Head of Recruitment - UK & South Africa

The Head of Growth will play a key role in shaping and executing the company's global talent strategy. Acting as a strategic advisor to the Senior Leadership Team, this person will ensure a strong pipeline of senior and critical talent, and drive exceptional candidate and employee experiences - from first contact to retention.

They will be responsible for aligning hiring plans to business priorities, managing relationships with external partners, and designing scalable processes for onboarding and internal mobility across key markets.

Key Responsibilities Talent Acquisition & Partnerships

• Partner with the Senior Leadership Team to define and execute a robust hiring plan aligned with business goals and budgets.
• Manage external recruitment partners and internal stakeholders to ensure excellence in hiring delivery (quality, speed, and experience).
• Oversee end-to-end recruitment processes, ensuring alignment with company culture and diversity goals.
• Define and implement a consistent, data-driven recruitment process across markets.
• Champion diversity, equity, and inclusion in all talent decisions.

Onboarding & Retention

• Design and implement scalable onboarding plans for new joiners to ensure rapid integration and productivity.
• Partner with People Operations and L&D to track new hire success and engagement.
• Lead initiatives to improve retention through development opportunities and internal career pathways.

Employer Brand & Candidate Experience

• Strengthen the company's employer value proposition across all regions.
• Ensure a best-in-class candidate experience reflective of the company's culture and values.

Profile

• 10+ years of experience in talent acquisition and/or HR leadership, ideally across multiple geographies.
• Proven experience advising senior leadership on workforce planning and talent strategy.
• Strong understanding of the UK, US, and South African talent markets.
• Demonstrated success managing external search partners and senior hiring.
• Exceptional communication, influencing, and stakeholder management skills.

Required Skills & Experience Strategic and Technical Expertise

• 10+ years of experience in Talent Acquisition or broader Talent/HR leadership roles, with a proven track record of delivering results across multiple countries.
• Strong understanding of workforce planning and headcount forecasting, ideally in partnership with Finance and business leadership.
• Deep experience in end-to-end hiring, including senior/executive recruitment, assessment methodologies, and stakeholder engagement.
• Proven ability to manage and evaluate external recruitment agencies/search firms to ensure consistent quality and brand alignment.
• Data-driven decision-making: ability to interpret hiring metrics and translate insights into action plans.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Experience acting as a strategic advisor to senior executives, influencing decisions through data and insight rather than just process.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build trust across regions and time zones.
• Strong cross-cultural awareness and ability to adapt communication style for global audiences.
• Demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion across all talent practices.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience leading talent programs across the UK, US, and South Africa (or comparable global footprint).
• Background in both in-house and agency/executive search environments, bringing commercial and operational perspectives.
• Exposure to learning and development or leadership development programs that drive retention and engagement.
• Hands-on experience with HR systems (e.g., Greenhouse, Workday, Lever, SmartRecruiters, or similar) and comfort with HR analytics dashboards.
• Knowledge of employment and hiring regulations in South Africa, including compliance with local labor laws and data privacy requirements.
• Proven experience in employer branding and candidate experience optimization.
• Familiarity with organizational design principles and workforce capability mapping.
• Advanced facilitation, coaching, or mentoring skills (especially valuable if the role will shape internal mobility and development).
• Previous experience in fast-scaling or transforming environments, where structure, culture, and talent strategy evolve rapidly.

What we Offer

• 25 Days annual leave
• Learning and Development Support throughout your career at Theodo
• 3 week work from anywhere policy
• Equipment budget for your tech set up
• Company pension
• Monthly Socials
• A Slack network of 600+ engineers across our extended ecosystem - ask questions, share patterns, or troubleshoot obscure bugs with some of the sharpest devs out there.
• Monthly Lunch & Tells - in-person sessions to share technical discoveries, cool code tricks, or war stories from the field with fellow engineers. You'll work on a hybrid basis from our office based in London.

Who are we

Theodo UK is a software consultancy specialising in full-stack development, mobile and web applications and cloud solutions. We are a 70 person team based in the UK and South Africa, and we're growing quickly. Theodo UK operates with the entrepreneurial drive, agility and ownership mindset of a start up, but with the financial stability, global reputation and technical depth of the wider Theodo Group behind us. This unique position allows our team to innovate quickly, take smart risks, and build real value for clients-without compromising on quality. We follow Lean and Kaizen principles to continuously improve and deliver high quality digital products at speed. While headquartered in the UK, our reach is global. Supported by our South African team, we manage projects across English speaking markets worldwide.

Values

Team Spirit - Our team has a natural ability to work together to achieve a common goal. Taking on the role of a good teammate requires courage; it means challenging and giving each other feedback. Its key to our teams succeeding.

Pragmatism - Achieving effective results by utilising resources efficiently and avoiding unnecessary waste of time, energy and money. Emphasising agile practices, employing concise and direct interactions and engaging in firsthand experiences to challenge beliefs.

Willingness to Improve - Actively identifying areas for improvement rather than tolerating good enough, promptly learning from problems and embracing challenges outside of one's comfort zone. These are all skills we promote in our team to benefit themselves, fellow Theodoers, Theodo and the wider community.