From the listing
About the role
We're an agile, globally distributed talent acquisition team with the creativity, expertise and ambition to revolutionize talent attraction — built around productivity and a 6-star candidate experience.
This role sits in the Talent team and runs as a Payward-wide shared service across Payward, NinjaTrader, Reap and future acquisitions. It reports to our Global Head of Talent Acquisition with a dotted line to our Chief People Officer.
This hire will handle confidential searches, sensitive succession conversations and market intelligence, working directly with our Board, C-Suite and broader Payward leadership team on a daily basis.
What you'll do
- Own executive recruiting end to end across the Payward platform spanning C-level, Board, VP+ and bespoke Advisor mandates.
- Partner directly with the Co-CEOs and the executive team on the searches that matter most, absorbing their pace and operating as a trusted advisor.
- Run board and advisory mandates with the discretion they require. Confidentiality here is structural, not a preference.
- Define how executive hiring scales as a shared service across a growing, multi-brand platform.
- Own the external search partner strategy: managing relationships with key retained firms, and ensuring seamless partnership if and when they are engaged.
- Report to the Head of Talent and operate as a member of the talent leadership team, with a dotted line into the Chief People Officer.
What they're looking for
- 6+ years of executive recruiting experience, with demonstrable ownership of executive searches (VP, C-level, Board) from mandate through close.
- A selection mindset over a screening one. You calibrate candidates against business strategy and can defend a shortlist to a skeptical executive audience.
- Closing and negotiation strength at executive level: pre-closing, offer construction, equity and comp complexity.
- Experience partnering closely with Compensation & Benefits and the HR business partners to ensure full alignment throughout a search lifecycle.
- Business acumen to understand and pitch a complex platform business credibly. Executive candidates buy the thesis, not the job spec.
- Proven agency and retained-firm management — briefing, accountability and spend control.
- Exceptional written and verbal English at executive register.
- Discretion by default, with a track record of executive searches quietly.
- Comfort operating in ambiguity, with responsiveness to candidates and executives across all time zones.
- Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, given the proximity this role requires to our executives and to board and advisory mandates.
Nice to have
- In-house executive recruiting experience at a fintech, brokerage, exchange or payments company.
- Background inside a retained executive search firm, in addition to in-house work.
- Experience building executive recruiting as a shared service across multiple entities, or across multiple portfolio companies.
- Exposure to crypto or digital assets.
From the company page
Benefits
The hot takeJeff's read on Kraken
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