Principal Recruiter

Overview

Principal Recruiter on Qualys's Global Talent Acquisition team, a senior individual contributor role reporting to the Vice President, Global Talent Acquisition, leading business-critical, highly specialized and difficult-to-fill hiring globally. This is not a high-volume recruiting role.

What you'll do

• Lead end-to-end recruitment for business-critical, highly specialized, and difficult-to-fill positions across Qualys globally.
• Partner directly with executives, senior leaders, and hiring managers to develop and execute effective talent acquisition strategies.
• Drive complex searches across technical and non-technical functions, including Engineering, Product Management, Cybersecurity, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Operations, and Executive Leadership.
• Develop and execute innovative search strategies for niche, emerging, and highly competitive talent segments where traditional recruiting approaches may be insufficient.
• Build and maintain strategic talent pipelines for current and future hiring needs through proactive sourcing, talent mapping, networking, referrals, market research, and competitive intelligence.
• Conduct organizational mapping, competitor analysis, and talent market research to identify and engage exceptional talent globally.
• Act as a trusted advisor to business leaders on talent availability, hiring strategy, compensation trends, market dynamics, and competitive talent landscapes.
• Influence hiring decisions through data, external market insights, and talent intelligence.
• Partner with stakeholders to define hiring requirements, assessment approaches, and candidate evaluation criteria to ensure high-quality hiring outcomes.
• Engage, assess, and attract high-caliber candidates across a broad range of functions, disciplines, and experience levels.
• Own candidate engagement and offer closure, effectively managing competing offers, compensation expectations, relocation considerations, and complex negotiations.
• Deliver an exceptional candidate experience while acting as a brand ambassador for Qualys.
• Leverage recruiting technologies, AI-enabled tools, and talent intelligence platforms to improve sourcing effectiveness, candidate engagement, and hiring outcomes.
• Champion best practices in strategic recruiting, executive search, talent mapping, candidate assessment, and stakeholder management.
• Partner with recruiters and recruiting leaders globally on critical hiring initiatives and particularly challenging searches.
• Continuously identify opportunities to improve hiring effectiveness, quality of hire, recruiting efficiency, and candidate experience.

What you'll need

• Bachelor's degree required.
• 12+ years of recruitment and executive search experience, with a demonstrated track record of hiring senior leadership and business-critical talent across multiple functions and geographies.
• Significant experience recruiting across both technical and non-technical functions.
• Proven success hiring for highly specialized, niche, and difficult-to-fill roles.
• Strong expertise in executive search, talent mapping, market intelligence, competitive research, and strategic sourcing.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and partner effectively with senior leaders and executive stakeholders.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to align talent acquisition strategies to business objectives.
• Exceptional communication, relationship-building, and negotiation skills.
• Experience supporting hiring across multiple global regions and talent markets.
• Proven ability to operate independently, manage ambiguity, and successfully lead complex searches from strategy through closure.
• Experience leveraging Applicant Tracking Systems, LinkedIn Recruiter, AI-powered recruiting tools, and talent intelligence platforms.

Nice to have

• Advanced degree.
• Experience within cybersecurity, enterprise software, SaaS, cloud, AI, or other high-growth technology environments.
• Executive search firm or retained search experience.
• Experience recruiting for leadership, specialist, technical, and go-to-market functions on a global scale.
• Strong understanding of global talent markets and competitive hiring landscapes.