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.

Global Technology Leader at Converse | Driving Innovation and Excellence in Tech at Nike Inc | Expert in Scalable Tech Solutions

**Opinions are my own**

I build commerce infrastructure and lead distributed engineering teams that ship at scale.

15+ years as a software engineer with deep experience in full stack development, solution architecture, data engineering, and platform design. 

The last 7+ years leading engineering teams across multiple continents while staying hands-on with technical work.

What I’m good at:

Building systems that eliminate entire categories of problems, not just fix symptoms. I’m currently focused on leveraging AI to collapse workflows that burn hundreds to thousands of engineering hours, turning multi-day manual processes into single button deployments, and complex code reviews into automated quality gates that learn from our patterns.

Leading distributed teams by designing for autonomous velocity. AI-assisted documentation and systems that make the team faster whether I’m online or not. The best engineering leaders multiply output without multiplying headcount.

Making strategic bets on what to automate, what to build, and what to kill. The highest ROI work right now is teaching machines to do the repetitive technical work so engineers can focus on the problems that actually need human judgment.

Technical background:

Software engineering and full stack development across the entire stack. Solution architecture, data engineering, and platform infrastructure. Hands-on experience with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify, BigCommerce, and e-commerce infrastructure at scale. Currently experimenting with LLM-powered tooling for code generation, testing automation, and engineering workflow optimization.

Current:

Leading multiple engineering teams on commerce infrastructure at Nike, with continued hands-on work in platform architecture, full stack development, and AI-assisted engineering tooling.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Jono Herrington

Shopify’s admin went down for hours on Cyber Monday.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud processed 61 million orders at 100% uptime.

Salesforce built its entire company on 1  word …

Trust.

On Cyber Monday 2025, that word meant everything.

While thousands of Shopify merchants were locked out of their admin panels, SFCC powered billions in transactions without breaking. 

One platform optimized for modern aesthetics. The other optimized for the moment when trust actually matters.

Here’s what separates platforms when stakes are highest:

Trust isn’t a feature. It’s the foundation

↳ 100% uptime during Cyber Week isn’t marketing copy. It’s what happens when your core value is reliability, not growth at all costs.

Shopify optimized for speed to launch

↳ Great for getting online fast. But enterprise commerce isn’t about launch day. It’s about not breaking when your entire quarter depends on five days in November.

SFCC was built on infrastructure and catalog complexity Shopify still can’t match

↳ Enterprise-grade infrastructure that scales under load. Catalog capabilities for managing tens of thousands of SKUs across regions and brands. The unglamorous foundation nobody celebrates until it prevents millions in lost revenue.

The most iconic brands didn’t chase the shiny new platform. They stayed where trust was proven, not promised.

The next wave of commerce innovation (AI merchandising, headless at scale, agentic experiences) is being built on the only foundation that matters …

A platform that works when it counts.

The most exciting days for Salesforce Commerce Cloud are ahead.

What’s your platform’s definition of trust?

Global Engineering Leader | Building E-commerce Platforms at Scale

Your team’s velocity problem isn’t your team size. It’s your pipeline.

Most leaders see slow delivery and think “we need more engineers.”

But adding people to a constrained pipeline just creates more waiting.

Here’s what actually matters:

Throughput is limited by your slowest step, not your team size

↳ If code review takes 3 days, hiring two more engineers doesn’t speed it up. It means more PRs waiting in the queue.

Every step in your pipeline is either a constraint or it isn’t

↳ Deployment takes 4 hours? That’s your constraint. Security approval takes 2 weeks? That’s your constraint. Everything else is downstream.

Removing one constraint does more than adding three engineers

↳ Automate that manual approval step. Fix that flaky test suite. Reduce deployment time from 4 hours to 20 minutes. The team you have can suddenly ship exponentially faster.

I stopped asking “how many engineers do we need?”

I started asking “what’s blocking the engineers we have?”

Identify the constraint. Remove it. Find the next one.

That’s how you actually increase velocity.

What’s the slowest step in your delivery pipeline right now?

The hardest part of moving into engineering leadership wasn’t the technical complexity.

It was letting go of the keyboard.

For 10 years, my value was measured by what I shipped.

Lines of code. Features delivered. Bugs fixed.

Then my role changed.

Suddenly, my value was measured by what my team shipped.

Not me. Them.

Here’s what I had to learn:

Writing code yourself is faster. Teaching others to write it scales.

↳ I could knock out a feature in a week. Or I could spend that week pairing with two engineers who’d then be able to handle similar features without me. One approach ships one feature. The other ships ten.

