Laurel is on a mission to return time. As the leading AI Time platform for professional services firms, we’re transforming how organizations capture, analyze, and optimize their most valuable resource: time. Our proprietary machine learning technology automates work time capture and connects time data to business outcomes, enabling firms to increase profitability, improve client delivery, and make data-driven strategic decisions. We serve many of the world's largest accounting and law firms, including EY, Aprio, Crowell & Moring, and Frost Brown Todd, and process over 1 billion work activities annually that have never been collected and aggregated before Laurel’s AI Time platform.

Our team comprises top talent in AI, product development, and engineering—innovative, humble, and forward-thinking professionals committed to redefining productivity in the knowledge economy. We're building solutions that empower workers to deliver twice the value in half the time, giving people more time to be creative and impactful. If you're passionate about transforming how people work and building a lasting company that explores the essence of time itself, we'd love to meet you.

About Laurel

Laurel’s mission is simple and ambitious: return time to people. We believe the company that best understands how digital work is done can rewrite the working model for the knowledge economy, so people can create twice the value in half the time.

We’re a $100M Series C, ~100-person team distributed across San Francisco (EPD hub) and New York (GTM hub), with a deep philosophy of talent density, and a bias toward speed, impact, and truth-telling. Startups are hard, and we choose to do it the hard way on purpose: small, dense, fast, and relentlessly focused.

We are now hiring our Head of Talent to build and run a centralized recruiting function that can keep pace with the company we are becoming—one that moves fast, corrects fast, and hires only stunning talent.

Role Summary

The Head of Talent will be Laurel’s senior recruiting leader, reporting to the Chief People Officer and operating as the company’s primary bar-raiser and talent strategist.

You will:

• Own full-spectrum recruiting (technical + non-technical) across Engineering/Product, GTM, and G&A

• Centralize and elevate Laurel’s recruiting capability (process, tools, systems, pitch, employment brand)

• Lead all execution—from intake to sourcing to close—operating in high-speed, high-precision mode

• Build a world-class recruiting function

• Partner deeply with hiring managers to clarify needs, sharpen signals, and make better/faster decisions

• Push back with conviction when expectations are misaligned or when talent quality is at risk

• Move towards a steady 15–20 hires per quarter, without compromising our bar, values, or velocity
  

This is a role for someone who loves the work of recruiting and who wants to build leverage, not headcount.

You are the person who ensures we hire the team that can actually achieve our mission.

Key Responsibilities

1. Build & Run a High-Level Recruiting Engine

• Own the full recruiting lifecycle for all roles (technical and non-technical).

• Establish high signal, lightweight processes that keep the company moving fast without sacrificing talent quality.

• Centralize recruiting workflows so hiring managers have clarity, speed, and partnership, not chaos.

• Develop and maintain a predictable hiring rhythm that allows leaders to plan and deliver.

2. Be the Company’s Bar-Raiser

• Evaluate all candidates through the lens of talent density, leverage, and Laurel’s cultural trade-offs.

• Partner with leaders to define what “stunning talent” looks like in their function, then hold the line.

• Push hiring managers to sharpen their thinking, clarify priorities, and make decisions faster with better data. Data is the guide for decision making. This role will determine which metrics will move the needle and how we will gather and report to improve company performance.

• Ensure every hire meaningfully improves the team.
  

3. Talent Strategy & Business Partnership

• Build strong relationships with Engineering, Product, GTM, and G&A leaders; understand their domains deeply.

• Translate business strategy into hiring plans, staffing models, org design and recruiting allocation.

• Forecast and proactively plan rather than operate reactively.

• Bring market intelligence: compensation ranges, role design, competitive talent behavior, and candidate expectations.
  

4. Elevate Laurel’s Employment Brand & Candidate Pitch

• Refine and continuously evolve how we tell our story—why Laurel exists, how we work, and the trade-offs required.

• Deliver a crisp, compelling pitch that differentiates us from every other startup.

• Ensure every candidate interaction—human or automated—reflects clarity, rigor, and the seriousness of our mission.
  

