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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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…