Build right. Hire right. Rebel forever.

I'm a fractional Head of Talent for Series A-C startups and defense contractors. I build recruiting infrastructure companies own forever, ATS workflows, sourcing frameworks, scorecards, pipelines; then close critical hires in under 30 days.

My path wasn't traditional: TGI Fridays → booking bands → managing tours → 14 years in recruiting. It taught me to spot talent fast, sell with conviction, and treat every search like representation. I operate like an agent, take care of both sides, protect the brand, close the deal.

Currently: Fractional Head of Talent at EarthDaily Federal (geospatial intelligence, defense). Board member at Underground Admins.

Author: Head and Heart: Winning the AI Recruiting War

richie@rebeltalentsystems.com | rebeltalentsystems.com

Richie Lampani

I got recognized at Costco yesterday.


Guy walks up, points at me, and goes "You're that recruiter."

I said "Depends. Are you hiring or mad at me for ghosting you or something?"

He said "Neither. I just see you everywhere and wanted to make sure you were real."

Then he bought a 48-pack of paper towels and left.

No follow. No handshake. No "love your content." Just a man confirming my corporeal existence between the rotisserie chickens and the tire center.

I've never felt more seen and more invisible at the same time.

This is what 50,000 LinkedIn connections gets you.

A stranger in bulk goods aisle 7 performing a wellness check.

Anyway I'm still taking clients.

Also, who would tune in for the below podcast? I'm trying to talk Shaun Hervey into starting it back up. 

Richie

Fractional Head of Talent | Series A-C Startups & Defense | Author & Talent Strategist | Former TGI Fridays Flair Champ

When the hiring manager says ‘we need someone hungry’ and the team looks like they’ve been surviving on vibes and stale granola since 2023.

No alternative text description for this image

I get why people hate recruiting agencies. I’m Richie. I’ll go first.
I apologize for my part in it and for once being one of the idiot recruiters you all deal with. Candidates AND Decision Makers. 

Because the real problem with recruiting isn’t mysterious. It isn’t candidates. It isn’t even “bad actors.”

The real problem with recruiting is that there is zero barrier to entry.

Anyone can open a “firm” tomorrow.

No credentials. No licensing. No skill checks. Nothing.

Even if you get hired into an agency, the interview process isn’t about expertise for recruiters with 2 or less years experience. It’s about personality and enthusiasm.

Can you smile through rejection, handle being micromanaged, and agree to do more for less? Congratulations, you’re a recruiter now.

No wonder the industry looks the way it does.

What new recruiters actually get taught
It’s not recruiting. It’s volume mechanics.
Here’s the training plan at most shops:
-Here’s the template job description. Don’t think. Just post it.
-Here's the basics of the ATS. Not even how to search the database that exists within it.
-Here’s how to search for keywords. Don’t understand them. Just match them.
-Here’s the call quota. Hit it.
-Here’s the email quota. Hit it.
-Here’s the “submit” quota. Hit it.
AND INVARIABLY and INEVITABLY at EVERY shop I've worked at, there is a minimum of 1 meeting a month about candidate ownership that 100% will devolve into a battle of how to decide who talked to Joe that has a very basic skillset but always answers every outreach.

If I’m finding .NET developers but I don’t know what .NET is, that’s not recruiting.

That’s scavenger hunting.
Volume is the skill.
Quality is the accident.


When you hand anyone a LinkedIn seat and tell them “go find talent,” this is what happens:
-Bad outreach floods good candidates
-Bad screening wastes hiring managers’ time
-Bad job descriptions repel the people you actually want
-Bad incentives encourage speed over accuracy

Candidates think we’re clowns(and a LARGE % of the time, they're right)

Hiring managers think we’re a tax.

And agencies keep doubling down on “more activity” instead of “more skill.”

If this industry took its job seriously, recruiter would mean something:
-Understanding the tech you’re sourcing for, not just the keywords
-Writing job descriptions that attract, not repel
-Market mapping, calibration, and diagnostics with hiring teams
-Measuring retention and quality of hire, not CV volume
-Training rooted in assessment, psychology, and labor market knowledge

It’s not complicated.
It’s just not how the industry is built.

If you run a recruiting team or an agency, ask yourself:
Are you training recruiters to understand the work or just search for words?
Would you trust your own career with the people your shop places?

If the answer makes you uncomfortable, that’s the point.

