Head of Talent

Exa; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. We are a SF-based team of ~150, seeking a Head of Talent Acquisition to lead recruiting through this next stage of growth.

You will own recruiting strategy, build and manage a small team, partner with founders and hiring leaders, and directly handle executive and specialized searches while shaping Exa's candidate experience.

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience leading a talent acquisition function and managing/growing a team of recruiters.
• Strong track record of hiring highly technical talent in areas such as infrastructure, research, web crawling, retrieval.
• Experience leading executive and senior leadership searches.
• Proven ability to operate as both strategist and closer.
• Experience building or improving recruiting systems in a high-growth company.
• Comfort using data to evaluate recruiting performance and guide decisions.
• Ability to balance long-term planning with hands-on execution for a global workforce.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a recruiting strategy aligned with Exa’s hiring plans including international expansion.
• Lead, develop, and grow a recruiting team supporting research, engineering, go-to-market, and leadership hiring.
• Run the most critical searches end-to-end when the stakes are high - executive searches and highly specialized roles.
• Partner with founders and hiring managers to define roles, interview loops, assess candidates, and close key hires.
• Set the bar - establish clear and consistent hiring standards across the company; define what great looks like across teams.
• Evaluate and build scalable recruiting operations to support our hypergrowth, leveraging Exa's internal AI tools
• Build a culture of speed, ownership, and high bar across the recruiting team
• Shape how Exa is experienced by candidates and build a reputation that attracts elite talent

Skills

Talent acquisition leadership

Technical recruiting

Executive search

Recruiting systems

Data-driven recruiting

Global workforce

Job description

About Exa

Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn’t been disrupted since the 90s. We're a largely SF-based team of ~150 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders & dropouts alike.

We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We’re high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right.

We are looking for a Head of Talent Acquisition to lead recruiting through this next stage of growth.

The role

The Head of Talent Acquisition will own Exa’s recruiting strategy, team, systems, and execution. You will lead a small talent acquisition team, build the function to support continued growth, and work closely with founders and hiring leaders across the company.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will develop the recruiting organization while remaining directly involved in senior, executive, and specialized technical searches.

We are building complex systems, and solving technically difficult problems. We need the best humans to do this, all while building a culture of technical optimism, original thinking, and joy.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and execute a recruiting strategy aligned with Exa’s hiring plans including international expansion.
• Lead, develop, and grow a recruiting team supporting research, engineering, go-to-market, and leadership hiring.
• Run the most critical searches end-to-end when the stakes are high - executive searches and highly specialized roles.
• Partner with founders and hiring managers to define roles, interview loops, assess candidates, and close key hires.
• Set the bar - establish clear and consistent hiring standards across the company; define what great looks like across teams.
• