Head of Talent

We offer opportunities to do your life’s work while helping solve one of the most important technical and moral challenges of our time.

Full-time, in-office in Emeryville, California.

Be our founding Head of Talent. Own every open search end to end, from scoping to close, and build the hiring function the company grows on without lowering the bar.

Key Responsibilities

• Own full-cycle recruiting for every open role, across formulation and computational chemistry, behavioral assay science, machine learning and computer vision, lab network operations, and global health and regulatory: scoping, sourcing, interviewing, offer design and close.

• Turn ambiguous mandates from the founder and technical leads into crisp role definitions, calibrated bars and structured interview loops, with scorecards, debriefs and calibration you run yourself.

• Build top of funnel from scratch: talent maps and warm pipelines across entomology, chemistry, machine learning and vector-control research, and the labs, companies and funders where that talent works.

• Run the searches that never move through a standard process: senior researchers and operators who are not looking, where timing, discretion, market intelligence and a tailored approach matter more than process.

• Close exceptional people who have other excellent options, on substance and relationship rather than pressure, by being fluent in the work and honest about the trade-offs.

• Stand up the recruiting infrastructure the company needs: applicant tracking, pipeline reporting, employer presence and a candidate experience that reflects the seriousness of the work.

• Own the people foundations that come with hiring: leveling, offer frameworks and a consistent bar across science, engineering and operations. Hire and lead recruiters if and when the team needs them.

Qualifications

• Ten or more years in talent, including leading recruiting as a head of recruiting, director or founding recruiter at a research organization, frontier technology company or another environment with a famously high bar.

• Took an organization through rapid early scaling: joined when the team was small, built the recruiting function and its processes from scratch, and are energized rather than unsettled by doing it again.

• Personally hired senior scientists, engineers and operators, closing against offers from the best companies in the world.

• Track record of building relationships with hard-to-reach candidates who are not actively looking or who need a highly personalized process.

• Can hold your own in a substantive conversation about insect behavior, chemistry, machine learning and malaria vector control, enough to earn the trust of researchers and engineers.

• Operate with discipline, discretion and care without needing a large team around you.

Desired Attributes

• Experience spanning recruiting and people operations, including leveling, compensation design and onboarding, so the hiring system and the employee experience grow together.

• Time in mission-driven organizations, and a record of hiring for first-of-their-kind roles.

• Experience advising founders on talent strategy, org design and compensation.

• Deep interest in the science, and in the people and institutions shaping vector control and crop protection.