These are the breakout startups hiring in New York this month — meet them before everyone else does.

Sierra is building the AI platform for customer experience — helping the world's biggest brands replace clunky support flows with AI agents that actually understand people, resolve issues in real time, and scale without breaking. Founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor (ex-Google, ex-Salesforce). Growing fast with offices in SF, NYC, Atlanta, and London.

Hiring: software engineer (agent), enterprise AE, sales director, strategist (agent development), product manager (agent development), and more. Details here.

PermitFlow is taking on one of construction's oldest headaches: permits. They've built software that helps contractors and developers navigate complex permitting processes faster and with less pain — cutting weeks off timelines that have historically run on paperwork and bureaucracy. NYC-based and scaling across the US.

Hiring: enterprise AE, applied AI engineer, head of marketing, customer success manager, staff software engineer, and more. Details here.

Posh is a consumer tech company building at the intersection of AI and personalization — with a tight, senior NYC team moving fast on product. All 12 open roles are in New York, on-site, which tells you something about how they operate.

Hiring: senior software engineer (backend AI), senior data scientist, engineering manager, account executive, partnerships manager, and more. Details here.

Merge built the unified API layer that lets any B2B product plug into hundreds of HR, ATS, accounting, and CRM integrations in one shot. If you've ever seen "Connect your HRIS" inside a SaaS tool, there's a decent chance Merge is powering it. Backed by Accel and NEA, with offices in NYC and SF.

Hiring: engineering manager, staff software engineer, product marketing manager (AI), lead product manager, enterprise CSM, commercial AE, technical support engineering manager, and more. Details here.

Clear Street is rebuilding capital markets infrastructure from scratch — a cloud-native, end-to-end platform giving sophisticated investors access to every asset, in every market. They're 800+ people, FORTUNE® Best Workplaces in New York, and backed by serious institutional credibility. If you want to work on hard fintech problems without the legacy tech debt of a bank, this is it.

Hiring: VP of DevOps, VP of fixed income settlements, senior software engineers (Studio, AI, risk, trading systems), software engineer (infrastructure, market data), associate — equity research, and more. Details here.

AssemblyAI builds the Speech AI infrastructure that powers voice agents, conversation intelligence, and real-time transcription for developers and enterprises. Their Universal-3 Pro model just launched as the most accurate real-time transcription model on the market. Remote-first, globally distributed, and moving fast in one of the most competitive AI verticals right now.

Hiring: roles across engineering, research, and product. Details here.

Meter builds full-stack enterprise networks — hardware, software, and management — from the ground up. Think internet, wired, Wi-Fi, and cellular, all under one roof and one monthly rate. They design and manufacture their own hardware (firewalls, switches, access points, gateways) and pair it with software that makes managing thousands of locations actually manageable.

Hiring: technical project manager, technician operations manager, software engineer (product), deployment engineer (network), sales — majors northeast, sales engineering. Details here.

The Funding Landscape

NYC just had its strongest February on record — and it wasn't close. $2.53B raised across 76 deals, up 181% year-over-year. AI companies took 53% of the deals and nearly half the capital. The money is moving, and it's moving fast.

February's biggest rounds:

Vestwell raised $385M (fintech / retirement infrastructure)

Runway closed $315M (gen-AI video)

Talkiatry landed $210M Series D (mental health)

Whop secured $200M (marketplace for communities and software)

Garner Health raised $118M Series D (health benefits)

The Reality Check

The top end of the market is thriving. Everything else is getting squeezed. Generalist hiring is slow, competitive, and showing no signs of loosening. Founders are running lean and every new hire needs to justify itself fast.

The takeaway for you: Look at what's getting funded. AI, fintech, and health tech are where the capital is flowing — and capital follows hiring. If you're making a move, make it toward a company that just raised and is building something that matters.

See you at the showcase on the 23rd.