Director, Talent Intelligence and Early Careers

Headway; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

HSA/FSA

401(k) match

Parental leave

Fertility reimbursement

Job summary

Headway is seeking a Director of Talent Intelligence and Early Careers Recruiting to build and lead a first-of-its-kind function focused on long-term talent pipelines. You’ll own Campus Recruiting and Talent Intelligence, create strategy, hire and train the team, and drive a competitive advantage through data, events, and partnerships with universities.

You’ll partner with the Head of Recruiting, HR, and Recruiting Programs to ensure scalable, high-impact programs.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of recruiting experience, with leadership in campus or talent-pipeline functions
• Experience hiring across technical and business functions
• Track record of building programs from scratch
• Strong analytical orientation with data-driven strategy
• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills
• Comfort with ambiguity and bias toward action

Responsibilities

• Lead Campus Recruiting and Talent Intelligence pillars from strategy to execution
• Build and mentor teams; own relationships with universities and career centers
• Define events strategy (career fairs, hackathons, diversity programs) and ROI analysis
• Own internship programs end-to-end including onboarding and return offers
• Partner with HR and Recruiting Programs to scale programmatic work
• Deliver defined hires per quarter and maintain long-term nurturing pipelines

Skills

Campus recruiting

Talent intelligence

Sourcing strategy

Data-driven decision making

Stakeholder management

Team building

Strategic hiring

Cross-functional collaboration

Employer branding events

People analytics

Job description

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that.

But we're going further. Over 90,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 2.6 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale, and building much of it with AI. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens.

We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

About The Role

Headway is looking for a Director of Talent Intelligence and Early Careers Recruiting to build and lead a first-of-its-kind function focused on Headway's long-term talent pipeline. This leader will own two interconnected pillars — Campus Recruiting and Talent Intelligence — and will be accountable for delivering a defined number of hires across the business through these channels. You'll build the team, the strategy, and the infrastructure from the ground up, working hand-in-hand with the Head of Recruiting, Recruiting Manager peers, and the HR and Recruiting Programs teams to make this a true competitive advantage for Headway.

Why this role, why now? Headway is scaling rapidly, and sustainable growth means building talent pipelines — not just filling reqs. This Director will shape how Headway thinks about talent for the next decade: from the campuses we invest in, to the internal moves we enable, to the market intelligence that keeps us ahead of the competition. It's a rare opportunity to build something consequential from the ground up, at a company where the mission — access to mental healthcare for everyone who needs it — gives every hire real stakes.

What you’ll own…

Talent & Market Intelligence Pillar

• Build and lead a recruiting and market intelligence team responsible for proactive talent mapping, competitive landscape analysis, and sourcing strategy across tech and business functions.
• Define the frameworks for market mapping — who we should know, where talent is moving, and which competitors, industries, or schools are underexplored.
• Serve as the organization's sourcing subject matter expert, setting the standard for sourcing craft and raising capability across the entire recruiting team through coaching, enablement, and shared best practices.
• Partner with recruiting manager peers and hiring managers to translate market intelligence into actionable sourcing and targeting strategies.
• Build the infrastructure and operating rhythm for long-term nurture of high-potential candidates, so relationships are cultivated well before a role opens and warm pipelines exist at the moment of need.
• Partner with Talent Brand to shape an events strategy that creates in-person and community touchpoints with the talent we've mapped, turning brand investment into pipeline.
• Own the data infrastructure and reporting that surfaces hiring trends, pipeline health, and market benchmarks to inform capacity planning conversations.

Campus Recruiting Pillar

• Define and own Headway's campus recruiting strategy end-to-end: target school selection, event programming, offer positioning, and conversion.
• Build and manage relationships with universities, career centers, and student organizations across both technical and business disciplines.
• Own the full event strategy — from info sessions and career fairs to hackathons and diversity-focused programming — and continuously assess ROI to double down on what works and cut what doesn't.
• Own the summer internship program end-to-end: intern hiring, project scoping with managers, onboarding, programming and community-building throughout the summer, performance evaluation, and return offer decisions.
• Partner with the HR and Recruiting Programs teams on the surrounding programmatic infrastructure — return offer processes, post-offer engagement, and start-date conversion — that turns campus hires into long-term Headwegians.

Cross-Functional Responsibilities

• Own a defined number of business-wide hires through your team's channels; hold yourself and your team accountable to that number quarter over quarter.
• Capacity plan alongside the Head of Recruiting and Recruiting Manager peers — bringing a data-backed point of view on where early careers investment will yield the highest return across functions and levels.
• Serve as the connective tissue between campus, sourcing, and programs, ensuring a seamless candidate experience from first touch through hire and onboarding.

You’ll be a great fit if…

• 10+ years of recruiting experience, with meaningful time spent leading campus, sourcing, or talent pipeline functions at a high-growth company.
• Demonstrated experience hiring across both technical (engineering, data, product) and business (sales, operations, G&A) functions — you understand what good looks like in both worlds.
• Track record of building teams and programs from scratch, not just inheriting them.
• Strong analytical orientation — you use data to set strategy, measure outcomes, and make the case for where to invest and where to pull back.
• Experience partnering with HR, People Programs, or Recruiting Operations teams to bring structure and scalability to programmatic work.
• Excellent stakeholder management — you can influence without authority and hold a credible point of view in a room with senior leaders.
• Comfort with ambiguity and a bias toward action; this role requires someone who can define the path while walking it.

Comprehensive benefits:

Medical, dental, vision, HSA/FSA, 401(k) including match for 2027!, Carrot Fertility reimbursement, and paid parental, medical and caregiver leave.

We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview.

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