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., 1050 or 30100 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.
