Applied AI Engineer

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 Candidate data is poor and getting noisier (self-reported, outdated, now AI-inflated).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 one of the first engineers at Squad, you will own the AI systems that power our marketplace. You'll work on real production use cases of LLMs and other ML techniques to solve core business problems - from candidate-job matching to automating marketplace operations. This role requires developing a deep understanding of our product and what drives our business, so you can operate and drive impact both cross-functionally and independently.

You'll have end-to-end responsibility for AI projects, including definition, design, development, launch, and iteration. This means ensuring your work has measurable impact on user growth, operational efficiency, or revenue.

This is a demanding role with a high level of autonomy. You'll work directly with the founder to shape what we build, and you'll have the freedom to make technical decisions and ship fast.

If you join, you will own problems and outcomes from start to finish, including:

• Building and refining our candidate-job matching systems to increase placement quality and speed

• Automating internal marketplace operations - replacing manual workflows with intelligent systems

• Scoping and shipping AI-powered features across our product, from classification and extraction to content generation and search

• Staying on top of emerging AI methods and making decisions about which models and techniques to use, including when to fine-tune vs. prompt engineer

• Establishing evaluation and experimentation protocols to ensure accuracy and consistency

• Prototyping and productionizing AI functionality, incorporating real-world feedback to improve performance

• Building tooling and infrastructure to accelerate AI development and iteration

• Collaborating with the team and CEO to make business decisions as we balance speed of growth and long-term profitability

What we look for

• 4+ years of engineering experience, with meaningful time spent shipping AI/LLM features in production

• Experience driving AI projects end-to-end - from model selection and data pipelines to deployment and real-world iteration

• Proficiency with modern AI/ML technologies (LLM APIs, embeddings, vector databases, fine-tuning) and a strong foundation in full-stack web development

• You're hands-on and want to stay that way - you're happiest when you're building, not managing

• Startup DNA: you've built at early-stage companies. Prior experience in talent or recruiting is a plus

We'll be most excited if you have:

• 4+ years of engineering experience, with meaningful time spent shipping AI/LLM features in production

• Experience driving AI projects end-to-end — from model selection and data pipelines to deployment and real-world iteration

• Proficiency with modern AI/ML technologies (LLM APIs, embeddings, vector databases, fine-tuning) and a strong foundation in full-stack web development

• Clear written and verbal communication — you're effective in internal debates and external conversations alike

• A track record of moving fast, finding shortcuts, and going to unreasonable lengths to deliver

• You're hands-on and want to stay that way - you're happiest when you're building, not managing

Working with us

Squad is based in New York, with our team working out of a beautiful office in Flatiron.

We run as a high-trust environment with high 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, and we reflect this through ownership and pay.

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)

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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.

Squad is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.