Head of Talent Acquisition, AI, Scale-Up (Paying up to £200,00 + Equity)

Head of Talent Acquisition, AI, Scale-Up

Location: Remote, European Union/ UK

Salary Range: Up to £200k + Equity + Benefits

Hawkwood is partnering with a leading European AI infrastructure scale-up building core technology that enables businesses to develop, deploy, and operationalise AI at scale. Backed by over $200m from tier 1 investors including Accel and Sequoia, the company has emerged as one of Europe’s most exciting AI platforms, seeing rapid enterprise adoption and exceptional commercial momentum, including over $100 million in ARR.

Led by a highly credible founding team, the business is now entering a critical phase of scale as it expands internationally across Europe and the US. With growing organisational complexity and ambitious hiring plans, there is a clear need to formalise and elevate the global Talent Acquisition function and hiring operating model.

As a result, we are hiring a Head of Talent Acquisition, a highly strategic leadership role focused on building a scalable, AI-enabled, and operationally excellent hiring function capable of supporting the company’s next phase of growth.

What you’ll do:

• Own and evolve the global Talent Acquisition operating model across internal recruiting, RPO, and external partners in support of international growth
• Translate business priorities into sequenced, commercially grounded hiring plans while driving prioritisation across competing hiring demands
• Build a leverage-first TA function focused on automation, scalability, operational excellence, and hiring predictability
• Lead or partner on critical VP, Head-level, and highly strategic leadership searches across multiple functions and geographies
• Partner closely with Finance, People Partners, and functional leaders to align hiring plans with business priorities, budgets, and organisational design
• Define and continuously improve scalable hiring processes, interviewer standards, structured interviewing, and hiring decision frameworks across the organisation
• Drive excellence across ATS hygiene, hiring data integrity, reporting, forecasting, and operational visibility to improve hiring velocity and quality-of-hire
• Build a modern Talent Acquisition function that effectively leverages AI, automation, and tooling to improve scale and efficiency
• Drive adoption of AI-enabled recruiting practices and help upskill the TA organisation to operate effectively alongside new technologies
• Continuously evaluate and improve hiring equity, process consistency, and candidate experience standards globally
• Own the recruiting-side employer brand strategy in partnership with Marketing and People teams, using market insight and hiring data to continuously improve candidate engagement, conversion, and closing rates
• Lead and develop a high-performing Talent Acquisition organisation, including internal recruiters, and external recruiting partners
• Build a culture of accountability, operational rigour, collaboration, and continuous improvement across the TA function

What we’re looking for:

• Proven experience leading Talent Acquisition functions within a fast-scaling tech companies, ideally across multiple geographies including Europe
• Track record designing and evolving scalable hiring models across in-house teams, and external partners
• Experience leading complex executive level searches with strong judgment and stakeholder management capability
• Demonstrated success improving hiring quality, diversity outcomes, and process consistency through structured, data-driven approaches
• Hands-on exposure to AI, automation, and tooling-led scalability within Talent Acquisition or adjacent operational functions
• Strong understanding of EU and US hiring markets, compensation practices, and hiring compliance considerations
• Experience building interviewer enablement, hiring calibration, and bar-raising programmes at scale
• Highly commercial and operationally minded, with the ability to make effective decisions in fast-moving and ambiguous environments
• Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills, with the credibility to influence senior leadership teams
• Experience within developer-led or highly technical product environments is highly advantageous

We recognise how challenging this current job market is for candidates, and Hawkwood are therefore striving to provide the best candidate experience we can.

If you are interested in this opportunity, we kindly ask that you apply directly via this LinkedIn advert rather than email or LinkedIn message. This helps us ensure every candidate receives a fair, consistent, and structured experience throughout the process.