Recruitment Partner

You have been billing for years. You know how to find talent, you know how to close, and you are good at it. What you do not have is a say in how the business is run, a book that is genuinely yours, or tooling that was built by people who have actually sat in your chair.

This is a partner-track seat, not a desk. You take ownership of a business line, you run it with real autonomy, and you are in the room when the firm makes decisions about where it goes next.

If you are looking for a bigger version of the job you already have, this is not it. If you are looking for the last recruitment job you take before you either become an owner here or go do it yourself, keep reading.

About Decode Talent

Decode Talent is a Calgary-based engineering and software talent advisory firm. It was founded by two cousins who share not only the same name, but the same vision for how recruitment can be done better through advisory, data and technology.

Here is what will make your job easier than it would be at the staffing firms you will be competing against.

We vet from both sides, with two kinds of expertise most firms have neither of.

Engineers vet our engineers. The most common complaint about technical staffing is that recruiters cannot tell a strong engineer from a confident one. Our technical screening is run by engineers who have shipped production systems, so when a candidate reaches a VP of Engineering they have already been assessed by a peer.

A Chartered Professional in Human Resources (CPHR) vets the fit. Technical capability is only half of why placements succeed or fail. Our CPHR assesses whether a candidate will genuinely work well inside a particular organisation, and whether a client's operating environment is one where a placement can succeed at all. That second question matters more than the industry likes to admit — most failed placements are not failures of skill.

The practical consequence is that we qualify in both directions. We turn down engagements where we can see the operating conditions will not support the hire. You will have the standing to walk away from a bad-fit account, and that is a far more powerful position to sell from than desperation.

Technical leadership with real scale behind it. Our CTO brings 25 years in engineering leadership, including multiple companies taken through billion-dollar exits. This serves not only our client base but our growth trajectory of the technology Decode Talent owns.

A recruitment platform we built ourselves. We run on Curator, our own ATS and recruitment technology, rather than reselling someone else's. The R&D behind it has qualified for SR&ED and other Canadian innovation tax credits, and we keep investing in it as a core part of the business. Practically, that means when the platform gets in your way, you tell us and we change it.

What you will own

A business line, not a requisition queue. You will take a vertical, a geography or a service line and run it as your own P&L. Which one is a conversation, not an assignment — we would rather build around where you already have credibility and relationships than hand you someone else's leftovers.

Full-desk authority. You own client acquisition, terms, delivery standards and how you build your side of the team. You decide which accounts are worth taking, and you have the firm's backing to decline the ones that are not.

A seat at the table. You are in on firm-level decisions — pricing, positioning, what we build into the platform next, which markets we go after. Partners here are consulted before decisions get made, not briefed after.

The team you need to scale past your own hours. Billing ceilings are usually a delivery problem, not a sales problem. You will have technical screening, CPHR-led fit assessment and sourcing support behind you, so the hours you spend are spent on the work only you can do.

What you bring

A track record of consistent billings in agency recruitment, ideally in technology, engineering or another specialised market Demonstrated business development ability — you have opened accounts, not just worked ones handed to you The judgement to qualify an engagement properly, including the confidence to turn one down Comfort operating without a manager checking your pipeline, and the discipline that requires An interest in building a business, not just hitting a number What this is not

We would rather lose you at the job description than three months in.

This is not a salaried seat with a bonus attached. Your earnings track what you build. The offer of employment will be comprised of guaranteed, contingent and profit pool based compensation.

This is not a role where the accounts come to you. Early on, you will be building.

This is not a firm that will let you place into an environment you know will chew the candidate up, even if it bills. If you find that constraint frustrating rather than useful, we are not a fit.