Talent Acquisition Lead

Talent Link by e2i; Singapore; On-site; SGD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Talent Link by e2i is seeking a Talent Lead to identify and close ultra-niche talent for a Singapore deep-tech startup. This role requires hands-on hunting, not managing a recruiting team, and involves engaging senior researchers and engineers who don’t respond to traditional sourcing.

You will partner with founders to frame compelling equity narratives, expand university relations, and craft long-term sourcing infrastructure as the company grows into Australia, India, and the US.

Responsibilities

• Hunt, don't process. You'll personally run sourcing for hyper-niche searches: Boolean, Google Scholar, citation chains, conference attendee lists, referral chains.
• Map the landscape for every senior hire, finding where the right people actually work across research groups, national labs, defence contractors, and adjacent firms.
• Sell the mission, not the salary, and build a credible equity narrative with candidates who earn significantly more elsewhere.
• Get close to the work to be credible with founders and technical leads, shaping conversations without being the technical interviewer.
• Build sourcing infrastructure for the long term with university relationships and employer-brand initiatives.
• Shape how we hire globally as we expand into Australia, India, and the US, tailoring approaches per market.

Job description

Talent Link by e2i is a programme to match candidates to job opportunities offered by e2i’s Industry Partners. Applicable for Singaporeans and Singapore Permanent Residents only.

This job opportunity is from our Industry Partner in the Tech Startup space.

Job Descriptions

We're hiring a Talent Lead to find and close the people who will define the next phase. This isn't a "manage the recruiting team and run the pipeline" role. We already have a team who owns inbound and coordination. What we need is a hunter: someone who can personally find and close the talent that doesn't exist in normal pools.

The people we want to hire—quantum physicists, precision mechanical engineers from defence contractors, geophysics PhDs, AI researchers from frontier labs—aren't on LinkedIn. They don't need a job. They're heads-down at organisations that pay well and where they have credibility.

Convincing them to leave for a Singapore deep-tech startup takes more than a polished outreach email. It takes understanding what motivates them, finding them where they actually are, and building a mission and equity narrative that holds up under scrutiny.

What You Will Do

• Hunt, don't process. You'll personally run sourcing for hyper-niche searches: Boolean, Google Scholar, citation chains, conference attendee lists, referral chains. This is hands-on individual contributor work. The volume is low; the depth is everything.
• Map the landscape. For every senior hire, you'll figure out where the right people actually work, including in research groups, national labs, defence contractors, and second- or third tier companies adjacent to the obvious targets. The best mechanical engineer for us isn't necessarily at SpaceX.
• Sell the mission, not the salary. You'll be the person who has that conversation with a candidate earning materially more than we can offer in cash and makes it land. The narrative you'll use is built in close partnership with the Chief of Staff. Your job is to know it deeply enough to make it feel real, especially when it comes to equity with candidates for whom ESOPs are unfamiliar territory.
• Get close enough to the work to be credible. You'll partner with founders and technical leads to understand each role deeply enough to engage a candidate the way another scientist or engineer would. You won't be the technical interviewer, but you'll be the first technical feeling conversation they have with us.
• Build sourcing infrastructure for the long term. University relationships, communities, employer-brand initiatives. You'll work hand-in-hand with the marketing team—at Atomionics, hiring and brand are the same conversation.
• Shape how we hire globally. As we expands into Australia, India, and the US, you'll build the talent strategy for each market, mapping where the right people are, how they need to be approached differently, and what the pitch looks like in each context.