Jeff Winter
Jeff Winter
Recruiting Leader, Suno
Jeff Winter’s path into recruiting didn’t begin with a career plan—it began with a phone call.
Early in his career, Jeff was checking in on a friend in Ketchum, Idaho when the conversation took an unexpected turn. His friend was starting a recruiting firm and asked if Jeff wanted to join. Jeff said yes, packed up, and moved to Idaho. What followed was the start of a 17-year journey building and scaling a recruiting business that spanned agency search, executive recruiting, RPO, and even a proprietary software solution the firm eventually sold.
The company began by placing software engineers in the Bay Area—operating remotely before remote was mainstream—and eventually relocated its growing team to San Francisco. Over nearly two decades, Jeff ran the search side of the business while helping fund and expand new lines of service, gaining firsthand experience in building recruiting operations from the ground up.
As the market evolved, so did Jeff’s career. Watching many of his top agency recruiters transition successfully in-house, he made the move himself, joining Thumbtack to build and lead its internal talent function. From there, he continued to scale organizations at Quantum and later at Chime, where he became the company’s first recruiter and helped architect its talent foundation during a period of rapid growth.
Most recently, Jeff stepped into a new chapter as Head of Talent at Suno, an AI-powered music company at the forefront of creative technology. With Suno scaling quickly—from 150 employees toward 400 in a single year—Jeff now leads the charge in building the talent infrastructure behind a product that has the potential to reshape how music is created and experienced.
What Energizes Him Most
For Jeff, energy comes from building something that is both meaningful and creative.
At Suno, he is drawn to the rare combination of scale, innovation, and culture. The company’s technology is already reaching millions of users, with the potential to touch billions, and the team behind it is deeply passionate about what they are creating. For Jeff, it’s not just about growth—it’s about building a foundation for a product that could change an entire industry.
He thrives in environments where the work feels purposeful, the people care about what they’re building, and there is real opportunity to shape the future of a company. At this stage of his career, that blend of creativity, impact, and leadership is what keeps him inspired.
How Recruiting Is Changing
Jeff has watched the conversation around AI in recruiting evolve rapidly—and sometimes unrealistically.
In his view, early enthusiasm led many executives to believe that AI would dramatically reduce or even replace recruiting and sourcing. But in practice, the technology has proven more complex. While AI can assist with top-of-funnel tasks, research, and automation, Jeff believes its real challenge lies in expectation-setting: understanding what these tools can truly deliver and how to measure their return on investment.
He’s seen organizations rush to implement new solutions, only to realize that adoption, learning curves, and real-world effectiveness take time. Not every tool fits every business, and thoughtful experimentation matters more than chasing the newest technology.
For Jeff, recruiting remains a deeply human discipline. Negotiation, relationship-building, trust, and influence cannot be automated. Technology can streamline processes, but it cannot replace the craft of working with people—internally with leaders and externally with candidates.
Jeff’s Advice for 2026
Jeff’s advice for the year ahead is rooted in pragmatism.
As AI investment accelerates, he encourages talent leaders to stay grounded in the reality of their work: recruiting is still about people. Leaders will increasingly face trade-offs between investing in technology and investing in teams, and Jeff believes the most effective organizations will resist false choices between the two.
“Set the right expectations,” he emphasizes. AI can perform tasks—but people build relationships, navigate nuance, and drive outcomes. The future of talent isn’t about replacing humans with tools; it’s about equipping humans with better ones.
He also anticipates a more competitive market ahead. With renewed investment across AI, consumer, robotics, and infrastructure, and with more companies returning to in-office or hybrid work, factors like geography, commute, and culture will once again play a major role in how candidates make decisions.
For Jeff, success in this next phase will come down to balance: embracing innovation without losing sight of what has always made recruiting powerful—the human connection at its core.
That grounded, builder’s mindset is what defines Jeff Winter’s leadership style and what makes him a standout voice in the evolving talent landscape—and a deserving member of the Talent 100.
