Technical Sourcer/Researcher

Most sourcing jobs hand you a title and a target number. This one hands you a market and asks you to understand it better than anyone else has.

Our client is a boutique, retained executive search firm in the United States, founded and run by former in-house talent leaders from some of the best-known technology companies in the world. They deliberately keep a small caseload. Every search is retained, every search is researched from scratch, and their stated thesis is that hiring should be driven by data and original research rather than by whoever happens to be qualified and available. That thesis only works if someone is doing the research. That someone is you.

As their Technical Sourcer / Talent Researcher, you are the research engine behind every search. You will chart the talent ecosystem around a role before a single message goes out, map team structures and reporting lines at the companies that build the strongest people, track who is scaling and who is contracting, and surface senior engineers, product leaders, designers and analytics people that other firms never reach. Your research feeds directly into how each search is positioned, who gets targeted, and how the outreach is written.

You will work alongside the firm's recruiters and managing partners, joining kickoff calls and debriefs, and you will be expected to tell them the truth about a market early — including when the truth is that the brief will not clear it. This is a role for someone who finds genuine satisfaction in a complete, defensible map of a niche, and who would rather deliver eighty names that all belong than three hundred that mostly do not.

Key Responsibilities

Market Mapping & Talent Research

• Lead deep-dive research to chart the full talent ecosystem around each search, turning a hard search into a solvable one
• Map team structures, reporting lines and headcount at target startups and at the larger incumbents that feed them
• Identify where the strongest Engineering, Product, Design and Analytics talent is concentrated across high-growth sectors such as AI/ML, fintech, SaaS, security and adjacent verticals — and develop a view on why it clusters there
• Track talent movement, promotion patterns and organizational shifts at high-talent-density companies
• Deliver market maps that give the recruiting team and their clients a clear, actionable picture of the landscape, including its limits

Talent Intelligence

• Go beyond names: build a point of view on headcount trends, funding rounds, org changes and competitor hiring movement within each target sector
• Research which companies are scaling, which are contracting, and where strong people are likely to become available in the next two quarters
• Translate that intelligence into research outputs that shape positioning and search strategy, not just lists of names and contact details
• Surface market constraints and competitive dynamics while there is still time to change the plan

Strategic Sourcing

• Build high-signal candidate pipelines for senior individual contributor and leadership roles, spanning Staff through Principal and Director through VP
• Use LinkedIn Recruiter at a power-user level: layered Boolean, precise filters, projects, spotlights and the platform features that surface people a standard keyword search never returns
• Source beyond LinkedIn using whatever channel the niche demands, including GitHub, Crunchbase, patent databases, academic publications, conference speaker lists and open-source contribution history
• Curate rather than pad — every name on a list belongs there, and you can say exactly why

Search Strategy & Calibration

• Partner on calibration and search design so that research directly informs positioning, target company lists and outreach strategy from day one
• Join search kickoff calls and debriefs so sourcing stays aligned as the brief evolves
• Recommend concrete adjustments when the research shows the original brief will not clear the market — a wider stage band, an adjacent domain, a relaxed must-have, a different geography

Data Integrity & Documentation

• Maintain accurate, well-organized and immediately actionable Google Sheets across every active market map and candidate list
• Keep formatting consistent, data current, and documentation clear enough that anyone on the recruiting team can open a sheet and act on it without cleanup or clarification
• Maintain source tracking, search methodology notes and candidate status documentation for every active search
• Treat data hygiene as a professional standard rather than an afterthought

Collaboration & Communication

• Work closely with recruiters and managing partners to translate client briefs into targeted research strategies
• Communicate findings proactively and in real time, including the uncomfortable ones: thin talent availability, market constraints, pipeline gaps
• Flag candidate quality issues and research dead ends early enough for the strategy to change rather than late enough to explain a miss

• Substantial hands-on experience in sourcing or talent research for engineering or technology roles. We are looking for roughly four years or more, and the depth of the work matters more to us than the exact number.
• LinkedIn Recruiter mastery. You have worked from a paid Recruiter seat as a daily tool, not an occasional one, and you can build the search that finds the needle rather than the haystack.
• Experience sourcing for United States based technology companies, ideally venture-backed startups from seed through Series D.
• Research depth. You are comfortable spending hours inside a single niche to produce a complete, defensible map of the market and the hundred best people in it.
• Startup fluency. You understand talent density across the ecosystem, which organizations build the strongest people, and what it takes to thrive in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
• Investigative instinct. You do not stop at the obvious sources. You triangulate across GitHub, patents, publications, conference talks and company team pages to reach people who are not findable any other way.
• Strong data organization in Google Sheets. Your sheets are clean, logical and useful to anyone who opens them.
• Clear, confident written English. You can explain a market to someone who has not looked at it, in writing, without being asked twice.
• Preferred Qualifications
• Background at a boutique, retained or executive search firm that runs a research-driven methodology
• Experience building market maps or talent ecosystem analyses for specific sectors such as AI/ML, fintech, SaaS, security, defense technology or climate
• Hands-on sourcing through GitHub, Crunchbase, patent databases or other non-LinkedIn research methods
• Familiarity with funding stages and venture ecosystem dynamics — you know what separates a Series A from a Series D, and what that difference means for talent
• Experience delivering candidate intelligence reports or market briefings to recruiting leadership or to clients directly
• Exposure to searches at the Staff, Principal, Director or VP level rather than only at junior and mid levels
• Tools & Platforms
• LinkedIn Recruiter — primary sourcing platform; advanced proficiency required
• GitHub — engineering talent sourcing and contribution analysis
• Crunchbase — company research, funding tracking and headcount intelligence
• Google Sheets — market map and candidate list management
• Patent and publication databases — sourcing for specialized technical talent
• An ATS or CRM as assigned — candidate tracking and pipeline management
• Microsoft Teams for day-to-day collaboration, and Hubstaff for time tracking
• What Makes You a Great Fit
• You treat every search like an investigation. You do not stop when the obvious candidates are found; you keep digging.
• Your lists are curated, not padded. Every name belongs, and you can defend why it is there.
• You are genuinely curious about markets, companies and talent ecosystems. You read funding announcements and engineering blogs for your own interest, not because someone told you to.
• Your data is always clean. The recruiting team can open your market map and act on it immediately, without asking you a single clarifying question.
• You say what you are finding in real time. If a market is tighter than expected or a sector is talent-constrained, you raise it early and bring options with you.
• You would rather be measured on precision than on volume, and you are comfortable defending a shorter list.