Executive Search Lead - Technology

Canonical; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Team sprints twice yearly in person

Learning budget USD 2,000 per year

Annual compensation review

Recognition rewards

Annual holiday leave

Parental leave

Employee Assistance Programme

Travel opportunities to events

Priority Pass / travel upgrades

Job summary

Canonical is seeking a Talent Scientist to lead on teaching senior executives how to source senior talent and to drive analytics across the hiring lifecycle. The role involves coaching leadership, building strategic talent pipelines, and ensuring fair, unbiased sourcing of candidates within a remote-first, global environment.

Ideal candidates have headhunting experience in technology, familiarity with psychometric tools, and strong SQL/Python skills to uncover patterns from data.

Qualifications

• Head hunting experience in technology to source senior talent.
• Exposure to psychometric assessments.
• Proficiency in SQL or Python for data trend analysis.
• Experience conducting behavioural, competency-based interviews.
• Academic background in psychology or people-based subjects with strong math skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop search strategy to move headhunted talent through pipeline.
• Coach senior leadership to improve hiring outcomes for management roles.
• Drive talent analytics using SQL/Python for real-time insights.
• Build relationships with global stakeholders to align hiring strategy.
• Identify opportunities to improve hiring processes and reduce bias.

Skills

Head hunting

Market mapping

SQL

Python

LinkedIn Talent

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Psychology or related field

Tools

Greenhouse ATS

Thomas International

DISC profiling

Job description

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation and IoT. Our customers include the world’s leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in 75+ countries and very few office based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder led, profitable and growing.

As a pioneer global remote-first tech company with a product that inspires people globally, we attract a huge number of applicants to our organisation. We have created a hiring process that is totally unique empowering our business based Hiring Leadership team to lead talent selection. Our Talent Science team ensures that our processes are effective and that the business is able to hire high performing talent. This is an exceptional opportunity to join a team that is changing the way an organisation hires connecting performance outcomes to hiring.

Our Talent Science team has a mission to ensure that we follow objective, scientifically rigorous and efficient processes to select the very best new colleagues regardless of location, culture or background. We work closely with our key stakeholders to ensure that decisions are being made in the right way and that our hiring model supports the section of world class talent.

Our team works closely with the business to oversee the hiring process and encourage best practice whilst offering an expert viewpoint on talent assessments. We are not recruiters; it’s about the science of talent and performance, raising awareness and offering deep analytical insights across the business to enable them to select the best talent available from our global talent pool.

We have a brand new opportunity for a Talent Scientist in the team who will lead on teaching our senior executives how to source senior talent. Your key skills will be:

• Experience of identifying and approaching senior leadership talent from either a professional search firm or from an in-house search function, working within the Technology industry.
• Excellent knowledge tools used to identify future talent including market mapping.
• Strong analytical problem solving ability to identify trends and patterns from data, with SQL or Python.

Location: EMEA - Home based

The role entails

• Developing a search strategy for our business, ensuring processes enable headhunted talent to move smoothly through the pipeline.
• Coaching our senior leadership teams to drive hiring outcomes, enabling them to become expert at approaching and attracting exceptional talent for their management and leadership positions.
• Driving talent analytics to provide our business with real-time insight, using SQL or Python to identify trends in data.
• Conducting in-depth behavioural talent interviews providing considerable insights into motivations and behaviours.
• Building key relationships with global stakeholders to ensure we deliver against our hiring agenda, closely monitoring hiring activities, driving results and ensuring our operational processes remain consistent.
• Seeking continuous improvement on hiring processes and outcomes.
• Bringing a passion for diversity and inclusion, ensuring we remove unconscious bias from our hiring process and that our sourcing strategy underpins this.

What we are looking for in you

• Professional experience of headhunting from a reputable executive search firm or in-house search function, with an informed opinion of strategies and experience of successfully sourcing senior talent in the Technology industry.
• Exposure or appreciation of psychometric assessments.
• Strong analytical problem solving ability to identify trends and patterns from data using SQL or Python, with proficiency in LinkedIn talent modules..
• Experience of conducting behavioural, competency based interviews with the ability to train stakeholders and advise on how to get the best out of an interview.
• An exceptional academic background including a Bachelors or Masters degree in a Psychology or people based subject and a good level of Maths from High School.
• A high level of personal organisation to work remotely and be effective.
• Willingness to travel to company events 2-4 times a year, for up to two weeks each.

Other skills you may bring

• Experience of more advanced analytical and statistical analysis to interrogate data.
• Exposure to the following tools: Greenhouse ATS, Thomas International and DISC profiling.
• Psychometric validity and reliability metrics.

What we offer colleagues

We consider geographical location, experience, and performance in shaping compensation worldwide. We revisit compensation annually (and more often for graduates and associates) to ensure we recognise outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus. We provide all team members with additional benefits, which reflect our values and ideals. We balance our programs to meet local needs and ensure fairness globally.

• Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team sprints in person
• Personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year
• Annual compensation review
• Recognition rewards
• Annual holiday leave
• Maternity and paternity leave
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
• Priority Pass, and travel upgrades for long haul company events

About Canonical

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm at the forefront of the global move to open source. As the company that publishes Ubuntu, one of the most important open source projects and the platform for AI, IoT and the cloud, we are changing the world on a daily basis. We recruit on a global basis and set a very high standard for people joining the company. We expect excellence - in order to succeed, we need to be the best at what we do. Canonical has been a remote-first company since its inception in 2004. Working here is a step into the future, and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game.

Canonical is an equal opportunity employer

We are proud to foster a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives, and background create a better work environment and better products. Whatever your identity, we will give your application fair consideration.