About the Role
You'll be the first dedicated recruiter at Cents, and you'll own talent acquisition end to end. That means you’ll be running full-cycle searches across the company and building the hiring system that Cents will use for years.
You’ll have the opportunity to build a hiring strategy into a real process: a clear definition of what great hiring looks like here, interview loops that predict performance, managers who know how to interview, and a candidate experience that makes people want to say yes. You'll design it, get leaders to adopt it, and then run it every day.
You'll report to the VP of People and partner directly with leaders across the company on their most important hires. Our leaders care deeply about who joins Cents and they're eager for a partner who can bring structure, insight, and momentum to how we hire. The recruiter who thrives here is the one who brings a point of view, grounds it in data, and takes the initiative to move things forward. You'll help shape how this company grows, and you'll see the impact of your work in every team you help build.
Key Responsibilities
Build the hiring process from the ground up
• Define what the Cents hiring process should look like, stage by stage, from intake to offer, and get leadership aligned on it.
• Design structured interview loops for each role family: who interviews, what each stage assesses, and how we decide. Replace gut calls with scorecards and clear debriefs.
• Set up and own the tooling: the ATS, job templates, sourcing channels, scheduling, and the hiring metrics we track (time to fill, pass-through rates, source quality, offer acceptance).
• Build the playbooks that make hiring repeatable: intake templates, interview guides, reference and offer processes, and a candidate experience we'd be proud to go through ourselves.
Coach managers and guide every step
• Run kickoff and intake sessions with hiring managers that get to a real, agreed-upon profile before the search starts.
• Train interviewers on how to run a structured interview, ask better questions, avoid bias, and write feedback that helps the team decide.
• Stay in the room through the whole process: facilitating pre-briefs & debriefs, push for decisions, and coach through tough calls like a split panel or a competing offer.
Drive relationships forward and influence outcomes
• Build trusted partnerships with our executives and hiring managers.
• Bring a point of view. Push back on unrealistic profiles, unclear ownership, or slow feedback, and back it with market data and pipeline evidence.
• Own candidate experience from first touch to first day. Keep momentum in every search and never let a great candidate go quiet.
• Partner with the VP of People & CFO on workforce planning, comp benchmarking, and how hiring connects to onboarding and performance.
Run full-cycle searches
• Carry roles across engineering, product, sales, customer success, and G&A, including senior and leadership searches.
• Source proactively & build pipelines through outbound, referrals, and community.
• Screen, schedule, close. Run compensation conversations, offers, and negotiate with confidence.
• Tell the Cents story in a way that lands. We're modernizing an industry most people overlook, and the right candidates find that exciting once they understand it.
Work smarter with AI and automation
• Build AI-powered recruiting workflows that automate the repeatable parts of the job, such as sourcing lists, first-touch outreach, scheduling, and interview note synthesis, so your time goes to candidates and hiring managers.
• Pick the tools, set them up, and teach the team how to use them well. You'll own the recruiting stack end to end.
• Use the time you win back to raise the bar on the parts that can't be automated: judgment, relationships, and closing.
Requirements
• 6+ years of full-cycle recruiting, with experience in-house at a high-growth startup (Series A through C is the sweet spot). You've hired across functions, not just one.
• You've built before. You've stood up or rebuilt a hiring process, interview framework, or ATS from scratch, and you can tell us what you'd do differently now.
• Real influence with senior leaders. You have examples of changing an executive's mind about a profile, a process, or a candidate, and you did it with evidence and relationships rather than escalation.
• Strong sourcing chops. You can build a pipeline for a hard role without waiting for inbound.
• Comfort with data. You know your funnel numbers, you use them to diagnose problems, and you can explain them to a CFO.
• Ownership. You run toward ambiguity, you follow through, and you'd rather ship a good process this month than a perfect one next quarter.
• Clear, warm communication with candidates and colleagues alike. People should feel better about Cents after every conversation with you.
Nice to Haves
• Experience recruiting for vertical SaaS, SMB-focused software, or sales-heavy orgs.
• Hands-on experience with Ashby, Greenhouse, or Lever, and with LinkedIn Recruiter.
• Exposure to People operations beyond recruiting, such as onboarding, comp, or performance.
Why this Role?
You'll build, not inherit. Most senior recruiters join a machine someone else designed. Here you get a blank page and a leadership team that wants you to fill it.
You'll work at the right size. At 100 people, you can know every hiring manager personally and see the impact of a single great hire on the whole company.
About Cents
Cents is a New York-based technology company building the leading platform for the $40+ billion laundry and dry cleaning industry, helping laundromats, dry cleaners, and garment care businesses start, manage, and grow. We're backed by top-tier investors including Bessemer, Camber Creek, and Sumeru Equity Partners, and we were just ranked No. 101 on the Inc 5000 for 2026. Our team is full of passionate technology experts obsessed with supporting and empowering small business owners, and we're just getting started. If you want to help elevate an entire industry, this is where that happens.
Benefits Overview
We offer great compensation packages, and comprehensive health benefits, & believe in a strong cohesive team atmosphere. Our laundry stipend, gym stipend and access to learning opportunities from our team and network of advisors, and investors are just the starting point!
- Equity Options
- Unlimited PTO and 12 Paid Holidays
- Gym, Laundry and Work-from-home/Commuter stipend
- Parental leave – Up to 14 weeks fully paid for new parents
- Health benefits, including medical, dental, vision, mental health support, parental leave, life and AD&D insurance, and disability
- 401(k)
Cents is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital or familial status, pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions, military or veteran status, citizenship or immigration status, arrest or conviction record, domestic violence victim status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.