Head of Talent Ops

Professional networking has barely moved in twenty years. Profiles are static, representation is manual, and the infrastructure connecting top talent to the right rooms has never been rebuilt from the ground up. Profound is building the AI rep for the top 1% of professionals — a voice AI and LLM-powered layer that understands a person at a depth a static profile never could, and represents, connects, and amplifies them the way Hollywood reps do for actors and athletes, except at scale.

The founding team is Anuj Rathi — previously Chief Business and Growth Officer at Cleartrip, CPMO at Jupiter, SVP Revenue and Growth at Swiggy, and the first product manager at Flipkart — and Prashant. Angel-funded, global from day one, and building from Bengaluru for the world.

The bar here is intentionally higher than what India consumer tech has historically asked for. Small team, top-1% standards, anti-AI-slop. Beta launches in the next few months.

A global category. Built from Bengaluru, for the world.

Profound is pre-beta and building the operating layer that will become its global playbook. This is the founding seat for that work.

You'll own how Profound runs senior mandates end to end — intake, calibration, shortlist, close, 90-day retention. You'll set the bar for the closer team, define the handoff between AI and human judgment, and work directly with the founder on mandate selection, pricing, and the metrics that keep the engine moving. The environment is intense, the learning curve is steep, and the playbook you write here is the one Profound licenses to the world.

• The end-to-end operating playbook for senior mandates — intake through placement through 90-day retention, written from scratch.
• Mandate selection — which roles Profound takes, which it walks from, and the calibration call that surfaces the real brief behind the brief.
• The closer team — who to hire, how to set their bar, how to compensate them so the right people stay.
• The AI-to-human handoff line — what the AI handles, where the closer takes over, and what "good" looks like at every step of the shortlist.
• Pricing and unit economics — success fee structures, retainer math, renewal pricing, and when to walk from a mandate before it costs more than it earns.
• Internal tooling and metrics — the rituals, dashboards, and data that keep time-to-fill, submit-to-shortlist, and offer-acceptance moving with speed and quality.

• You have five to eight years inside a recruiting firm running senior mandates — and you walked away knowing exactly what was broken about it.
• You can tell within ten minutes of a brief whether a mandate is worth taking. You've fired clients, rebuilt recruiter teams, and held the conversation where a hiring manager moves the goalposts for the third time.
• You live in the numbers: time-to-fill, submit-to-shortlist, offer-acceptance, 90-day retention. These aren't metrics you report — they're the lens you think through.
• You're AI-native enough to have already torn apart your own workflow and rebuilt it. You think in leverage: two closers plus eight AI agents outperforming ten people isn't a thought experiment, it's a design principle.
• You have judgment on senior talent — the gap between a strong AVP and a Director, between a Director and a VP, across product, engineering, and design. You can sit on a calibration call and pull the hiring manager's real need to the surface.
• You understand the commercial side: success fee structures, retainer math, when to walk, how to price a renewal. You've held P&L-adjacent accountability inside a recruiting context.
• You're comfortable being the only person in the seat for the first stretch — no team to delegate to, no playbook to inherit, no process to follow that someone else built.
• Founding-team energy. You bring your own conviction to the work, not just execution against a brief.

• Hold the bar, always. Top-1% standards on every mandate — not because it's in the brief, but because it's the only way the playbook scales.
• Think in leverage. Two sharp closers plus AI agents beat ten generalists. Design for that ratio from day one.
• Own the commercial reality. Mandate selection, pricing, and walk-away decisions are yours to make — bring the judgment to make them well.
• Work founder-direct. Short feedback loops, no layers, high context. Bring your thinking, not just your output.
• Move with speed and quality together. Fast without sharp is noise. Sharp without fast is too late. Hold both.
• Build for global from the first line. The playbook written here gets licensed. Write it like it will be read in twelve cities.

Angel-funded founding team, meaningful ESOPs as part of the founding seat. Compensation is ₹15–30L per year fixed. You'll report directly to Anuj Rathi, co-founder. This is the seat where the global playbook gets written.