Zero barrier to entry is not changing.
The bar you set inside your own shop can.

We have several finalists on this. Holding for now. 

Remote - 10-99 - IT Admin role - part time! 
Pay is DOE but targeting 50-75/hour
Role: Part-Time IT Administrator
Engagement: 1099 Contractor
Time Commitment: Part-time, flexible

Location: Remote, EST Time zone preferred, must be US Citizen living in the US. 

Overview
EarthDaily Federal is looking for a part-time IT Administrator to support our internal systems and act as the primary liaison between our internal team and our external IT and security partner.

This role sits at the center of everything technical inside the company. You will own the day-to-day IT administration work while coordinating with ISI on security, compliance, and higher-level infrastructure items.

This is a startup-style environment. Many basic IT processes are either incomplete, undocumented, or need to be cleaned up. The right person is comfortable walking into a messy system and methodically making it better.
Some people love that. Some people hate it. We want the ones who love it.

Core Responsibilities
-Serve as the primary IT point of contact for EarthDaily Federal
-Act as the liaison between internal teams and ISI
-Coordinate requests, troubleshooting, and follow-ups with our external security provider.
-Manage internal user access, permissions, onboarding, and offboarding
-Administer Microsoft 365 environment including SharePoint and Teams
-Support employee endpoint setup and basic troubleshooting
-Maintain and improve internal IT documentation and processes
-Partner with engineering leadership to support basic IT needs as required

Environment and Tools
-Microsoft 365
-SharePoint
-Teams
-Internal SaaS tooling supporting engineering and operations

Preferred Background
-Experience working in small or early-stage environments
-Comfortable operating with limited documentation and evolving processes
-Prior exposure to secure or compliance-driven environments is a plus
-Awareness of CMMC concepts is a bonus but not required
-Strong communication skills and comfort acting as a bridge between vendors and internal teams

What Success Looks Like
-Internal IT issues are triaged quickly and resolved cleanly
-ISI communication is organized, tracked, and effective
-Users know exactly where to go for IT help
-Systems become cleaner, more documented, and easier to manage
-Leadership gains visibility and confidence in the IT function

Interview
Talk to me
Talk to COO
Talk to CTO

Rock and Roll. Looking to get someone in ASAP

Notes
This is not a maintenance-only role.
This role exists to stabilize, clean up, and bring order to foundational systems that grew faster than the structure supporting them.
If you enjoy building order from chaos, this will be a great fit.
If you need everything perfectly defined on day one, it will not be.

3 fully remote roles for Underground Admins clients. 2 Engineering and 1 sales. Please share.

🚂 Production Engineers (x2)
Stop. Don't send me your DevOps resume.
Two Production Engineer roles. Fully remote. $150K-$250K base.

But here's the filter:
If your day is CI/CD pipelines and Jira tickets, this isn't it. If you've never owned a production service end-to-end, this isn't it. If your incident response is "check the runbook," this isn't it.

This is for software engineers who moved into production because they gave a damn about how their code behaved in the wild.

The work:
60-70% hands-on C# on modern .NET, building and owning services
30-40% reliability, observability, SLOs, systems design
Zero L1 support. No on-call circus. No finger-pointing at infra.
Python for tooling. PostgreSQL on AWS. Legacy migrations that don't burn the house down.

Requirements:
3-7+ years owning production systems as a software engineer
Strong C# and Python
U.S. citizen, living in the U.S.

Interview process: Two technical rounds. One alignment conversation. Done.
DM me with the nastiest incident you've ever fixed and what you changed so it never happened again.

🪖 Head of Defense Sales
$200K base. Uncapped commission. And you're building this from zero.
One of my clients needs a Head of Defense Sales to own the entire DoD go-to-market. Not manage existing accounts. Build the function.

This is a closer role, not a farmer role.

What you're walking into:
Full ownership of defense sales strategy
Pipeline you build yourself
Direct line to executive leadership
Future team-build potential when you prove it works

The work:
Identify, qualify, close new DoD logos
Build relationships with primes, integrators, and program stakeholders
Translate complex tech into mission outcomes
Shape capture plans, proposals, pricing
Carry quota. Deliver.

Non-negotiables:
Proven track record selling software into DoD
Experience closing new logos, not just renewing contracts
You understand defense procurement, budgeting, acquisition cycles
Can build pipeline independently in a fast-moving environment

Preferred:
Active or recently lapsed clearance
Background in data, analytics, cyber, AI, or privacy tech
Startup or growth-stage experience
Network in Army, SOCOM, Space Force, Navy, Air Force, or COCOMs

Location: US based. East Coast or DMV preferred. Huntsville, Denver, Colorado Springs, Tampa, San Diego also work.