Your impact shifts from execution to multiplication

↳ The question isn’t “what did I build?” It’s “what did I enable?” Architecture decisions. Standards. Unblocking paths. Creating clarity where there was confusion.

Influence without authority becomes the actual job

↳ You can’t just tell people what to do. You have to build consensus across teams, communicate trade-offs to leadership, and make technical decisions stick through persuasion, not position.

The transition isn’t natural.

Every instinct says “I could just fix this myself in 30 minutes.”

But if you do, you’ve just made yourself the bottleneck.

Engineering leadership isn’t about being the best coder in the room. It’s about making the room better at coding.

What’s the hardest part about stepping back from hands on work?

Beware! The 800-pound gorilla is awake.

Shopify. BigCommerce. All the market hype?

Better watch out.

Google launched Universal Commerce Protocol on Saturday.

Launch partners: Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, Walmart.

Salesforce wasn’t on that list.

By Wednesday, they announced native UCP integration.

Not “planning to support.”

Not “exploring the protocol.”

No slide 2 on a deck calling out “Forward Looking Statements.”

Native integration. Shipping to Agentforce Commerce merchants. Now.

4 days from launch to announcement.

Here’s what everyone’s missing.

Being first to the table doesn’t mean you’ll execute best at scale.

Shopify codeveloped UCP with Google.

But SFCC powers the leading brands in enterprise commerce with infrastructure built for exactly this moment.

While everyone else was reading the spec, Salesforce shipped.

The gorilla was sleeping. You got a head start.

Now it’s awake.

Better watch out.

This is going to be one of the most exciting times to be on Commerce Cloud.

And the teams building on it need to understand what this unlocks.

The platform isn’t catching up.

It’s already steamrolling.

I killed a $500K initiative in my 1st quarter at Life is Good.

The vendor had a slick presentation. Better performance. Modern architecture. Industry momentum.

Leadership was ready to approve.

I asked one question: “Can we run the numbers to prove this is the right move?”

We did.

The numbers told us the spend didnt make sense.

Can we migrate? Yes.
Should we? No.

Here’s what I learned:

“Can we” is an engineering question

↳ Is this technically possible? Do we have the skills? Can it be done?

“Should we” is a business question

↳ Does this move the needle? What’s the ROI? What are we not building if we do this?

Junior engineers ask “can we.” Staff+ engineers ask “should we.”

↳ The skill isn’t just building things. It’s knowing which things are worth building.

That $500K went toward features that actually moved conversion.

The framework migration? 

Still hasn’t happened. And doesn’t need to.

Your job isn’t to build everything that’s possible. It’s to build what’s valuable.

What’s the last thing your team wanted to build that you questioned?

We went from 1 commerce protocol to 2 in 4 months.

Google launched UCP this week. OpenAI shipped ACP in September.

Both let AI agents buy things directly from your platform.

Here’s what most platforms are missing: 

1. Product feeds that update in real time. 

2. Checkout APIs agents can call programmatically. 

3. Inventory accuracy measured in seconds, not hours. 

4. Fulfillment logic that returns instant answers.

This isn’t about choosing UCP or ACP. It’s about whether your commerce platform can even support programmatic transactions at scale.

Most can’t.

They’re built for humans clicking through checkout flows. Not for APIs that need to create, price, and complete purchases in milliseconds without rendering UI.

Your platform either has this infrastructure or it doesn’t.

* If you don’t, both protocols are impossible.

* If you do, both protocols are straightforward integrations.

The platforms that will dominate agent commerce already rebuilt their infrastructure for programmatic access.

Not because they were preparing for agents.

Because they understood that eventually something would need API access to commerce at scale.

Everyone else is about to discover their platform can’t do what agents need.

Does your platform expose real time commerce APIs or just human checkout flows?

You can’t prioritize technical debt if you can’t measure its impact.

Here’s what I ask before approving refactoring work:

How much time does this cost us per sprint?

↳ Adding features takes 3 days instead of 1? That’s measurable. “It’s messy” isn’t.

How many incidents does this cause?

↳ Breaking every other deploy? Quantifiable. “It’s not clean code” isn’t.

What’s blocked because of this?

↳ Can’t ship the Q4 roadmap? That’s a cost. “I don’t like the architecture” isn’t.

If the team can’t quantify the pain, I don’t approve the fix.

Not because I don’t trust them.

Because if we can’t measure the problem, we can’t measure whether we solved it.

Measure the cost. Then measure the improvement.

What metrics do you use to measure technical debt impact?

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