Talent Acquisition Lead - UK

Salience Labs; Abingdon; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Salience Labs is seeking a hands-on Talent Acquisition Lead in the UK to run end-to-end recruitment in an early-stage environment. You will headhunt top candidates for roles across the UK and Europe, reporting to the Head of Talent and collaborating with hiring managers.

The role requires aggressive outbound recruitment, rapid turnaround, and a flexible approach across technical, commercial and operational hiring areas. You will align with the US team and build scalable recruiting processes.

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of recruitment experience with sourcing and closing hires.
• Agency experience with outbound delivery and fast pace.
• Early-stage technical startup experience with hard-to-fill roles.
• Experience across technical, commercial and operational hiring.
• Ability to work under tight deadlines and high pace.
• Strong outbound sourcing, including candidates not actively looking.

Responsibilities

• Run full-cycle recruiting from intake to offer with limited support.
• Manage hiring across multiple functions simultaneously.
• Build outbound pipeline for hard-to-find talent via research, networks and market mapping (LinkedIn).
• Work with hiring managers to define role requirements and success.
• Sell Salience to candidates and maintain strong candidate relationships.
• Provide regular pipeline updates and quick feedback to managers.
• Coordinate with US talent team for a unified regional approach.
• Track time-to-hire, response rates and conversion; act on results.
• Contribute to tools and processes as the team grows.

Skills

Full-cycle recruiting

Sourcing & closing

Head hunting

Outbound sourcing

Stakeholder management

Time-to-hire tracking

AI-assisted recruiting

Tools

LinkedIn Recruiter

Job description

About Us

Salience Labs is building an industry-defining approach to optical circuit switching for AI infrastructure, engineered for real latency reduction and cost savings at hyperscale. We’re moving from proven technology to real world deployment at scale, and joining at this stage means genuine ownership over that next chapter, working alongside a small, highly technical team on one of the most consequential problems in AI infrastructure today.

About Us

Salience Labs is building an industry-defining approach to optical circuit switching for AI infrastructure, engineered for real latency reduction and cost savings at hyperscale. We’re moving from proven technology to real world deployment at scale, and joining at this stage means genuine ownership over that next chapter, working alongside a small, highly technical team on one of the most consequential problems in AI infrastructure today.

The Role

This is a hands-on, delivery-focused recruiter role. As Talent Acquisition Lead in the UK, you will run recruiting end to end in an early-stage environment. The work is broad and the pace is high. You will go directly into the market to headhunt the best possible candidates for each role opened.

You will report to the Head of Talent and work closely with hiring managers to fill roles based in the UK and Europe.

Responsibilities

• Run full-cycle recruiting, from intake and sourcing to closing and offer, with limited dedicated support
• Manage hiring across multiple functions at once, prioritising as needed
• Build outbound pipeline for hard-to-find talent using research, networks and market mapping as well as LinkedIn
• Work with hiring managers to define role requirements
• Sell Salience to candidates with better-known options
• Give hiring managers regular pipeline updates and fast turnaround on feedback and decisions
• Align with the US talent team on a shared approach across regions
• Track time to hire, outbound response and conversion, and act on the results
• Contribute to tools and processes as the team grows

What We’re Looking For

• 3 to 5 years of recruitment experience, personally sourcing and closing hires
• Agency experience, with a record of working at pace and delivering on outbound
• Early-stage technical start-up experience, moving fast on hard-to-fill roles through headhunting
• Range across technical, commercial and operational hiring, with the ability to get up to speed quickly
• Bias to speed, with a clear view of your own time to hire
• Strong attention to detail across candidate communication, scheduling and offers
• Strong outbound sourcing, with examples of reaching candidates who were not looking
• Comfort working with demanding stakeholders and tight deadlines
• Curiosity and quick learning in unfamiliar technical areas
• Flexibility across UK and US time zones
• Comfort using AI tools to work faster
• A team-first attitude, with no job too small
• Deep-tech, semiconductor, hardware or photonics experience is a plus

Salience Labs Limited is a leader in photonic solutions targeting connectivity for AI datacenter infrastructure.

Backed by over a decade of research from the University of Oxford in the UK and the University of Münster in Germany, Salience’s innovative developments in photonic switching technology enable high-speed, ultra-low latency networking fabrics that remove infrastructure bottlenecks for AI workloads.