NYSE: ZIP

Unique Data and Artificial Intelligence Provide Better Outcomes for Employers and Job Seekers. With a relevant data pipeline created from billions of interactions between job seekers and employers, we are uniquely positioned to harness that data to fuel the advanced artificial intelligence, or AI, behind our matching, recommendation and marketplace optimization capabilities. Through our deep learning-based natural language processing, we understand job seekers’ and employers’ nuanced needs. We analyze clicks, applications, hiring signals and numerous other interactions to improve outcomes for all participants in our marketplace. Our advanced technology stack processes the data generated by our highly engaged user base to continuously improve our matching.

Accelerating Network Effects. Increasing the number of jobs in our marketplace attracts more job seekers. A greater number of job seekers attracts more employers who in turn post more job opportunities in our marketplace. These natural, self-perpetuating network effects increase our data and thereby accelerate the rate at which our matching technology gets smarter over time.

What We Do

We enable work by connecting job seekers and employers in our marketplace.

How We Work for Employers

Our technology delivers high-quality matches to our employers immediately after a job goes live and provides tools to streamline the candidate selection process.

Quality Candidates Fast

•Instant alerts to qualified potential candidates. When employers post a job, ZipRecruiter’s matching technology immediately identifies and sends an alert to highly qualified job seekers in our marketplace.

•Direct recruitment messages from the employer. Immediately after a job is posted, ZipRecruiter’s matching technology presents the employer with a list of the best potential candidates in the market. The employer can then, with a single click, personally invite the most qualified potential candidates to apply. These recruitment messages directly from the employer drive higher-rated candidates, increasing value for employers.

•Matching that learns. When an employer gives an applicant a positive rating, our technology searches for other job seekers with similar profiles to that candidate and proactively encourages them to apply. Our matching is constantly improving over time as we collect more data and our technology applies the learnings embedded in the data.

•Job distribution. Our employers’ jobs are posted not only across ZipRecruiter’s online sites and mobile apps but are also distributed to sites managed by our Job Distribution Partners. Job Distribution Partners are third-party sites who have a relationship with us and advertise jobs from our marketplace, and include job boards, search engines, social networks, talent communities and resume services. The diversity and depth of our partner network enables employers to reach an especially broad job seeker audience.

•Access to an expansive database of job seekers. We provide employers the ability to search through our database of job seekers who have broad skill sets and a range of experiences.

Efficient Candidate Vetting

•All the applicants in one place. For employers who do not already have an established process to manage hiring, job applicants are captured inside the ZipRecruiter Applicant Tracking System, or ATS. Our ATS centralizes and simplifies the decision-making process. Inside this system, hiring teams can review, rate, manage the status of, and ultimately decide which candidate to hire. For employers already using certain third-party ATSs, we seamlessly populate candidates into their existing workflow.

•Great matches. Our matching technology identifies candidates with the right skills, education, and experience to help hiring managers avoid missing high-quality candidates.

•In-demand candidate alerts. We notify employers when their candidates have received interest from other employers, encouraging them to reach out quickly. In a tight, competitive market for top-quality talent, these notifications prompt hiring managers to move quickly to avoid losing out on a potentially great hire.

•Face-to-face interactions. Our product allows employers to schedule interviews with candidates vetted by our matching technology within hours of posting a job, shortening the time it takes to find and hire great talent.

Flexible Pricing

•Flexible pricing based on customer needs. We provide a variety of pricing plans to best suit an employer’s specific needs, including flat rate pricing on terms typically ranging from a day to a year, as well as performance-based pricing for employers that run sophisticated recruitment marketing campaigns.

How We Work for Job Seekers

For job seekers, we make finding work easier.

Process Efficiency

•Search millions of jobs in one place. ZipRecruiter provides job seekers with access to millions of jobs from all over the internet. Job seekers can filter this vast array of opportunities by using

numerous criteria to find the handful of best potential matches on our website or in our mobile app.

