Founding People & Talent Lead

Job details

Work model

Not provided by source

Salary

Not listed by source

Location

Munich

Job description

About the Role A fast-growing, seed-stage AI company in Munich is hiring a Founding People & Talent Lead to build the Talent and People function from the ground up. This is a high-impact, hands-on founding role working directly with company leadership to solve one of the most critical scaling challenges in a high-growth AI enterprise software business targeting a large, underserved market in the DACH region and beyond. You'll own end-to-end recruiting while progressively shaping how the company onboards, develops, and retains exceptional people. If you thrive in high-agency environments, enjoy building systems from scratch, and want to grow into a broader People leadership role, this is for you. What You'll Do • Build and own the full hiring engine - leading recruiting end-to-end from role definition through sourcing, assessment, and closing offers. • Spend the majority of your early time on Talent, sourcing and closing exceptional candidates across all functions. • Design and scale recruiting processes, analytics, workflows, and operating rhythms that enable fast, high-quality hiring. • Partner with founders and team leads to define role expectations, calibrate hiring decisions, and challenge org design. • Build out People systems over time - including onboarding, performance calibration, career progression frameworks, and compensation benchmarking. • Develop and own employer branding to attract top talent across the DACH region and internationally. • Build and nurture a talent network across universities, startups, and technical communities. • Leverage AI tools and experiment with new workflows to increase recruiting velocity and quality. • Uphold a high bar for hiring excellence and maintain standards as the team scales. • Contribute actively to company culture, hiring for long-term retention and growth. What We're Looking For Required: • 2–5 years of experience with meaningful time in Talent, People, or org development at a high-growth startup or scaleup. • Demonstrated experience leading end-to-end recruitment across all functions (role definition, sourcing, assessment, closing) in a high-growth environment - ideally through a hypergrowth phase (e.g., 10→50 or 30→100 people). • Proven ability to build scalable recruiting systems, processes, workflows, and analytics independently. • Strong storytelling and relationship-building skills with a track record of sourcing and closing senior candidates. • Daily use of AI tools and a genuine curiosity to experiment with new recruiting workflows. • Ability to build employer branding and a talent network to attract top candidates in the DACH region and beyond. • Fluency in English. • Comfort with ambiguity, high agency, and on-site work in Munich. Nice to Have: • German language skills (a meaningful plus for this market). • Experience with performance calibration and compensation benchmarking as part of scaling People operations. • Background in enterprise software, AI, or B2B SaaS environments. Location This role is based on-site in Munich, Germany. Candidates must be willing to work from the Munich office full-time. Visa sponsorship is not available - candidates must already have the right to work in Germany. Compensation & Benefits Compensation details were not specified for this role. You will be joining as a founding team member at a well-funded seed-stage company (Series A/B pipeline), with the opportunity to grow into a senior People leadership position as the company scales. Find Jobs in Germany on Arbeitnow