Founding Recruiter

Sent, Inc.•New York, NY

3d•$110,000 - $150,000•Onsite

About The Position

Sent is hiring its first dedicated recruiter to help us double the team by 2027. You'll work directly with leadership, own every search end to end, and build the hiring engine that takes us from 30 to 60. About Sent We're building the messaging infrastructure that powers how businesses communicate with their customers. We provide a unified API for SMS, WhatsApp, iMessage, and RCS, making it simple for developers to reach people on any channel. We've raised $5.1M in seed funding backed by Companyon Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, UIF, and CEAS Investments. We're scaling fast, and hiring is the lever that determines what comes next. The Role You'll own the full recruiting function for Sent's NYC HQ. We're split 50/50 with our Europe office, which means we're taking headcount in NYC to 30. Strategy, sourcing, screening, candidate experience, closing, and the systems that hold it all together. You'll report to the Head of Operations and partner directly with the executive team on headcount planning, org design, and who joins the team. This is the first dedicated recruiting hire at Sent. There's no playbook to inherit. You set the bar for how we hire and shape who we become.

Requirements

3+ years of recruiting experience, ideally at a startup or high-growth company. You've owned requisitions end to end, not just scheduled interviews.
A track record of hiring across functions. You've filled technical and non-technical roles. Senior leadership and sales hiring experience is a strong plus.
Real instinct for team building. You can look at an org chart and have an opinion about what's missing, what's overhired, and what to do next. You think about hiring as a system, not a ticket queue.
Strong judgment on people. You assess candidates quickly and accurately, and you can articulate why someone is or isn't a fit.
Highly organized and responsive. You run multiple searches at once. Candidates and hiring managers both find you easy to work with.
Comfortable building from scratch. You thrive in ambiguity and create structure where none exists. You don't wait for a playbook.
Familiarity with modern recruiting tools. Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever, or similar. You pick up new systems fast.
Based in NYC and able to work in our Flatiron office.

Responsibilities

Own the full recruiting lifecycle. Source candidates, run screens, manage the pipeline in Ashby, coordinate interviews, and help close offers. You're the primary point of contact for every candidate, start to finish.
Partner with leadership on headcount and org design. Sit at the table when we talk about what the team needs to look like 6 and 12 months out. Bring real intuition for how teams grow, where the next hire should sit, and when to wait. Push back when the plan doesn't add up.
Calibrate searches with hiring managers. Define role requirements, agree on candidate profiles, and keep searches on track. Bring market perspective and challenge when needed.
Run our external partner stack. Own the relationships with sourcing partners, agencies, and contract recruiters. Know when to use them, how to brief them, and how to get the most out of them.
Build the hiring infrastructure. Define interview processes, write the scorecards, improve candidate experience, and create systems that scale. We're early. You get to shape this.
Run onboarding for every new hire. Partner with Ops to make sure week one is excellent. The candidate experience doesn't end at the offer.
Track and improve. Own the metrics. Time to hire, pipeline conversion, source effectiveness, offer acceptance. Use the data to find bottlenecks and fix them.