•Simple, one-click applications. On ZipRecruiter, job seekers create a profile and can then apply for certain opportunities with a single click. Our one-click application technology works across both our marketplace and certain Job Distribution Partners to remove barriers between a job seeker and their next opportunity. This is particularly useful for job seekers on mobile devices where a resume can’t be easily created or uploaded.

•Job application tracking. Job seekers typically apply to numerous opportunities throughout the course of their search. Our simple, user-friendly dashboard aggregates their application history so job seekers can track opportunities they have reviewed or applied to.

Personalized Recruiter Assistance

•“Phil,” your AI-powered career advisor. Our AI-powered career advisor “Phil” engages with job seekers throughout their job search journeys. Phil helps job seekers discover new opportunities and stand out to employers. Phil provides positive, personalized messages to candidates, inviting them to apply for new open positions. With repeated interaction throughout the job seeker experience, ZipRecruiter is able to deliver better matches and recommendations.

•Pitched to employers as a potential candidate. After a new job is posted, ZipRecruiter’s matching technology immediately presents strong-fit in-market job seekers to the employer for consideration. Employers can then directly invite the job seekers they like best to apply. Candidates receive inbound requests from interested employers before applying or even actively searching. While job seekers typically do not like the process of applying to jobs, the feeling of affirmation from being recruited to a particular job drives greater engagement.

•Job alerts. ZipRecruiter delivers a digest of relevant new opportunities from across the web on a frequent basis, enabling job seekers to monitor the full breadth of our marketplace offerings.

•Application updates. Our technology notifies job seekers when an employer either views their application or gives them a positive rating. This addresses a primary complaint we hear from job seekers: applying to a job and then hearing nothing back.

Our Strengths

Our core competitive advantages that have been critical to our success include:

•Large and proprietary data set. We capture billions of user interactions facilitated by our marketplace. Going far beyond the resume, job description and job search history, we observe how job seekers interact with every job and how employers engage with every job seeker in our marketplace.

•Leading edge AI-powered matching technology. Our purpose-built technology captures insights from our proprietary data set, driving meaningful increases in match quality over time.

•Powerful network effects. More jobs, more job seekers and better matching technology over time create more high-velocity hiring activity in our marketplace, fueling a self-perpetuating cycle of network effects.

•Best products for job seekers. Job seekers love our #1 rated job search app1. Phil, our AI-powered career advisor, gets to know each individual job seeker, helping them discover new opportunities and stand out to employers.

•Our brand. Since our founding, we have invested to build the ZipRecruiter brand to 80% aided brand awareness among U.S. employers and job seekers.

•Flexible business model. Our sales and marketing spend is highly variable, allowing us to quickly align investment with a changing macroeconomic backdrop. We respond to employer and job seeker acquisition opportunities quickly, taking advantage where we see great returns on investment.

•Designed for simplicity and speed. We thrive on taking unnecessarily complex processes and simplifying them. This product design philosophy permeates our entire company. We focus on continually making ZipRecruiter faster and simpler for employers and job seekers to use.

•Metrics-driven culture. We are a metrics and data-driven company. We are disciplined about setting quantitative operating goals and then finding innovative ways to achieve those goals.

Our Competition

Hiring is a vast, competitive, and highly fragmented market. We compete in varying degrees with other online job sites including Craigslist, Glassdoor, Google, Indeed, LinkedIn, Meta and hundreds of others.

Competition for Employers

Employers have a range of options when posting job opportunities. We compete to attract and retain employers to advertise their jobs in our marketplace. We compete for employers based on several factors including the pricing and features of our offerings, the speed of receiving great candidates, the size of our job seeker community, the simplicity of our user experience, and our trusted brand. We believe that our employers are able to cost-effectively attract the right job seekers in our marketplace compared to other online recruiting sites and traditional “offline” recruiting service providers due to the combination of the strength of our job seeker community and our proven matching technology that continues to get smarter over time.

