Kalepa - Lead Technical Recruiter (New York)

About Kalepa:

Insurance is a $7T global industry built on professional labor: underwriting, claims, pricing, operations, and distribution. Kalepa is building AI that can perform that work.

We create professional-grade AI systems for insurers: software that can read, reason, decide, and act inside real workflows and operate over long-time horizons. Kalepa begins by augmenting professionals with the tools to succeed at their jobs. That earns us the right to learn from real decisions, capture decision traces, and automate what can be automated successfully over time.

Our products are already in production with leading insurers, driving measurable outcomes and expanding across functions. The opportunity is far broader than any single workflow: to build the AI operating system for decision-making across insurance. For people who want to work on AI that matters, in a sector where correctness, trust, and real-world impact count, Kalepa is just getting started.

Kalepa is backed by leading investors such as IA Ventures and Inspired Capital, and our team brings experience from Facebook, Palantir, Google, Amazon, McKinsey, Mastercard, and Uber.

Our Values (This is important):

Many organizations have a dusty list of corporate values that no one ever follows. Kalepa is not one of those companies. Our values are designed to unlock the potential of our employees.

Success at Kalepa is bred from five core principles:

• Hustle and Determination - We hire people who take full ownership of their craft and relentlessly pursue excellence with speed and determination. We choose the hard problems and do not give up. This is the foundation of how we work and how we win.
• Deliver Customer Impact - We're obsessed with customer impact. Every feature, every line of code, every decision is measured against one question: does this help insurers make better decisions? If it doesn't drive speed, accuracy, or profitability for our customers, we don't build it.
• Meritocracy - We're building something exceptional, and that requires exceptional people and ideas. We have a high bar but we reward excellence with rapid growth. If you're the best at what you do, you'll thrive here.
• Transparency - We value honest, transparent communication over politics. We challenge ideas, not people. We say what needs to be said, even when it's hard. This is how we solve problems fast and find the truth.
• Experiment Relentlessly - Many of the problems we face have never been solved before. We tackle them by testing quickly, measuring rigorously, and iterating until we find the path forward. Speed of learning is our advantage.

In addition to our NY office, we have remote employees speaking 10+ languages across the globe. But we invest in bringing our people together both for regional meetups and global offsites (2021 - Playa Del Carmen | 2022 - Rome | 2023 - Buenos Aires | 2024 - Lisbon | 2025 - Cartagena).

Kalepa’s culture isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. But for the people who are a fit, they can’t imagine working elsewhere.

About the role:

Base Salary: $180k–$220k*

Location: New York, NY (Hybrid)

Kalepa is seeking a Lead Technical Recruiter to build the engine behind our next stage of growth. You will own full-cycle recruiting for Engineering, Product, and Design functions and shape the processes, tools, and brand that will define how Kalepa hires for years to come.

Responsibilities:

• Own full-cycle recruiting for Engineering roles: intake, sourcing, interviews, offer, and close.
• Run intake with hiring managers to turn open roles into clear scorecards and search strategies.
• Source and build pipelines for passive, hard-to-find technical and AI/ML talent.
• Bring market and comp intelligence into hiring plans, and lead offer negotiation and closing.
• Build and improve our interview process: kits, scorecards, structured debriefs.
• Act as a strategic partner to company leaders and hiring managers, followed by strong execution, ensuring that all hiring goals are met in a timely manner with top-tier candidates.
• Strengthen Kalepa's employer brand in the engineering and AI community.

About you:

• 5+ years of full life-cycle technical recruiting experience.
• Track record hiring backend, infrastructure, full-stack, or ML/AI engineers.
• Experience partnering directly with engineering leaders on intake and closing.
• A strong, independent sourcer, not just an inbound processor.
• Fluent in Greenhouse (or a comparable ATS) and modern sourcing tools such as Juicebox, Metaview, and Seekout.
• Comfortable owning a full requisition load with minimal oversight.
• Creative and energized by experimenting with new tools to identify and engage the highest quality engineers.
• Able to critique your own work and be transparent in what’s working and what’s not.
• Experience with nurturing pipelines over time and maintaining relationships with candidates beyond the first interaction.

As a plus:

• Experience recruiting for AI/ML or LLM-focused roles.
• Experience building a recruiting function from an early stage.
• Insurtech, fintech, or other regulated B2B SaaS recruiting experience.

What you’ll get:

• Competitive salary (based on experience level).
• Significant equity options package.
• 401(k) plan with employer contribution (regardless of employee contribution)
• Excellent benefits: 100% covered medical, 100% covered vision and dental, and others.
• Work with an ambitious, smart, global, and fun team to transform a $7T global industry.
• 20 days of PTO a year.
• Global team offsites (2023 - Buenos Aires, 2024 - Lisbon, 2025 - Cartagena)
• Healthy living/gym stipend. Mobile phone bill stipend.
• Continuing education credits.

*The salary range listed is an estimate and will vary based on a variety of factors. Final compensation will be determined during the offer stage based on relevant experience, performance during the interview process, and geographic location, and may therefore differ from the posted range.