If you've opened doors and closed complex software deals in defense, DM me.

Underground Admins clients - NOT EDF. If you're interested hit up myself or Amy and we'll set you up with a screen.

Share this with all of the gritty, grindy, grimy hunters: You've sold into DoD. You know what it takes.

You don't live in SAM(dot)gov waiting for RFPs. You go find the opportunities before they exist. You build relationships that turn into requirements. You're in the room shaping the conversation, not responding to it.

The long cycles. The relationship game. The "no" that turns into "not yet" that turns into a $2M contract 18 months later.

You've carried a bag. Built pipeline from nothing. Sat through capability briefs that went nowhere and turned cold calls into warm intros into real money.

EarthDaily Federal is building something. Geospatial intelligence. AI-powered analytics. Real mission impact for Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force.

We've got the tech. We've got the past performance. Now we need hunters who want to eat.

Remote. Competitive comp. No bureaucracy. Small team, big upside.
If you're tired of selling software to people who don't care, come sell something that matters to people who do.

I don't have a range on this yet but honestly, there's a solid base and you probably are more interested in the commission checks anyway. Bene's and remote.

DM me. Let's eat.

This is Chuck. Chuck charges 25% to send you ‘top-tier talent your internal team can’t find.’ 

Because apparently his LinkedIn recruiter seat works differently than yours 

Or his job posts are better because he changed your company name out for “our client” so candidates wouldn’t just apply direct. 


Stop renting Chucks. Hit me up about a better way.

Once you see it as a demonstration and not an audition, everything changes.

You’re not begging for approval.  

You’re showing how you actually work.

Candidates: You’re not “on stage.” You’re giving a preview. And finding alignment. 

Companies: You’re not “judging talent.”  Or “selling an opportunity”. You’re showing what it feels like to be on the inside. And finding fit.

The "trust your gut?" poll results are all in here. How people treat red flags in interviews.

When you've taken a job you already had doubts about, when did the gut feeling hit that it wasn't going to work out? I ran a poll. 442 people answered

Open article: The gut knew. You overruled it. by Richie Lampani • 3 min read

REMOTE - Production Engineer/SWE/SRE opening through Underground Administration Staffing and Recruiting! Share this please

6 month contract to hire - 160-200k+ DOE plus bene's and extras

Global SaaS platform. Zero bureaucracy. Actual engineering work, not ticket triage.

I am looking for someone who can write real backend code and also own reliability end to end.

 If you are a script-only SRE, this is not the role.

 If you are a heads-down SWE who avoids production, also not the role.
I need the rare breed who lives in the middle.

The Work:
 • Write production-grade backend code in Python, Go, or Java(plus C# chops)
 • Support modernization and migration of legacy .NET services into AWS
 • Build internal tools, APIs, and automation
 • Tune Postgres and improve service performance
 • Deploy, monitor, troubleshoot, improve
 • Own services independently with minimal supervision

Bonus Points:
 • Kubernetes experience
 • Rust exposure or willingness to learn
 • Strong observability stack experience with Datadog, Dynatrace, or New Relic

Requirements:
 • Must be a US Citizen
 • Must be physically located in the US
 • No visas or sponsorship
 • Contract to hire
 • Fully remote

Interview Process (fast and simple):
Engineering Manager
Peer interview
Engineering Manager again for final talk and offer

No marathon interview loops. No whiteboard theater. No pointless homework.

If you can build, ship, deploy, break, fix, and improve a service, you will get through this quickly.

If this sounds like you, or you know the complete STUD who can do both SWE and SRE at a high level, let's talk. 

Also have some fun stuff coming up at EDF and Rebel. 

Feels like motion. Let's get people hired.

Enrique Kalb

★ Compliance, IT Support, Cybersecurity ★ Stop the worry and get the Continuous Threat Check. ★ Business-focused IT ★ LinkedIn Cyber Ninja ★

Cybersecurity sales leader with 13+ years driving growth across enterprise, federal, and regulated commercial markets.

I’ve spent my career across cybersecurity, compliance, managed IT, managed security, and co-managed IT, supporting teams in the DoD, Intelligence Community, and regulated industries like healthcare, legal, manufacturing, financial services, and construction.

