributions toward commuting costs, and we'll cover the full cost of a Muni pass for those using public transit.
  
  

Interview Process

• Intro (15min): informal chat for you to learn more about the role. We'll ask for details on your past projects and what you're looking for next. We want to know that you meet our basic requirements and can speak about your work clearly. You’re welcome to ask lots of questions about whether working at Agave makes sense for you.
• Writing Exercise (45min): we provide two short prompts that you reply to in a Google Doc. Our goal is to quickly decide whether you understand our business and can write clearly, with minimum time required from you.
• Experience (30min): we'll dive into the details of your recent work experience, asking questions to learn about what you've done. Our goal is to ensure you've worked on sufficiently complex projects to confirm you'll be successful if you join us full-time. We'll also reserve time to answer any questions you have about Agave.
• Case Study (2-4 hours): we provide a longer-form case study, which you can complete on your own time. The case study mimics real work you will do in this role, so it’s also an opportunity for you to see if you’ll enjoy the work day-to-day.
• On-site (60min x 5, all 1:1 interviews) [In-Person in SF, we pay for the trip]: you'll interview with each co-founder and other members of our team. This will be a deeper dive into your experience and overall fit. Each interview is about 1hr, 45min for our questions and 15min for yours.
  
  

Compensation Range: $90K - $160K