Wellfound:ai ATS Connection: What We Access, Why We Need It, and What We Do With Your Data

This page explains why wellfound:ai asks you to connect your Applicant Tracking System (ATS), what we use that access for, and the safeguards in place.

Wellfound:ai uses Merge, an ATS integration provider, to connect your ATS.

To connect your ATS follow this guide.

Summary on how we use your ATS data

Your ATS data is yours.

🚫 We do not:

share it across customers
use it to build a shared candidate pool
use your ATS as a source of candidates to contact.

✅ We do use the ATS connection to:

Sync and display applicants so you can process them in Wellfound (Inbound)
Prevent duplicate outreach/duplicate records
Export candidates you approve into your ATS (so your ATS stays the system of record)
Keep status/stage changes in sync between Wellfound and your ATS

What "your data is yours" means in practice

It's essential to understand how your data from your ATS is utilized.

In our system, there is:

No cross-customer sharing: Your candidates, pipeline data, interview data, notes, and decisions are not shared across the platform or with other customers.

No "mining" your ATS: We do not use your ATS as a source to find candidates to message.

No outreach to your existing ATS candidates: Autopilot outreach applies only to Wellfound-sourced candidates you've approved to engage.

How the ATS connection is used by wellfound:ai

Autopilot (Wellfound-sourced candidates)

Autopilot involves wellfound:ai sourcing candidates and (when enabled by you) reaching out only to those Wellfound-sourced candidates.

We do not reach out to candidates you already have in your ATS.

We do use the ATS connection to:

Check whether a candidate already exists in your ATS (to avoid contacting someone you already engaged, rejected, or are actively interviewing)
Export approved candidates into your ATS
Sync stages/status as the candidate progresses

Applicants (processing your existing ATS inbound applicants in Wellfound)

If you use wellfound:ai's applicants feature, we sync applicants/candidates from your ATS so you can review and process them in wellfound:ai (filters, triage, accept/reject, etc.), while keeping your connected ATS as the system of record.

Outbound candidate outreach is not part of the applicants tool. We do not proactively message candidates through this feature. The only candidate communications that may occur are actions you explicitly initiate (for example, applying a rejection action that uses your configured rejection template/workflow).

Why we sometimes request "more permissions than you'd expect."

We use an ATS integration provider called Merge to support connectivity across many ATS vendors and configurations. Merge, like Wellfound, is fully SOC 2 compliant. ATS APIs and permission models vary significantly and change over time.

Important: requesting permission is not the same as using it.

In practice, "surgical" permission sets often fail in real customer environments due to:

Vendor-specific scopes that behave differently than documented
Changes to ATS APIs and permission requirements
Features break because one endpoint needs an additional scope that's easy to miss

So we may request a broader set of ATS permissions to ensure the integration works reliably.

We still:

Use the connection to only deliver the features you've enabled
Perform write actions (exporting candidates, moving stages, rejecting/undoing, etc.) only when you or your team initiates them in Wellfound
Limit processing to the jobs/projects you connect in wellfound:ai

The main permissions we need (high-level)

Jobs

Link ATS jobs to Wellfound projects (so actions and applicants map to the correct req)

Users

Map ATS users to project members (so the right people are associated with the workflow)

Stages

Map pipeline stages so candidates/applications land in the correct stage and display accurately

Candidates

Check for existing candidates to prevent duplicate outreach/duplicate records
Export Wellfound-approved candidates into your ATS

Applications

Sync application stage/status from ATS → wellfound:ai
Apply stage changes (advance/move/reject/undo) when initiated in wellfound:ai

Note: Some ATS platforms also require access to related objects—e.g., notes, attachments, education/employment fields—to fully export a candidate record in a way that matches your ATS expectations.

Security and compliance

Both Wellfound and Merge (our ATS integration provider) are SOC 2 compliant. Details are available in our Trust Center.

Questions from security or IT

If your team wants deeper detail (exact scopes/endpoints, data flow diagrams, retention, and subprocessors such as Merge), direct them to the Trust Center or contact support.