Founding People & Talent Lead

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.

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