I’ve built and scaled revenue engines inside growth-stage startups while also closing complex enterprise and regulated-market deals across cybersecurity, compliance, and managed services.

What I’m known for is building and scaling sales teams, putting real GTM structure in place, and helping buyers make confident decisions through complex security and compliance requirements without unnecessary friction. I do my best work when deals are messy, stakeholders are senior, and trust actually matters.

Day to day, I’m working with executives, technical teams, and channel partners to move deals forward, reduce risk, and drive sustainable growth with clear communication and practical execution.

I run complex enterprise sales cycles using MEDDPICC and Sandler to qualify, forecast, and close predictable revenue across cybersecurity and SaaS platforms

Bilingual in English and Spanish.

If you’re building or scaling enterprise cybersecurity sales in regulated environments, let’s connect.

Director of Cybersecurity Sales

Continuous Networks, LLC is a locally owned IT company specializing in making IT Personal.
Continuous was started in 1997 as a web hosting company, providing organizations with Windows and Unix cloud hosting. Continuous became increasingly aware of the need for small businesses to offload their internal IT applications from in-house data closets to data centers with redundant power and networks and built their first datacenter in 2004. With the increasing reliance on hosted technologies now called the "cloud", Continuous expanded its services to include personal IT consulting, hardware procurement and provisioning, and MSP services built upon our advanced cloud technologies and expertise. For over 15 years, Continuous has helped companies expand past their IT closet with Cloud technologies, such as daily backups and high availability. Continuous has 20 employees and 24/7 monitoring.

Continuous manages over 1,000 servers, representing 1,000 companies across 100 countries worldwide.

This is why hackers remain single :-)
Luke Matthews  the MEME team

Cybersecurity Sales Leader | Enterprise, Federal & Regulated Markets | Eliminating Downtime & Compliance Gaps, Reducing Cyber Risk

Most password policies were written for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.

Your password is expiring so people do what they always do. 

Go ahead add a number, heck go ahead and swap a symbol, maybe bump the version from 1 to 2, and move on.  

That doesn’t stop threat actors it just trains users to hate security and look for any workarounds.

If someone is using a long passphrase they can remember, isn’t reusing it anywhere else, and keeps it private, forcing a change every 60 to 90 days doesn’t make things safer. It just looks good in a policy document.

What actually really helps in 2026 is:

- Use a long passphrase you can remember
- Don’t reuse passwords across systems
 -Turn on MFA everywhere you can
 -Use a password manager and stop trying to be a human spreadsheet LOL

Passwords should change when there’s only a reason and that is if: 

-It's after a suspected breach
-It's after clicking something weird or when a password was shared or exposed.

Just keep in mind that security has to work with how people actually behave.

If the controls only succeed with annoying users, they’ll be ignored and that’s when the real risk starts.

OMG ChatGPT was hacked!!!

No ChatGPT wasn’t fully hacked, and nobody dumped all its data on the dark web.  I have seen alot of posts about this today.   Let me paint the picture. 

What researchers showed is that you can trick an AI agent that’s connected to other systems into doing stupid things with sensitive data known to it. 

This is basically, social engineering an AI that has access to your tools and email, or apps. 

If for example the agent can see it, there’s probably a way to abuse it.

If you plug AI into email, CRM, or internal systems, you created a new path for data to walk out the door if it’s not locked down.

Most defenses today are still reactive you patch one technique, attackers find another.

AI isn’t magic it isn’t evil not yet. It’s just powerful and without guardrails, it’ll help the wrong person just as easily as the right one.

Open article: ChatGPT falls to new data-pilfering attack as a vicious cycle in AI continues by arstechnica.com

Female hand holding smartphone showing an evil with devil horn on her AI chatbot conversation app in the city. Illustrating the ideas around the risks and dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

ChatGPT falls to new data-pilfering attack as a vicious cycle in AI continues

Incognito mode doesn't equal invisibility bros and gals.
Stop pretending it is.
You’re not anonymous. 

You’re just not saving your browser history. That’s it.
Your boss can still see what you’re doing on company Wi-Fi 😉 

Here’s what Incognito mode actually does....

Doesn’t save your history
Doesn’t keep cookies or data
Useful for testing and logging into multiple accounts.

Here’s what it really doesn’t do....

