Chief of Staff (to the SVP of Engineering)

Company Description

SmartRecruiters is the Recruiting AI Company that transforms hiring for the world’s leading enterprises. Built for global scale, SmartRecruiters, an SAP company, delivers an AI-powered hiring platform that automates and optimizes the entire talent acquisition process, ensuring faster and smarter hiring decisions. More than 4,000 companies, including Amazon, Visa, and McDonald’s, rely on SmartRecruiters to build winning teams. In 2025, SmartRecruiters joined SAP, the global leader in enterprise applications. Together, SmartRecruiters and SAP are accelerating the reinvention of hiring by combining cutting-edge AI innovation with the scale, reach, and resources of SAP’s ecosystem.

At SmartRecruiters, we are a values-driven, globally focused tech company with strong financial backing and a bold vision for the future of work. We commit and dig deep, embracing challenges with grit, curiosity, and a drive for excellence. We foster a collaborative and inclusive work environment, where trust and determination bring us together. Because together, we will win.

Recognized by Fosway Industry Analysts as a strategic leader in recruitment technology for three consecutive years, and awarded by Comparably as a top company for Women, Perks and Benefits, Work-Life Balance, Happiness, Compensation, Diversity, and Culture – we take pride in creating a place where everyone can thrive. Our remote-friendly culture, competitive salaries, and strong internal mobility ensure that high performers have meaningful growth opportunities in an environment built on respect and empowerment.

Job Description

As the Chief of Staff (CoS) to the SVP of Engineering, you will become an operational “Swiss Army Knife” and a strategic partner helping to scale the executive’s time, attention, and decision-making capabilities. Your mission is to close the gap between business, product, and engineering strategies and day-to-day cross-functional execution across the entire enterprise.

Operating as an “air traffic controller” for the Engineering Leadership team, you will work to align priorities, unblock cross-functional dependencies (such as the intersections between Engineering, Product Management, Go-To-Market, and Finance), and translate strategic initiatives into actionable, measurable plans. While operations leaders focus on efficiency, your fundamental mandate is effectiveness: ensuring the engineering organization is working on the right things.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Planning & Goal Alignment

• Support the Engineering Strategy creation process. Help with collecting data and aligning Engineering with Product, Design, and Go-To-Market teams
• Translate the Engineering Strategy into Actionable Workstreams by breaking it down into departmental OKRs and quarterly initiatives
• Own the OKR framework and cadence by designing the annual and quarterly planning process
• Enforce organizational focus by limiting and safeguarding strategic WIP
• Foster the psychological safety required to set ambitious “stretch goals”

Rhythm of the Business & Executive Operations

• Design and facilitate the engineering leadership operating cadence
• Lead the weekly status calls by setting the agenda, circulating pre-reads, and following up on action items
• Capture critical decision logs and translate decisions into action
• Manage the Quarterly Business Review (QBR) and OKR grading cascades
• Own the cadence, content, and execution of engineering leadership off-sites

Strategic Communications & Culture

• Distill complex technical work into clear executive briefs, board-level narratives, and compelling organizational updates
• Prepare the SVP for the Executive Team and Board of Directors meetings by synthesizing complex technical progress into exec-ready presentations
• Help with building agenda and content for All Engineering and All R&D meetings

Financial Stewardship & Workforce Management

• Partner directly with the CFO, Chief People Officer and Executive Team to secure the overarching engineering budget and determine macro-level organizational design
• Support capacity planning and resulting hiring plan design and execution
• Partner with the People Team on designing Engineering Performance Management, Compensation Philosophy, and Promotion Processes
• Track Business Impact Metrics, including project Return on Investment (ROI), avoided costs, budget variance, and strategic resource allocation

Cross-Functional & Special Projects

• Act as a trusted proxy to resolve escalations and pressure-test assumptions without requiring the SVP’s constant presence
• Lead ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives such as M&A technical due diligence, cross-departmental restructurings, or new market entry analyses

Qualifications

• Relevant Experience: proven experience in Engineering Operations, Technical Program Management, Management Consulting, or Engineering Leadership, preferably within a high-growth or scaling technology company
• Technical Fluency: strong systems and architectural literacy; able to engage deeply with Principal Engineers, understand complex technical trade-offs
• Strategic Execution: demonstrated success designing, implementing, and managing organizational goal-setting frameworks (e.g., OKRs) and operating cadences (e.g., QBRs, strategic planning) at an enterprise scale
• Business & Financial Acumen: proven track record of partnering closely with Finance and People teams to drive macro-level capacity planning, manage departmental budgets, and track project ROI.
• Executive Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with a distinct ability to distill complex technical work into crisp, compelling board-level narratives and organizational updates
• Leadership & Influence: high EQ and low ego, with a proven ability to lead through influence without direct authority, pressure-test senior leaders’ assumptions, and foster a culture of psychological safety

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous experience serving as a Chief of Staff, Staff/Principal TPM, or an Engineering Manager who transitioned into strategic operations
• Direct experience managing post-M&A technical integrations or driving cross-departmental organizational restructurings
• Strong data analysis skills (e.g., SQL, advanced financial modeling) to independently query and validate business impact metrics

Additional Information

SmartRecruiters is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.