Sustaining Hiring Velocity at Uniswap Through Product Launch, AI, and a Strategic Pivot

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.