Hide your activity from your employer so if you are being naughty, they will find you.
Stop your ISP from seeing what sites you visit
Block websites from tracking you by IP 
Prevent malware, phishing, or weird browser extensions

Incognito is great if you’re buying a gift or using a shared computer.
It’s not a security tool. 
If your team thinks otherwise that’s a huge problem.

Incognito mode is good for keeping things clean on your device not for hiding your activity from the outside world.

Security starts with education :-)

How companies handle the aftermath of a cybersecurity breach. Luke Matthews

Companies don’t do enough after a breach.

We got hacked by a simple phishing email. You trusted us with your data for years, but here’s an identity monitoring service if you opt in.

NO!!! 

If your info was stolen, take control immediately don’t wait.

——Change your passwords and start with the breached account. Also, reused passwords make sure you change them too.

——Enable MFA as even if malicious hackers have your password, multi factor authentication can stop them.

——Alert your bank let them watch for suspicious activity.

Check your credit reports. Free once a year from the major bureaus don’t let fraud slip by unnoticed.

Your data is your responsibility. 

Companies failed don’t let that failure become yours so act fast protect yourself, and don’t wait for them to help!

Maybe this is an unpopular take but I have to say it, but I’m seeing a lot of SDRs calling themselves GTM and it doesn’t really make sense.

GTM isn’t a job title I just look at it as responsibility.

Go to market is figuring out who you’re selling to, why they should care, how you price it and how you message it, and how sales actually run. 

That work happens before anyone starts dialing.

SDRs do real work and anyone who’s done it knows it’s not for the faint of heart.

Prospecting, the calling, emailing, booking real conversations. But that’s running a motion, not building it.

Its not the same thing as writing the playbook.

I understand why it happens here I go. 

SDR doesn’t sound too sexy. GTM does and lot of startups blur the lines and suddenly everything revenue related gets labeled GTM.

But here’s the real issue.

If you disappear and the system still runs, you’re not GTM. 
If you disappear and the system breaks, you probably are.

I have no shade to SDRs that role is brutal and necessary I have done it.

But GTM is about ownership and leverage, not activity.

I said what I said.

Go ahead pay $1,000,000 and you’ll get your data back. Let me tell you there is no guarantee. A ransom is just wishful thinking with a huge price tag IMO.

If you pay once, don’t be surprised if you’re targeted again. Unless the real issue gets fixed, you’ve just shown you’re willing to write a check. I don’t see it every time, but double extortion is very real. Threat actors threaten to contact the MSP’s clients directly and extort them too. 

I have watched owners swear they’ll never pay, then change their mind fast when that threat lands and this is why security can’t just be a bunch of tools you stack together like people think.

After an incident, what really matters the most is what happens next and who’s handling the response, forensics, producing the reports? and providing environment is actually clean?

The cleanup and documentation always take the longest, and that’s usually where many clients decide whether they stay or walk. Good security gives you breathing room when things go wrong and it buys time while insurance drags on for months and months and it keeps the client relationship intact.

Security isn’t about how impressive your setup looks on paper but about how well you handle the worst day.

You might be compromised and not even know it 

Most people think they’d definitely know if their computer was hacked.
I used to think that too.

When mine was compromised, I was just at home on my laptop.
No big warning.
No ransom screen.

Just some annoying pop ups.
A couple weird browser redirects.
Things running slower than normal.

I almost brushed it off. I think most people would have. 

We’re so used to tech being SO glitchy that we don’t stop to question it anymore.
We just assume it’s well one of those things.

That’s exactly what cyber attackers rely on.

Here’s what I didn’t fully appreciate until it happened to me that…

Most cyberattacks aren’t loud.
They don’t announce themselves.

They sit quietly, watch and collect.

Once I realized that I shut everything down.

What I did next probably was overkill, but I wasn’t taking chances):

—Killed the Wi-Fi
—Ran more than one security scan
—Changed every password from a clean machine
—Wiped and reinstalled the OS
—Turned on MFA everywhere I could. This step is always missed. 

This isn’t about being paranoid.
It’s about not being naive.

If you ever get that feeling like something’s not right trust it.

PS: This things happens to very technical people too and maybe especially to them.

taplio

The Battle

Richie Lampani

Enrique Kalb

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreRichie Lampani's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreEnrique Kalb's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Richie Lampani

Enrique Kalb

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Richie Lampani's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreEnrique Kalb's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreRichie Lampani's LinkedIn Performance