Manager, Strategic Projects

Paraform; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Paraform is seeking a Strategic Project Lead (SPL) Manager in San Francisco, California. This role is pivotal in driving the company’s growth by overseeing a vertical of SPLs, optimizing marketplace strategies, and managing client relationships with founders and CXOs.

You will start as an individual contributor and grow up to 6+ direct reports, significantly impacting revenue while building a strong team. Ideal candidates will have 4-7 years of relevant experience, strong problem-solving skills, and a proven ability to manage teams effectively.

Qualifications

• 4–7 years of experience in consulting or operational roles.
• Proven track record managing customer relationships.
• Experience coaching a multi-headcount team.

Responsibilities

• Learn and execute the SPL role as an individual contributor.
• Build and lead a vertical with multiple direct reports.
• Shape company growth by partnering with teams across the business.

Skills

Problem-solving

Growth/revenue-focused operations

Team management

Exceptional communication

Job description

About this role

We’re looking for a hungry, growth-obsessed operator and leader to help drive the next chapter of Paraform’s growth- while building their team around them.

Paraform’s customer base is growing rapidly (hundreds of new customers a month), and Strategic Project Leads are the commercial engine behind that growth. As an SPL Manager, you’ll start by learning the SPL role from the ground up — owning a book of business, running engagements, and driving hires as an individual contributor. Immediately, you’ll begin thinking and working to grow and optimize your vertical. From there, you’ll begin leading a team of SPLs, growing to ~6+ direct reports by the end of your first year.

This is more than a team lead role. You’ll help drive a vertical— driving marketplace density, deploying incentives, refining our delivery motion, and building toward P&L ownership as Paraform scales.

If you’re motivated by revenue ownership, energized by ambiguity, are excited to work with an exceptional team, and want to build something that matters — this is the role.

What you’ll do

Months 1–2: Learn the role as an IC

• Own a book of business end-to-end — build deep relationships with founders and executives, run structured intake calls, push back on comp and requirements when the data supports it, and drive hires with urgency and precision.
• Be the quality layer — deeply understand each role, translate that into sharp recruiter briefs, and ensure only the strongest candidates reach hiring managers. Your judgment is the bar.
• Leverage Paraform’s recruiter marketplace — mobilize recruiters, calibrate them in real time, and hold a high standard for quality and speed.

Months 2–12: Build and lead your vertical

• Drive a vertical — drive marketplace density, deploy incentives strategically, and build toward target hires and revenue within your vertical. Work with partners across the business (e.g., Sales, Supply, Marketing) to unlock growth and efficiencies in your vertical
• Coach and develop a team of SPLs — starting with 1–3 direct reports and growing to ~6-8+. Your vertical/team can continue to expand from there as you drive its growth.
• Set the standard for delivery excellence — drive execution quality across your team’s engagements through coaching, live calibration, and direct feedback.

Ongoing

• Shape how Paraform grows — feed customer insight back across the business and partner with sales, supply, product, and engineering to influence how the platform evolves at scale.
• Build toward P&L ownership — as verticals mature, take on increasing commercial responsibility including role targets, hiring goals, incentive deployment across the business and more.

What we look for

• 4–7 years of experience, with a foundation in both problem-solving (e.g., consulting / MBB) and growth/revenue-focused operator roles (e.g., category management, partnerships, new verticals, GM)
• Prior experience managing a multi-headcount team — you’ve coached and held people accountable to outcomes.
• Track record of owning customer relationships and driving revenue — you’ve sold to or managed relationships with founders, CXOs, or senior operators.
• You’re comfortable with performance-based comp and motivated by a target, not intimidated by it, and eager to grow your own slice of the business.
• Exceptional 80/20 instincts — you know where to spend your time and don’t lose the thread across competing priorities.
• Resourceful and creative — you’ve built things without a full toolkit, moved fast under ambiguity, and found the fix when the playbook didn’t exist.
• Resilient and comfortable with ambiguity — you thrive when things aren’t fully figured out and can hold multiple threads without dropping them.
• Caring, high-ownership leadership style — you set a high bar and invest in the people around you.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication.
• Bonus points for start up and/or marketplace experience (e.g., operations, S&O, account management at a company like Lyft)

See more about the SPL (IC) role and Paraform here: https://www.paraform.com/share/paraform/cm6hrt3dq000dk00czzdcks9t

About Paraform:

Paraform is a marketplace modernizing one of the largest and most fragmented markets in the world: hiring. We partner with industry leaders like Cursor, Palantir, Windsurf, Decagon, Shopify, Coinbase, and Hightouch to hire world‑class talent, and are growing quickly - 8×-ing revenue last year.

Paraform is the first end-to-end AI recruiting marketplace that connects companies with thousands of specialized recruiters and AI agents that work together to fill roles faster and more accurately.

Our mission is to make hiring fast, reliable, and scalable for every company in the world.

At Paraform, we believe recruiting works best when the right people are working on the right problems, combining human judgment with AI that truly understands hiring. That’s why we’re building a new foundation for how companies hire, bringing together specialized recruiters and modern AI tools.

We treat recruiters like entrepreneurs, not vendors – and we’re building the financial, operational, and technical infrastructure that powers their success.

We are backed by the best investors and technology leaders: Felicis, A*, BOND, Liquid 2, DST Global, the founders of YouTube, Instacart, Canva, and more.