Competition for Job Seekers

Job seekers have a variety of choices when searching for their next great job opportunity. We compete for job seekers on many fronts, including our ability to surface unique and attractive jobs, our

1 Based on job seeker app ratings as of January 2026 from AppFollow for ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn, and Monster.

ability to simplify the search process, the transparent feedback job seekers receive on the status of their applications, and our trusted brand. Our marketplace is free to job seekers. We believe our offering to job seekers compares favorably to alternatives due to the combination of our large and unique pool of job opportunities, and the personalized job seeker experience facilitated by our AI-powered career advisor named Phil.

Our Employees and Human Capital Resources

As of December 31, 2025, we employed over 800 individuals across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Israel. We also engage independent contractors and consultants. We have efficiently operated and adapted as a remote and hybrid workforce since the beginning of 2020; however, we maintain office spaces for in-person work in Santa Monica, California, Phoenix, Arizona, and London, the United Kingdom. Collectively, we view our team as our greatest asset, and we take great pride in having been recognized by companies such as Comparably and Newsweek for various awards including “Best Company Culture”, “Best Place to Work,” and “Newsweek’s Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces” to name a few.

Several aspects of how we operate our business have been critical to building our team:

•We use ZipRecruiter. We utilize the power of the marketplace we have built to connect to our next great employees.

•We foster an entrepreneurial culture of safety and innovation. We believe a safe, professional environment empowers people to take risks and be their best selves. Our employees are encouraged to champion great ideas, embrace innovative approaches and use data to advocate for their point of view.

•We embrace inclusion and belonging. We believe our company is strengthened by a culture that embraces inclusion. We create a safe space for all employees to feel heard, included and like they belong. Our employee-led and executive-sponsored Employee Resource Groups are highly active and create communities for employees, regardless of background, to engage in. Our commitment to inclusion and belonging is aligned with our mission to actively connect people from all backgrounds to their next great opportunity.

•We reward high performance. We focus on attracting and retaining results-oriented employees who are passionate about our mission. We use a variety of compensation tools to recruit, retain and reward employees whose achievements exceed our high expectations.

•We are committed to our employees’ career development. We invest in our people so that ZipRecruiter is not just a great place to work, but also a great place to advance and grow a rewarding career. Over half of our leadership positions are held by people who grew internally at ZipRecruiter, demonstrating our dedication to fostering a culture of professional growth and development.

Our Technology

Our research and development efforts are focused on delivering great products through data driven systems, machine learning technology, and robust infrastructure to ensure that our marketplace is sophisticated, low latency, resilient, and available to our users at all times.

Our research and development organization is built around small, cross-functional development teams. These development teams foster greater agility, which enables us to develop new, innovative product features as well as iterate quickly on new capabilities and optimizations. Our development teams design, build and continue to expand our ATS, mobile apps, data processing and analysis pipelines, marketplace functionality, search and matching, email and messaging, and third-party product integrations as well as the software infrastructure that supports best practices such as high frequency

deployment, orchestrating containers, and leveraging open-source technologies. Our systems are currently operated entirely on cloud services.

We have engineers, product managers and data scientists in the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Canada. We intend to continue to invest in our technology capabilities as we further build out a category-defining marketplace for job seekers and employers.

Regulatory Matters

We are subject to many varying laws and regulations in the United States, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Israel and throughout the world, including those related to privacy, data protection, AI (including machine learning), content regulation, intellectual property, consumer protection, e-commerce, marketing, advertising, messaging, rights of publicity, health and safety, employment and labor, product liability, accessibility, competition, and taxation. These laws and regulations are constantly evolving and may be interpreted, applied, created, or amended in a manner that could harm or require us to change our current or future business and operations. In addition, it is possible that certain governments may seek to block or limit our products and services or otherwise impose other restrictions that may affect the accessibility or usability of any or all of our products and services for an extended period of time or indefinitely.

