The Cognitive
Your best candidate isn't in your search results.
5 places hidden candidates hide, with the brief that finds each one.
One data engineer. 384 ways to find their work.
Rebuilt the ledger at a fintech company, on Spark, in the Austin area
Your role
In what they did, written their way
The headline says what they are called. The work history says what they did, in words you would never type.
Find engineers who have built or rebuilt payments or billing data, however their profile words it: ledgers, invoicing pipelines, payouts, reconciliation. Any title. Austin area.
| The work you need | How it shows up on profiles |
|---|---|
| Built payments data | "Rebuilt the ledger" · "Owned invoicing ETL" · "Moved payouts to streaming" · "Reconciled transactions at scale" |
| Closed big deals alone | "Closed $100K+ deals" · "Owned enterprise deals end to end" · "Full-cycle AE, six-figure ACV" · "Sold to CFOs" |
| Grew a team | "Grew the team from 4 to 18" · "Hired 12 engineers" · "Built the platform team" · "Promoted 3 leads" |
| Opened a market | "Launched in Germany" · "First hire in EMEA" · "Took the region from 0 to $3M" |
| Kept customers | "Owned a $2M book" · "Net retention 115%" · "Renewed our top 20 accounts" |
| Built recruiting from zero | "First TA hire" · "Hired the first 50" · "Set up our ATS and hiring process" |
In a neighbouring role
The best person for the job is already doing it, under a role you would never search.
Find people who run revenue operations in practice, whatever their title: sales operations managers, CRM admins and business operations managers who own forecasting and pipeline reporting.
| You want | Already doing the work |
|---|---|
| RevOps Lead | Sales Operations Manager · CRM Administrator · Business Operations Manager · GTM Systems Manager |
| Product Operations | Program Manager · Product Analyst · Business Operations Analyst |
| Data Engineer | Backend Engineer who owns pipelines · Analytics Engineer |
| Customer Success Manager | Implementation Consultant · Support Team Lead · Account Manager |
| Talent Acquisition Partner | Sourcer ready for a full desk · HR Generalist who runs hiring · Agency Recruiter going in-house |
| Engineering Manager | Tech Lead who runs 1:1s · Staff Engineer who leads a team |
Behind a different title
You search the title on your job description. They hold the same seat under another name.
Find senior data engineers in Austin. Include every title the market uses for the same seat: ETL developer, big data engineer, data platform engineer, analytics platform engineer.
| You search | They are also called |
|---|---|
| Data Engineer | ETL Developer · Big Data Engineer · Data Platform Engineer · Analytics Platform Engineer · Pipeline Engineer |
| Account Executive | Account Manager (new business) · Sales Executive · Business Development Manager · Client Partner |
| Customer Success Manager | Account Manager (post-sale) · Client Success Lead · Relationship Manager · Onboarding Manager |
| Product Designer | UX Designer · UI/UX Designer · Interaction Designer · Experience Designer |
| Talent Acquisition Partner | Recruiter · Senior Recruiter · Recruitment Partner · Talent Partner · Hiring Partner |
| DevOps Engineer | Site Reliability Engineer · Platform Engineer · Infrastructure Engineer · Cloud Engineer |
| Controller | Financial Controller · Accounting Manager · Head of Accounting · Finance Manager |
Below the first page
Search results are sorted by keyword match, not by fit. The right person sits far down the list.
Find senior data engineers in Austin. Rank everyone by how well they fit the brief, and give me one line on why each person is there.
- A title you did not type. If every result has the exact title from your job description, the list is missing people.
- A town you did not name. If every result lists the city itself, the commuters are missing.
- A reason for every person. If you cannot say in one line why someone is on the list, they are there for a keyword.
- A possible next to the strong. Someone missing one thing, named as missing it, is often your hire after the hiring manager sees them.
One town over
You search the city. Many of the people who work there list the town they live in.
Find senior data engineers who live within commuting distance of Austin, including Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown and Pflugerville.
| You search | They list |
|---|---|
| Austin | Round Rock · Cedar Park · Georgetown · Pflugerville · Leander · Kyle · San Marcos |
| Dallas | Plano · Frisco · Irving · Richardson · McKinney · Arlington · Fort Worth |
| San Francisco | Oakland · San Jose · Palo Alto · Mountain View · Sunnyvale · Redwood City · Fremont |
The full brief
Find [seniority] [role] who live within commuting distance of [city], including [nearby towns]. Include every title the market uses for the same seat, and people in [neighbouring roles] who already do the work. They must have [the one thing they did, in plain words]. Skip [who to skip]. Rank everyone by fit and give me one line on why each person is there.
Run it in Claude
- Start your free 7-day trial at The Cognitive.
- In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors, and add a custom connector:
https://app.thecognitive.io/mcp - Sign in, then paste your brief.