5. Assess and Potentially Rebuild the Recruiting Function

• Build the business case if it strengthens speed, quality, and leverage.

• Define the future version of our recruiting tech stack, systems, workflows, and reporting.

• Operate with MVP mindset: simple, fast experiments → validated systems → scalable foundations.
  

6. Drive Performance, Prioritization & Accountability in Hiring

• Create processes that clarify: what roles we’re hiring, why now, and how we will measure success.

• Coach leaders through trade-offs, urgency, and sequencing.

• Ensure consistent calibration, feedback, and iteration across all hiring teams.

• Make in-office expectations (3+ days/week) explicit and non-negotiable throughout the funnel.
  

Ideal Experience & Profile

You may have been a Head of Talent, Director of Recruiting, VP of Talent, or a senior recruiting leader operating inside a high-growth, founder-led startup.

You likely bring:

• Full-cycle recruiting mastery across technical and non-technical roles

• Experience building or optimizing recruiting functions (centralized systems, processes, and tools)

• Track record of 8–10 hires per quarter without compromising the bar

• Experience influencing leadership teams and pushing back with data, clarity, and conviction

• Strong ability to assess talent quality and see around corners in org design and team evolution

• Deep understanding of how different functions (EPD, GTM, G&A) operate, succeed, and hire

• Experience managing contractors/RPO and evaluating build-vs-buy recruiting models
  

Bonus if you’ve operated in an environment with:

• High urgency

• High rejection rate / high calibration

• Limited internal resources

• Hybrid/in-office collaboration

• Founder-level expectations and pace
  
  

How You Work

This role is for someone who loves the craft of recruiting and wants to operate at championship levels.

You likely:

• Move fast and decisively, but not sloppily

• Prefer centralization, clarity, and simplicity in process

• Thrive in hybrid environments and make time together meaningful

• Communicate directly, cleanly, and without politics

• Are energized by being a truth-teller and bar-raiser

• Can zoom out to strategy and zoom right back into sourcing or running a calibration session

• Care about purposeful work with exceptional people, not work/life balance for its own sake

• Feel comfortable pushing back on both candidates and leaders when needed

• Believe your job is to hire people who level up the entire company, not just fill roles
  

Who This Role Is Not For

To be explicit:

This is not the right role if:

• You want to build a large recruiting team for its own sake

• You prefer long planning cycles, heavy process, or structured corporate talent functions

• You avoid challenging leaders directly or struggle with pushback

• You want high predictability, rich work/life separation, or a slower pace

• You see recruiting as transactional rather than strategic

• You dislike hybrid environments or cannot be in the office 3+ days/week

• You rely on warm inbound talent rather than outbound, strategic sourcing, and real partnership
  

Location & Reporting

• Location: SF or NY, 3+ days/week in-person

• Reports to: Head of People/CPO
  

If you’re energized by the idea of building a high-bar, high-speed recruiting function that shapes the company capable of accomplishing our mission—and you’re willing to live the trade-offs that come with that—we’d love to talk.

Why join Laurel:

• To date, we've secured significant funding from renowned venture capitalists (Google Ventures, IVP, Anthos, Upfront Ventures), as well as notable individuals like Marc Benioff, Gokul Rajaram, Kevin Weil, and Alexis Ohanian

• A smart, fun, collaborative, and inclusive team

• Great employee benefits, including equity and 401K

• Bi-annual, in-person company off-sites, in unique locations, to grow and share time with the team

• An opportunity to perform at your best while growing, making a meaningful impact on the company's trajectory, and embodying our core values: understanding your "why," dancing in the rain, being your whole self, and sanctifying time

We encourage diverse perspectives and rigorous thinkers who aren't afraid to challenge the status quo. Laurel is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. We are not able to support visa sponsorship or relocation assistance. 

If you think you'd be a good fit for this role, we encourage you to apply, even if you don’t perfectly match all the bullet points in the job description. At Laurel, we strive to create an inclusive culture that encourages people from all walks of life to bring their unique, diverse perspectives to work. Every day, we aim to build an environment that empowers us all to do the best work of our careers, and we can't wait to show you what we have to offer!