Sustaining Hiring Velocity at Uniswap Through Product Launch, AI, and a Strategic Pivot
Company Overview
Uniswap is the leading decentralized exchange protocol and one of the most consequential pieces of infrastructure in crypto. Uniswap Labs, the team behind the protocol, builds products and infrastructure that move the ecosystem forward – including Unichain, a high-performance L2 designed to be the home for DeFi. The company most recently raised a $165M Series B in 2022 from Polychain, a16z, Paradigm, SV Angel, Variant, and others.
By early 2025, Uniswap Labs had grown to ~140 people with an established in-house talent function: a Head of Talent, two full-time recruiters, a sourcer, and a coordinator. The bar for hires was high. The bar for outside partners was higher.
Challenge:
In January 2025, Uniswap entered a critical growth push tied to the Unichain launch and broader product expansion, with an estimated 30–50 net new hires over ~6 months, with more to come based on adoption and market conditions. The shape of the challenge was nuanced:
Demand was real but uncertain in duration. The team needed dedicated execution capacity for a sustained surge but couldn't justify additional full-time headcount in the recruiting org until they knew whether demand would continue beyond the launch window.
Quality could not slip. Uniswap is one of the most recognizable brands in crypto. The talent function was already strong. Any external partner had to meet, or exceed, the existing bar.
A strategic question on AI and the talent function loomed. AI tooling was advancing faster than internal recruiting orgs could absorb. Uniswap needed a view on how to evolve the function over the next 12–24 months — not just execute the current plan.
Priorities shifted mid-engagement. In early 2026, Uniswap shifted strategic focus, and the company and recruiting org leaned out. At the same time, enough open roles remained that the team was structurally understaffed for the work in front of them.
“We had a big hiring surge that would last at least 6 months, and I wasn’t sure if we’d keep up the hiring pace after that. My team was close to max capacity, and we needed to push hard while keeping the quality bar high - contingency wouldn’t be high-touch enough, so I called in reinforcements. I was looking for a good partner I could trust to deliver, who would fit in with our culture, and knew the space. Bull Moose fit that perfectly.” — Stephanie Marcellin, Head of Talent @ Uniswap
The Solution
Bull Moose ran two distinct engagements, designed to flex with Uniswap's evolving needs rather than fit a single template.
Engagement 1: Embedded GTM Recruiting + AI Strategy
Full-Time Embedded Talent Partner — GTM & Growth Hiring
Senior recruiter embedded in NYC, on-site 4–5 days per week, fully integrated with Uniswap's Slack, ATS, and team rituals.
Six-month engagement scoped to GTM and growth hiring during the Unichain push. Extended by two months as demand persisted.
Operated as a member of the internal team — attending standups, calibrations, debriefs, and offsites — not as an outside vendor running parallel.
Talent Operations & AI Strategy Intern
A Cornell junior with a software and data engineering background, deployed for a 10-week parallel engagement.
Conducted a comprehensive audit of the recruiting and people org's tools, workflows, and friction points.
Produced a strategic analysis identifying opportunities for AI to streamline sourcing, automate coordination work, and integrate fragmented systems into a more coherent stack.
Output: a recommendation set the Uniswap team could use to prioritize tooling investments and reshape the function for the next phase of growth.
“We brought in someone to do the thing we never had time to do ourselves - sit with every recruiter and hiring manager, map how we actually work, and tell us honestly where AI could help and where it couldn't. It didn't end as a deck in a drawer; it became our tooling roadmap. A year later, we'd changed our stack, and we're running sourcing, pipeline updates, and candidate intel through automation that traces straight back to that audit and the recommendations in it.” – Charlie Kerr, Senior Recruiter @ Uniswap; fmr. Bull Moose
Engagement 2: Embedded Engineering Recruiter
As priorities shifted in early 2026 and the internal team leaned out, Uniswap still had a meaningful slate of engineering roles to fill.
Bull Moose deployed a part-time, remote embedded Talent Partner on a six-month engagement focused exclusively on engineering hiring.
This freed the internal recruiting team to focus on strategic and executive-level searches without dropping execution on critical IC pipelines.
Results:
Across both engagements, Bull Moose helped Uniswap maintain hiring velocity and quality through a period of significant strategic change.
14 hires placed across GTM, growth, and engineering during the Unichain push and follow-on period.
AI & ops analysis delivered to the recruiting and people leadership team, informing the function's evolution and tooling roadmap.
One additional part-time talent consultant deployed to provide continued execution support as internal priorities shifted.
Over the course of the engagement, a unique opportunity emerged on Uniswap's team that aligned with mutual interest and fit, and the embedded recruiter transitioned in-house. While not a standard outcome of our engagements, it reflected the depth of integration and trust built through the partnership.
“Bull Moose has been a great partner for Uniswap — they over-delivered on the initial hiring mandate, provided even more value by piloting an AI strategy project, and were flexible in adjusting around the business needs as the company, market, and hiring demands evolved. They're good people we like and trust — we hired Charlie! If that doesn't say something about the quality of the staff, I don't know what does. That trust is why we re-engaged them when we needed additional recruiting support." – Stephanie Marcellin, Head of Talent @ Uniswap
“The difference is I was never 'the agency.' I was in Slack, in standups, in debriefs, in the offsite - owning pipelines next to the internal team, not running a parallel process and emailing over résumés. A few months in, most people couldn't tell you who was in-house and who was Bull Moose. That was the whole point.” – Charlie Kerr, Senior Recruiter @ Uniswap; fmr. Bull Moose
