Talent Sourcing Specialist

Rowden; West of England; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

Rowden, headquartered in Bristol, is building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse. We are hiring a Talent Sourcing Specialist to develop proactive pipelines across hard-to-fill engineering and tech disciplines.

You'll own sourcing strategy across passive channels, build warm pools, maintain ATS, and provide market insights to shape workforce planning. This role requires SC clearance eligibility and offers hybrid work with three days on-site.

Qualifications

• Demonstrable experience in proactive sourcing and headhunting, not just reactive CV reviewing.
• Strong Boolean search skills and fluency with LinkedIn Recruiter; familiarity with other sourcing platforms is a plus.
• Experience sourcing for technical or specialist roles (engineering, technology, science).
• Curiosity about candidate motivations and career paths; ability to build relationships.
• Data-driven approach to pipeline management and hiring metrics.
• Ability to work autonomously in a fast-moving environment with multiple priorities.
• Experience in defence, national security, deep tech or highly specialist engineering is an advantage.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain proactive talent pipelines for hard-to-fill roles across engineering and tech.
• Own Rowden's sourcing strategy across passive channels and advise on platform usage.
• Maintain living candidate pools and keep ATS updated with engagement history.
• Run initial candidate engagement and screening to assess fit before TA handover.
• Partner with TA to accelerate hiring and improve shortlist quality.
• Strengthen Rowden's employer brand in specialist communities and events.

Skills

Proactive sourcing

Boolean search

LinkedIn Recruiter

Tech recruitment

Data-driven pipeline management

Autonomous work style

Defense/National security experience (

Tools

Metaview

Seekout

JuiceBox

Hackajob

Job description

Description

We're building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.

We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.

Headquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 200 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe’s fastest-growing engineering businesses.

The role

Rowden operates in markets where candidates aren't browsing job boards and are not always on LinkedIn. Reactive hiring isn't good enough. We need someone who is already talking to the right people before we even know we need them.

We're looking for a Talent Sourcing Specialist to build and own our proactive pipeline capability. This is a new function within a small, high-performing People & Talent team, created because we're serious about staying ahead of demand as Rowden continues to scale.

This is a role for a resourceful, tenacious sourcer who thrives in specialist markets, builds relationships before they're needed, and turns data plus insight into pipelines that give Rowden a genuine competitive edge.

This role offers hybrid working with a minimum of 3 days per week on-site at our Bristol HQ.

Candidates must be eligible for SC clearance.

Build and maintain proactive talent pipelines

• Develop warm candidate pipelines for Rowden's hardest-to-fill disciplines before vacancies are formally raised. These can range from RF engineering, machine learning, systems engineering and software, through to highly specialist GTM roles.
• Own Rowden's sourcing strategy across passive candidate channels: LinkedIn Recruiter comes as standard, we’re looking for you to inform & build the other channels/platforms we should be utilising.
• Build and maintain living candidate pools: regularly engage, nurture and update contacts so pipelines stay warm.
• Ensure the ATS is kept up to date with sourced candidates, pipeline status and engagement history.

Deliver talent intelligence and market insight

• Produce talent mapping outputs that give Rowden a clear view of candidate availability, competitor hiring activity, compensation benchmarks and location considerations.
• Inform workforce planning decisions by providing data-driven insight on the talent landscape for key disciplines.
• Track and share market signals that could affect our ability to hire, emerging skills shortages, competitor movements, salary & benefit inflation, in a format the business can act on.
• Support location strategy decisions with evidence on where relevant candidate pools exist.

Partner with the TA team to accelerate hiring

• Work closely with TA Partners to understand upcoming demand, agree sourcing priorities, and handover qualified pipelines ahead of roles going live.
• Support TA Partners with headhunting and direct outreach on live roles, particularly for niche or senior searches where inbound volume is low.
• Run initial candidate engagement and screening conversations to assess interest and fit before passing to the relevant TA Partner.
• Contribute to shortlist quality by ensuring candidates in the pipeline have been meaningfully assessed, not just collected.

Strengthen Rowden's employer brand in specialist communities

• Represent Rowden credibly and compellingly in conversations with passive candidates, someone who can articulate what makes Rowden different and why it's worth a conversation.
• Identify and recommend events, communities, and forums where Rowden should have a presence to build brand awareness in key candidate markets.
• Feed candidate sentiment and market perception back into the TA team to inform how we position Rowden externally.

Key skills, experience and behaviours

We're less interested in the tools you've used and more interested in your ability to find people others can't.

You'll likely bring:

• Demonstrable experience in proactive sourcing and headhunting, not just reactive CV reviewing. You know how to find passive candidates and, more importantly, how to nurture and bring them into process at the right time.
• Strong Boolean search skills and fluency with LinkedIn Recruiter. Familiarity with additional sourcing platforms (Metaview, Seekout, JuiceBox, Hackajob or similar) is a plus.
• Experience sourcing for technical or specialist roles, eg engineering, technology or science disciplines preferred. You don't need to be a subject matter expert, but you need to understand enough to have a credible conversation.
• A genuine curiosity about the people you're looking for: their career paths, motivations, and what it would take to get them interested.
• Strong relationship-building skills. You're comfortable reaching out cold and turning that into a warm conversation.
• A data-driven approach to pipeline management, you track what's working, what isn't, and adjust accordingly.
• The ability to work autonomously in a fast-moving environment and manage multiple sourcing priorities simultaneously.
• Experience within defence, national security, deep tech or highly specialist engineering sectors is a significant advantage, but not a requirement.

What success looks like

• Rowden has warm, qualified pipelines in place for its hardest-to-fill roles before those roles are formally opened.
• Time-to-hire reduces because the TA team isn't starting from scratch every time a vacancy lands.
• Talent mapping outputs are trusted by the business and actively inform hiring decisions and workforce planning.
• Candidate quality improves because sourced candidates are genuinely assessed, not just forwarded.
• Rowden's profile in specialist candidate communities continues to grows, people have heard of us, and they respond when we reach out.

Rowden is growing fast in markets that are genuinely hard to hire for. That's not a problem, it's what makes this role interesting. You'll have real influence over how we build our teams, access to modern sourcing tooling, and a TA team that values what you bring.

If you're energised by finding the people nobody else can find, and you want to do it somewhere the mission matters, we'd like to hear from you.

Working at Rowden

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!

We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.

Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.

Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!

What matters to us?

• Our focus is on the end user. We exist to deliver the best possible outcomes for the users of our systems.
• Pace matters. The problems we solve are urgent.
• Our diverse skills and backgrounds make us better. Our team prides itself on being inclusive and multidisciplinary.
• We are radically honest. Saying what we mean, even when it isn’t easy.
• We are pragmatists. We provide realistic, focused solutions that get to the point.
• We improve continuously. We are relentless in our drive to make things better.