Are companies hiring recruiters again?
Job postings for recruiters went up 13% in a month at the 379 companies we can compare over that time, from 552 on October 12, 2026 to 625 on November 11. All the jobs at those same companies went up only 1.4% in that month, from 37,666 to 38,179.
That gap is the reason for this article. A recruiter's job is to find and hire other people, so a company usually adds recruiters when it plans to hire more of everyone else. I read the rise as a sign that some companies are getting ready to hire more, but one month is a short stretch, and some of these postings will be backfills. A backfill is a job that opens again because the person in it left, so it doesn't mean the team is growing.
Here is how the count moved, week by week, at the same 379 companies:
| Date | Recruiter postings | All open jobs |
|---|---|---|
| October 12, 2026 | 552 | 37,666 |
| October 26, 2026 | 542 | 38,037 |
| November 4, 2026 | 593 | 38,008 |
| November 11, 2026 | 625 | 38,179 |
| Source: Hiring Tempo, daily copies of company career pages. Only companies we tracked on all four dates, with no big swing in their total that would point to a fetch problem. |
Most of the rise came in the last two weeks. By "recruiter postings" we mean any job title with recruiter, recruiting, sourcer or talent acquisition in it, so it includes coordinators and recruiting managers as well as recruiters.
Which companies added the most recruiter jobs?
Brex added the most, going from 14 recruiter postings to 33. That number needs care, though. Brex's 33 postings are only 8 different jobs, because each one is listed in several cities, such as Seattle, New York and San Francisco. Most of them recruit for one team, like a Senior Product Recruiter or a Manager of Technical Recruiting for engineering. Take Brex out and the month's rise is still 10%, from 538 to 592.
| Company | Oct 12 | Nov 11 | All open jobs on Nov 11 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brex | 14 | 33 | 279 |
| Harvey | 9 | 17 | 374 |
| Shield AI | 10 | 17 | 669 |
| Rogo | 5 | 11 | 101 |
| Mercury | 0 | 6 | 75 |
| Thinking Machines Lab | 2 | 7 | 56 |
| GitLab | 4 | 9 | 252 |
| Cognition | 3 | 8 | 116 |
| Source: Hiring Tempo, company career pages, October 12 and November 11, 2026. |
Several of these are AI companies, like Harvey, Rogo and Cognition, and most of them also added jobs overall in the same month. Rogo went from 88 open jobs to 101, and Cognition from 102 to 116.
Who has the most recruiter jobs open right now?
Across all 829 companies we track, 1,078 open jobs had a recruiting title on November 11, 2026, at 284 companies. That's about 1 in every 73 open jobs. Defense and space companies lead the list by a wide margin.
Anduril had 132 recruiter postings on October 12 and 120 now, so it is still far ahead of everyone else even after a small drop. Its total jobs went up in the same month, from 2,459 to 2,553, so the drop looks more like filled jobs than a pullback.
The jobs also look fresher than the rest of the market. Of the 1,078 recruiter postings, 41% were first listed in the last 30 days, compared with 37% of all 78,830 open jobs. In the last week alone it was 13%, compared with 9% of all jobs. Some career sites give an old job a new date when it is posted again, so this is a rough guide and not an exact count.
What kinds of recruiter jobs are open?
About a third of the jobs, 341 of 1,078, are for technical recruiters, who hire engineers and researchers. Another 157 recruit for sales and go-to-market teams, the people who sell and market the product. Smaller groups hire executives (23 jobs) or students and new graduates (44 jobs). And 104 of the postings are contract jobs, which usually last a set number of months.
Where the jobs are is less spread out. Of the 800 recruiter postings in the US, 212 list San Francisco and 148 list New York City, far more than Seattle (36), Boston (27) or Austin (24). Only 12.5% of US recruiter jobs are remote, a little under the 13.4% of all US jobs we track. If you want to recruit from home, our remote jobs article shows which companies hire remote the most.
What do recruiter jobs pay?
Recruiter jobs show their pay more often than most jobs. About 29% of US recruiter postings list a pay range, compared with 18% of all US postings we track. Part of that is the law, because California and New York, where many of these jobs are, make employers put pay in the ad. Our guide to pay transparency laws lists every state that does.
For the 218 US postings with a yearly range in dollars, the middle of the range had a median of $169,000. Half fell between $142,500 and $187,500.
| Level | Postings with pay | Median midpoint |
|---|---|---|
| Coordinator | 14 | $95,000 |
| Sourcer | 13 | $140,000 |
| Recruiter | 115 | $165,000 |
| Senior recruiter | 37 | $175,000 |
| Lead or manager | 29 | $195,000 |
| Head or director | 10 | $245,600 |
| Source: Hiring Tempo, company career pages. The midpoint is halfway between the low and high end of each posted range. Small groups, like 10 or 14 postings, can move a lot with a single job. |
Those numbers are much higher than the typical pay for the whole field. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts recruiters as part of human resources specialists, a group of 939,700 jobs in 2025, and puts their median pay at $75,940 in May 2025. The companies we track are mostly tech, AI and defense companies that pay well, so our numbers show what this group pays and not recruiters in general.
The same BLS page expects the group to grow 6% from 2025 to 2035, which it calls faster than the average for all jobs, with about 73,700 openings a year.
What this count can and can't tell you
We count job postings on company career pages, not hires. A company can list 20 recruiter jobs and fill five, and a filled job can stay up for weeks. One job posted in several cities counts once per city, which is why Brex's 8 jobs show up as 33. And the rise covers one month at 379 companies, mostly in tech, so it says nothing about recruiting at hospitals, stores or staffing agencies.
It does say that at the companies in our count, recruiter jobs grew almost ten times as fast as jobs overall in the month to November 11. That fits with the October jobs report, where professional and business services, the group that includes staffing and recruiting firms, added 70,000 jobs.
On November 11, Anduril alone listed more recruiter jobs (120) than the next three companies on the list put together (100).
Sources
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Human Resources Specialists, last modified October 29, 2026, read November 11, 2026. Recruiters are included in this group. 939,700 jobs in 2025; median pay $75,940 in May 2025; projected growth 6% from 2025 to 2035; about 73,700 openings a year.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation, October 2026, released November 6, 2026. Professional and business services added 70,000 jobs.
- Hiring Tempo, open jobs on 829 company career pages, November 11, 2026, and daily copies from October 12, October 26 and November 4, 2026. Recruiter postings are jobs whose title includes recruiter, recruiting, sourcer, talent acquisition or talent partner, leaving out purchasing jobs like "strategic sourcing." The month-over-month comparison uses only the 379 companies we tracked on all four dates and whose total open jobs stayed within a range that rules out a fetch problem. Pay figures use only US postings with a yearly range in US dollars.