Senior Talent Researcher

As a Talent Researcher at TRM Labs, you’ll play a foundational role in enabling high-quality, high-velocity hiring. You will lead research efforts to uncover top talent in highly specialized domains, develop market intelligence, and build strategic longlists to accelerate hiring across technical teams. This role sits at the intersection of research, analysis, and recruiting execution — ideal for someone who is deeply curious, analytically sharp, and excited to build highly specialized team at scale.

The impact you’ll have here:

• Build organizational charts and talent maps across high-priority companies and sectors, surfacing high-potential candidates and under-the-radar talent.
• Partner with recruiters and hiring managers to define research questions and clarify search criteria. Translate fuzzy ideas into actionable frameworks and longlists.
• Deliver competitive talent insights (e.g., compensation, location trends, hiring velocity) that shape hiring strategy and increase hiring precision.
• Proactively maintain and refresh longlists in core verticals to support just-in-time sourcing when a new role opens.
• Drive efficiency across the research function by improving tooling, workflows, templates, and data accuracy.

What we’re looking for:

• 5+ years of experience in talent research, executive search, or sourcing with a strong research component.
• Demonstrated ability to build talent maps and org charts across technical or executive roles.
• Experience using sourcing/research tools like LinkedIn Insights, LinkedIn Recruiter, Gem, deep research techniques, and Airtable or GSheets.
• Analytical mindset with ability to generate insights from data and present them in concise, actionable formats.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills; ability to collaborate asynchronously across time zones.
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and shifting priorities in a high-growth, fast-paced environment.
• Bonus if you’ve done research within: blockchain infrastructure, crypto security, fintech fraud, or government threat intelligence.

About the Team:

• Our talent team is fully remote, embracing async communication and collaboration through Slack channels, thorough documentation, and proactive updates to keep work moving forward smoothly across time zones.
• We’re committed to structured alignment, holding weekly hiring syncs for each role, weekly team sourcing syncs, and bi-weekly team meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page and to solve challenges collectively.
• Driven by a dedication to our craft, we continuously refine our best practices and data quality to deliver an exceptional experience for both internal stakeholders and candidates, supported by precise, reliable reporting.
• As a globally distributed team, we operate across various time zones, yet most of us overlap for collaboration and meetings between 7am–12pm PST, bringing flexibility and resilience to our work routines.
• All team members, regardless of location, maintain at least a 4-hour overlap with PST business hours to enable real-time collaboration and drive solutions effectively across the team.

Learn about TRM Speed in this position:

• Within 72 hours of role intake, deliver a longlist of 30–50 uncontacted profiles, a draft org chart, and relevant market snapshots for recruiter and HM review.
• Provide 2–3 competitor org breakdowns, compensation benchmarks, and job description comps within the first week to support calibration.
• Identify 3–5 teammates with strong networks in target areas to drive referral mapping and increase pipeline depth.
• Refresh and re-rank passive candidate pools bi-weekly, applying input from hiring team and market shifts.
• Develop and maintain research templates, dashboards, and longlist hygiene best practices to help the team scale.