Data Privacy and Security Laws

We receive, collect, use, store, transfer, and process the personal information of job seekers, employers and other users of our website and services, our employees, service provider representatives and others across the world. We are therefore subject to various federal, state and international laws and regulations relating to the privacy, security, processing and protection of personal information in the United States, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Israel, and throughout the world.

These laws often require companies to implement specific information security controls to protect certain types of personal information and/or impose specific requirements relating to the collection or processing of such information, and we have implemented different security measures, policies and processes designed to comply with such requirements. At a federal level in the United States, our processing of personal information is primarily regulated through the Federal Trade Commission Act, and numerous states have implemented their own comprehensive data privacy laws (e.g., the California Consumer Privacy Act) or have pending data privacy legislation which impose additional obligations and restrictions. Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act states principles for the businesses to adhere to in processing and storing personal information, and certain Canadian provinces have similar comprehensive privacy laws that apply to companies operating within those provinces. We are also subject to privacy, data protection, and security laws in Europe, including the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the UK Data Protection Act. Further, we are subject to laws, rules, regulations, and other obligations regarding cross-border transfers of personal information, including laws relating to the transfer of personal information outside the EEA and the UK, and the use of cookies and e-marketing activities.

Privacy, AI and security laws are continuously evolving, and may be interpreted, applied, created or amended in a manner that could harm or require us to change our current or future business and operations. Legal requirements relating to data privacy, AI and security continue to evolve, and regulatory scrutiny in this area continues to increase around the world as various regulators and lawmakers continue to call for greater regulation of the collection and processing of personal information and use of AI, as well as restrictions for certain targeted advertising practices.

These changes, and the uncertainty created by the continuous evolution of the regulatory environment, implicate aspects of our corporate governance, risk management practices, public disclosures, environmental, social and governance related issues, AI and cybersecurity. For further information on the privacy, AI and data security laws that we are subject to, see the risk factor titled “Changes in laws or regulations relating to data privacy or the protection, collection, storage, processing,

transfer, or use of personal data, or AI, or any actual or perceived failure by us to comply with such laws and regulations or our privacy policies, could adversely affect our business”.

Seasonality

For a discussion of the seasonality of our business, see “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Factors Affecting our Performance—Seasonality.”

Intellectual Property

The protection of our intellectual property and proprietary technologies is an important aspect of our business. We seek to protect our intellectual property rights and proprietary technologies through trademark, copyright and trade secret laws, as well as through confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees, contractors and other third parties with whom we have a relationship in order to control access to, and clarify ownership of, our proprietary intellectual property and information.

As of December 31, 2025, ZipRecruiter, Inc. owned one U.S. patent as well as three U.S. and 20 international trademark registrations for the trademark “ZIPRECRUITER” and Poplar Technologies Ltd. had one U.S. trademark application and owned two international trademark registrations for the trademark “BREAKROOM”. We also own numerous domain names, including “www.ziprecruiter.com” and “www.breakroom.cc”. We consistently review our branding strategies and technology to assess the existence and registrability of new intellectual property.

We rely in part on trade secrets and confidential information to develop and maintain our competitive position. We seek to protect our trade secrets and confidential information through a variety of methods, including strict access control procedures and confidentiality agreements with employees, contractors and other third parties who may have access to our proprietary information. We also require employees to sign invention assignment agreements with respect to inventions arising from their employment, and strictly control access to our proprietary technology.

Corporate Information

We were incorporated in 2010 as ZipRecruiter, Inc., a Delaware corporation. Our website address is www.ziprecruiter.com. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this Annual Report on Form 10-K or any other report or document we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC.

Available Information

Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other filings with the SEC, and all amendments to these filings, can be obtained free of charge from our website at www.ziprecruiter-investors.com/financials/sec-filings. The SEC maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov. We also use our Investor Relations page on our website at www.ziprecruiter.com, press releases, public conference calls, public webcasts, X feed (@ZipRecruiter), Facebook page, and LinkedIn page as means of disclosing material information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, any website reference herein is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and the inclusion of such website addresses is as inactive textual references only.