Talent Acquisition Lead

Founding Talent Lead

Location: New York or London (office based role)

Salary: up to $140,000 (or up to £100,000) + 15% bonus

Join one of Europe's fastest-growing AI startups and build the hiring engine from the ground up.

Most recruitment roles ask you to fill vacancies.

This one asks you to help build a company. We're working with a venture-backed, AI-native startup that is transforming the insurance industry. Having raised over $15M from some of the world's leading investors, including Y Combinator, the business is entering a critical phase of growth with Series A firmly on the horizon.

To support that growth, they're looking for their first in-house Talent hire. This is an opportunity to work directly alongside the founders and become the architect of the company's hiring function, helping scale the team from 40 employees today to 60+ over the next 12 months.

What You'll B e Doing

As the first Talent hire in the business, you'll own recruitment end-to-end. You'll partner directly with founders and hiring managers to understand hiring needs, build talent pipelines, and deliver exceptional candidates at speed.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Owning the full hiring lifecycle from intake to onboarding
• Building proactive outbound sourcing strategies across technical and non-technical roles
• Engaging and converting passive candidates who have never heard of the company before
• Managing hiring pipelines and ensuring an exceptional candidate experience throughout
• Partnering with founders to forecast hiring needs and deliver against ambitious growth plans
• Building scalable recruitment infrastructure including ATS workflows, scorecards, interview processes, reporting, and automation
• Creating a recruitment function that can support rapid growth without sacrificing quality

What We're Looking For - our non negotiable requirements:

• 4-6 years of in house recruitment experience within tech startups (not agency)
• Extensive experience building technical and non technical teams within tech start ups as an in-house talent lead
• Experience scaling teams in fast-moving environments
• Strong sourcing capability and confidence approaching passive candidates
• Proven ability to manage multiple hires simultaneously without compromising quality
• A highly organised, process-driven mindset
• Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity and limited structure
• Energised by ownership, autonomy, and accountability

You'll Love This Role If:

• You enjoy building rather than inheriting
• You want direct access to founders and business decisions
• You thrive in high-intensity environments where speed matters
• You love finding talent that others can't
• You believe candidate experience is just as important as hiring outcomes
• You want to see the direct impact of your work on company growth

Why Join?

This isn't a traditional recruiter role. You'll be the person who builds the systems, processes, and talent strategy that power the next phase of growth for a business that is scaling fast and attracting significant investor attention.

If you've successfully helped scale a startup before and want the opportunity to build a world-class talent function from scratch, we'd loveto hear from you.