Recruiting Programs Manager

Vapi; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Excellent equity ownership

Comprehensive health coverage

Team off-sites

Flexible time off

$10k L&D budget

Job summary

Vapi is hiring a hands-on Head of Talent to own employer branding, careers content, events, referral programs, and the university/early-career pipeline. You’ll report to Head of Talent and build programs from zero to scalable, measurable efforts.

You’ll run candidate-facing programs, partner with Marketing, and obsess over cost-per-hire, referral rates, sourced-hire, time-to-fill, and offer acceptance to move fast in a competitive market for top technical talent.

Qualifications

• You’ve built recruiting programs, employer brand, or talent community from scratch.
• You’re an events operator able to run hackathons, meetups, or campus sessions end-to-end.
• You think in recruiting metrics: cost-per-hire, referral %, sourced-hire %, time-to-fill, and offer acceptance.

Responsibilities

• Own every candidate-facing program: employer brand, careers content, events, referrals, and talent pipeline initiatives.
• Partner closely with Marketing to ensure a strong candidate-facing presence and a cohesive employer brand.
• Develop and report on metrics like cost-per-hire, referral rate, sourced-hire, and time-to-fill to guide decisions.

Job description

Voice AI that resolves, not transfers.

Most phone systems trap callers in menus and scripts. Vapi is the platform for deploying voice agents that know your business and can listen, adapt, and resolve in minutes.

• The numbers: 1 billion calls. 1 million developers. 10x enterprise ARR growth

• The customers: Amazon Ring, ServiceTitan, New York Life, Intuit, Kavak, and thousands more, from YC startups to the Fortune 500

• The news: a $50M Series B led by Peak XV Partners, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund), Y Combinator, and our earlier backers. Total raised: $72M

Why We're Hiring This Role:

• We're competing directly with Anthropic, OpenAI, and other high-profile AI companies for the same talent. At that level of competition, employer brand and a candidate-facing presence are part of how we win offers, not a nice-to-have.

• Today this work happens informally, absorbed by our Talent leaders on top of their day jobs. We're building the capability in-house with a dedicated owner instead of outsourcing it to an agency, or letting it not happen at all.

• You'll own every candidate-facing program at Vapi: employer brand and careers content, technical events and community, the referral program, university and early-career pipeline, and our talent community. You'll report directly to our Head of Talent.

What You'll Do:

• 30 Day: Go deep on how we hire today. Meet hiring managers, Recruiting, and Marketing's events lead; audit our careers site, Glassdoor/Comparably presence, referral program, and event footprint; baseline the numbers (cost-per-hire, referral %, sourced-hire %, time-to-fill, offer acceptance).

• 60 Day: Ship the first wins. Relaunch the referral program with clear incentives, campaigns, and tracking toward 25–30% of hires via referral; stand up the shared event calendar with Marketing (and the monthly dedupe sync); publish your first wave of careers-site and "life at Vapi" content.

• 90 Day: Run your first programs end-to-end. Host a recruiting-focused technical event (hackathon, meetup, or campus session); launch the talent community and nurture motion (newsletter, team spotlights, silver-medalist re-engagement); present a 12-month program roadmap with targets against your baseline.

Who You Are:

• You've built recruiting programs, employer brand, or talent community from scratch, ideally at a fast-growing startup competing for technical talent.

• You're an events operator: you can run a hackathon, engineering meetup, or campus info session end-to-end, on time and on budget.

• You think in recruiting metrics: cost-per-hire, referral %, sourced-hire %, time-to-fill, and offer acceptance are how you measure your own work.

• You know the difference between marketing to customers and marketing to candidates, and you can partner tightly with a Marketing team without duplicating it.

• You write well. Careers pages, newsletters, event copy, and team spotlights will all carry your voice.

• You're a builder who's comfortable being the first and only owner of this function, going from zero to working programs fast.

How We Work:

• Build something worthy of love

  • Craft matters. We aim to build products and experiences customers genuinely love, not just tolerate.

• Commit and follow through

  • We finish what we start and build trust by being people others can count on.

• Why not today?

  • We value urgency and momentum. The fastest path to customer value usually wins.

• Seek raw input

  • We go directly to customers, data, and teammates instead of relying on summaries or assumptions.

• It's our problem

  • We operate as one team. We share credit, own mistakes together, and support each other when things get hard.

• Be direct and kind

  • We give feedback clearly, respectfully, and without delay.

Why Vapi:

• Generational impact: Build the human interface for every business

• Ownership culture: 70% of the company are previous founders

• Kind team: The founders, Jordan and Nikhil, are Canadians

• Tier-1 Investors: YC, KP seed, Bessemer Series A

What We Offer:

• Real stake: We offer a competitive salary and excellent equity ownership

• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision plans

• Team love: We love hanging out, and we do quarterly off-sites

• Flexible time off: take what you need

• More: catered meals, transportation, gym, and a $10k annual L&D budget