Head of Talent

Overview

Persona AI is developing and commercializing rugged, multi-purpose humanoid robots that perform real work. Persona’s founding team has a decades-long history in humanoid robotics, bionics, and product development delivering robust hardware that has touched the stars, worked miles below the surface of the ocean, and even roamed Disney Parks. Our mission is focused squarely on shipping beautiful, reliable products at massive scale, while building a customer-focused team to achieve these aims.

This isn a traditional HR role. You ll be our Head of Talent & Recruiting, owning the entire talent acquisition function end-to-end while helping us build a world-class people experience. You ll be hunting for robotics engineers, AI researchers, and hardware specialists in one of the most competitive talent markets in the world.

You I Be reporting directly to leadership and have the autonomy to build a team, systems, processes, and a team that reflects your vision for what recruiting can be in the age of AI.

You have a deep love for people and believe that building the right team is some of the most important work a company can do. You understand that recruiting is relationship-building at scale, and you re energized by the challenge of matching brilliant people with meaningful work.

You're a go-getter and an out-of-the-box thinker. You don wait for permission; you see what needs to happen and make it happen. You have grit—you know that finding the right robotics engineer or ML researcher takes persistence, creativity, and resilience.

You're rigorous about systems and process, but people leave conversations with you feeling energized, not drained—you're type-A with heart.

You're excited to be part of something that mattersuilding technology that will change how humans and robots work together.

• Lead full-cycle recruiting for highly technical roles across robotics, AI/ML, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and more—roles that require deep industry understanding and creative sourcing strategies
• Build and optimize recruiting infrastructure: ATS systems, passive candidate pipelines, talent communities, and data-driven processes that scale.
• Care deeply about the candidate experience:
  Every touchpoint matters. You sweat the details—response times, interview debriefs, rejection messages, offer presentations. Every touchpoint reflects our values and reinforces our brand.
• Build trust with candidates, hiring managers, and teams:
  You know that great recruiting is built on relationships, not transactions. People trust you because you genuinely care about their success.
• Design employee experience and retention strategies:
  You ll optimize onboarding, implement engagement surveys and feedback loops, track retention metrics to identify flight risks early, conduct career development and compensation benchmarking conversations, build recognition programs, and use exit interview insights to continuously improve how we keep our best people.
• Develop passive recruiting funnels that keep us connected and engaging with top talent.
• Help to scale the team from 40 to 80+ employees over the next year, maintaining quality and culture while moving at startup speed
• Be a systems thinker:
  Build frameworks for intake, assessment, offer strategy, and onboarding that can scale as we grow
• Lead and build a recruiting team as we expand—mentoring, coaching, and setting the standard for excellence
• Stay at the forefront of AI-enabled recruiting:
  The tools are changing rapidly. You re excited to experiment, implement, and establish best practices for AI-augmented talent acquisition

• 10+ years in recruiting, with your career rooted in talent acquisition (you ve lived this work, not stumbled into it)
• Startup DNA:
  You ve helped a company scale through critical growth stages (seed through Series B ideal) and know what it takes to recruit in high-growth, resource-constrained environments
• Deep technical recruiting experience:
  You ve hired engineers, researchers, or highly specialized technical talent and know how to assess for skills you don t personally have
• Proven systems expertise:
  You ve built…