Founding People & Talent Lead

About the Role

This is a founding People and Talent role at a seed-stage AI company building automation software for sales teams in distribution and manufacturing. You will build the Talent and People function from scratch, working directly with the founding team to solve one of the most critical scaling challenges at a fast-growing startup.

What You'll Do

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• Own end-to-end recruiting across all functions, from role definition through offer, with a strong focus on hands-on sourcing and closing in the early stage.
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• Design and scale recruiting processes, analytics, workflows, and operating rhythms that enable fast, high-quality hiring.
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• Partner with founders and team leads to define role expectations, calibrate hiring decisions, and contribute to org design thinking.
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• Build out People systems over time, including onboarding, performance calibration, career progression, and compensation benchmarking.
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• Develop and grow the employer brand to attract top talent across the DACH region and beyond.
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• Build and nurture a talent pipeline through university, startup, and technical community networks.
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• Experiment with AI tools and new workflows to increase recruiting velocity and quality.
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• Champion a high bar for hiring quality and implement measures to maintain standards as the company scales.

What We're Looking For

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• 2 to 5 years of experience spanning both talent acquisition and broader People topics such as performance management or org development.
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• Hands-on experience in a hypergrowth startup environment, for example scaling a team from 10 to 50 or 30 to 100 employees.
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• Demonstrated ability to run end-to-end recruiting while simultaneously designing scalable hiring processes and analytics.
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• Strong storytelling and relationship-building skills with a track record of sourcing and closing senior candidates.
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• High standards for hiring quality, structured thinking, and comfort with rapid execution in ambiguous environments.
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• Regular use of AI tools and a genuine curiosity to experiment with new recruiting workflows.
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• Fluency in English; German language skills are a plus.
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• Openness to grow into a broader People leadership role over time.

Location

On-site in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Visa sponsorship is not available.