Manager, Partner Firm Recruiting

Ascend; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Ascend is seeking a Recruiting Manager, East, to lead a regional team of recruiters and sourcers across the Northeast and Southeast. You will partner with firm CEOs and heads of people to scale hiring as Ascend expands its partner network.

You will own the operating rhythm, drive AI-enabled recruiting workflows, coach leaders, and escalate issues with cross-functional partners. The role requires strong communication and a track record of delivering high-quality hires in a PE-backed environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with at least 2–3 years leading a team of 3+ recruiters.
• Proven track record building high-performing recruiting teams and coaching on assessment.
• Hands-on full-cycle expertise with strong stakeholder management and closing skills.
• Bias for action with strong prioritization and follow-through.
• Active AI fluency in recruiting processes and responsible adoption.
• Experience running an operations or enablement layer for recruiting teams.
• Excellent communication and influence with senior hiring leaders.
• East Coast based, willing to travel quarterly to partner firms.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of recruiters and sourcers across the Northeast and Southeast.
• Build trusted relationships with firm CEOs, CGOs, and Heads of People; advise on workforce planning and talent strategy.
• Own operating rhythm: weekly 1:1s, pipeline reviews, calibration, reporting.
• Serve as day-to-day operational anchor for recruiting; manage escalation and documentation.
• Drive hiring outcomes across all firms in the region; coach on senior searches and negotiations.
• Embed AI fluency into workflows; leverage data to improve funnel health.
• Partner with platform peers on governance, tooling, and cross-team initiatives.
• Lead talent integration for new firms joining the region.

Skills

Leadership

Team management

Full-cycle recruiting

Hiring strategy

AI in recruiting

Stakeholder management

Cross-regional collaboration

Job description

About Ascend

Ascend empowers entrepreneurial CPAs to reach their goals with an innovative growth model that brings their firms into the new age. Backed by private equity from people-focused Alpine Investors, Ascend is building a modern platform for regional accounting firms that enables them to stay independent while accessing the resources of a large CPA firm to help them grow. Ascend provides access to growth capital, robust talent acquisition, best-of-breed technology, a catalytic leadership system, shared back-office services, and modernized equity incentives so that firms can surmount today's industry challenges and reach their full potential. Founded in January 2023, the company attained revenues sufficient to qualify it as a Top 100 U.S. accounting firm within six months of operation. For more information, visit ascendtogether.com.

About Ascend

Ascend empowers entrepreneurial CPAs to reach their goals with an innovative growth model that brings their firms into the new age. Backed by private equity from people-focused Alpine Investors, Ascend is building a modern platform for regional accounting firms that enables them to stay independent while accessing the resources of a large CPA firm to help them grow. Ascend provides access to growth capital, robust talent acquisition, best-of-breed technology, a catalytic leadership system, shared back-office services, and modernized equity incentives so that firms can surmount today's industry challenges and reach their full potential. Founded in January 2023, the company attained revenues sufficient to qualify it as a Top 100 U.S. accounting firm within six months of operation. For more information, visit ascendtogether.com.

About Alpine Investors

Alpine Investors is a people-driven private equity firm that is committed to building great companies by working with, learning from, and developing exceptional people. Alpine prides itself on fostering cultures where people value empowerment, diversity, fairness, integrity, and intellectual honesty. Founded in 2001, Alpine specializes in investments in companies in the software and services industries. Alpine has over $15 billion in AUM and has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Salt Lake City. For more information on the firm, visit www.alpineinvestors.com

Position Summary

Reporting to the Director of Partner Firm Recruiting, the Recruiting Manager, East will lead recruiting outcomes across our Northeast and Southeast partner firms. You will manage a team of high performing recruiters and sourcers, partner with firm CEOs, CGOs, and Heads of People across your region, and build the systems that allow recruiting to scale alongside Ascend's growth. You will also serve as the operational anchor for the broader recruiting team, owning the escalation path, documentation, and tooling triage that keep the function running. Your impact will be measured by your team's performance, the strength of your firm partnerships, and the smooth onboarding of new firms joining the Ascend platform.

In This Role, You Will

• Team Leadership & Development: Lead and develop a team of recruiters and sourcers across the Northeast and Southeast. Foster a high-performing team through clear expectations, consistent feedback, and meaningful coaching.
• Firm Partnership & Strategic Advisory: Build trusted relationships with firm CEOs, CGOs, and Heads of People across your region. Partner with firm leadership on workforce planning, market intelligence, and talent strategy, bringing recruiting expertise and data into conversations that drive well-informed hiring decisions.
• Operational Excellence & Scale: Own the operating rhythm for the team — weekly 1:1s, pipeline reviews, search calibration, and reporting cadences. Build scalable processes and systems that improve quality, speed, and candidate experience as the team grows.
• Operating Backbone & Escalation (Platform-Wide): Serve as the day-to-day operational anchor for the recruiting function. Own the escalation path for questions from recruiters across the platform — not just your region — resolving what you can and routing what you can’t. Own the team’s process documentation and playbook, and handle tier-1 issues with our recruiting-product account managers, flagging and triaging tooling problems before they reach the team.
• Hiring Outcomes & Execution: Drive consistent delivery against hiring plans across every firm in your region. Coach the team through complex senior searches, candidate negotiations, and search calibration moments. Lead with a solutions-oriented mindset, turning challenges into clear paths forward.
• AI & Modern Recruiting: Embed AI fluency into the team's operating model, identifying high-leverage workflows and ensuring the team stays at the leading edge of AI-enabled recruiting. Use data and recruiting analytics to surface insights and continuously improve funnel health.
• Platform Partnership & Cross-Functional Influence: Partner with the Director of Partner Firm Recruiting and platform peers on governance, tooling, reporting standards, and team-wide initiatives that raise the bar for Ascend recruiting. Represent your team and region with clarity, surfacing risks proactively and translating field realities into platform decisions.
• Integration & Growth: Lead talent integration for new firms joining in your region, ensuring a smooth transition and a strong start for firm leadership and their hiring needs.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of full-cycle experienced-hire recruiting experience, with at least 2-3 years managing a team of 3+ recruiters in a high-growth, PE-backed, or professional services environment
• Experience building and developing high-performing recruiting teams, including coaching on assessment, stakeholder management, and closing
• Deep, hands-on expertise in full cycle recruiting, with a track record of leading teams to deliver consistent hiring outcomes in high growth environments
• Strong operator with a bias for action and follow-through; sets priorities, navigates ambiguity with sound judgment, and drives execution and results consistently
• Active AI fluency in your own workflow and a track record of coaching your team on AI adoption; demonstrating curiosity, a willingness to learn, and sound judgment in applying AI responsibly to improve efficiency and impact
• Experience running an operations or enablement layer for a recruiting team — escalation, documentation, process ownership, and vendor/tooling triage.
• Excellent communication and influence skills with the ability to build trusted partnerships at the senior level while supporting your team's direct working relationships with hiring leaders
• East Coast based, with willingness to travel quarterly to partner firms across the Northeast and Southeast

What You Can Count On

We live by our values:

Own it. We seize growth opportunities with the passion, speed and accountability of an entrepreneur.

Serve whole-heartedly. We love our people and serve them with positivity and kindness.

Be excellent. We set a high bar because our mission matters.

Win together. We stay in sync, achieve as a team and celebrate each other.

Bring the sunshine. We have fun and bring enthusiasm to make the journey joyful.

At Ascend, we provide a fair and equal employment opportunity for all candidates regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, age, marital status, disability, or any other legally protected characteristic. Ascend hires and promotes individuals solely based on qualifications for the position to be filled and business needs.