Founding Talent Lead

Our client is a growing technology company developing highly specialized, technically complex products and solutions. The organization is building a team capable of operating at the intersection of advanced technology, engineering, research, and commercial execution.

The company is at an important stage of growth and is looking for a Founding Talent Lead to build and lead talent acquisition from the ground up while establishing foundational People Operations practices.

This is an opportunity to partner directly with the executive team and senior leaders to identify, attract, and close highly sought-after technical and business talent.

About the Role

This is not a recruiting coordinator or traditional HRBP role. It is a company-building role.

As the company's first dedicated Talent Lead, you will own recruiting end-to-end while helping define how the organization scales. You will work closely with leadership to build workforce strategy, establish hiring processes, create talent pipelines, and ensure every hire strengthens the organization's capabilities and culture.

You will partner closely with leaders across the organization to optimize onboarding, improve time to impact, and ensure new team members are positioned for success.

Many of the people the company needs will not be actively looking. They may be working in advanced technology organizations, research institutions, highly regulated industries, engineering firms, or high-growth technology companies. Finding, engaging, and closing this talent will be a core part of the role.

What you'll do

Build and Own Recruiting

• Lead full-cycle recruiting across technical, product, and business operations roles.

• Develop sourcing strategies for difficult-to-access talent markets.

• Build target-company maps and long-term talent pipelines.

• Conduct candidate outreach, screening, interview management, references, offers, and closing.

• Develop compelling recruiting narratives that reflect the company's mission, opportunity, and ambition.

Recruit Exceptional Talent

• Partner with executives and leaders to define hiring requirements before searches begin.

• Recruit across engineering, software, systems, research, product, operations, and other specialized disciplines.

• Help evaluate talent through structured interview processes and hiring calibration.

• Guide compensation and closing conversations for highly sought-after candidates.

Build the Hiring Operating System

• Implement scalable recruiting processes, tools, and metrics.

• Own recruiting analytics, forecasting, and reporting.

• Establish interview best practices, scorecards, and hiring governance.

• Improve candidate experience and employer brand.

• Build the recruiting foundation that future talent team members will inherit.

Partner on Workforce Strategy

• Work with leadership on headcount planning and organizational design.

• Advise on talent market dynamics, compensation trends, and hiring risks.

• Help determine when problems should be solved through hiring, automation, partnerships, or organizational design.

• Serve as a trusted partner to senior leaders as the company scales.

People Operations

• Partner with leadership on onboarding, employee experience, and organizational development initiatives.

• Support workforce planning, headcount forecasting, and talent analytics.

• Help introduce scalable practices around performance, career growth, and team effectiveness.

• Contribute to building a high-performance culture as the company scales.

What we're looking for

7+ years of recruiting experience, including substantial technical recruiting responsibility.

• Proven success recruiting highly specialized talent in competitive markets.

• Experience hiring engineers, researchers, technical professionals, or other highly specialized talent.

• Strong sourcing capability and the ability to identify technical depth versus surface-level experience.

• Comfort engaging with senior technical leaders and understanding complex technical environments.

• Exceptional written communication skills.

• Strong operational discipline and data-driven decision making.

• Ability to thrive in ambiguity and build systems from scratch.

• Experience leveraging AI and automation to improve recruiting effectiveness.

Particularly Valuable Experience

• Experience in technology, engineering, advanced manufacturing, research-intensive, or other highly technical environments.

• Early-stage startup experience.

• Experience serving as a company's first dedicated recruiting or talent leader.

• Recruiting for organizations where talent density and technical excellence are critical to success.

• Existing relationships within engineering, research, scientific, or other specialized technical communities.

What success looks like

First 90 Days

• Build a comprehensive talent map for the organization's highest-priority hiring needs.

• Establish recruiting metrics, process rigor, and hiring cadence.

• Take ownership of active recruiting searches.

• Develop trusted relationships with hiring managers and senior leaders.

• Launch a scalable recruiting operating framework.

• Evaluate and strengthen onboarding processes to improve new hire ramp-up and integration.

• Establish foundational people metrics and reporting, including headcount, hiring progress, and retention insights.

Within 6 Months

• Deliver against key hiring priorities while maintaining a high talent bar.

• Build repeatable processes across sourcing, assessment, interviewing, and closing.

• Improve hiring predictability, speed, and candidate experience.

• Establish the company as a destination employer for highly skilled, mission-driven talent.

• Create the foundation for scaling the talent function as the organization grows.

• Partner with leadership to introduce foundational practices for performance feedback, career development, and talent planning.

• Develop employee engagement and retention initiatives that support a high-performance culture as the team scales.

This is for a vacant role, an NDA will be required to release the name of the company. AI is not being used in evaluating candidates. No candidate profiles will be shared with the client without your explicit consent.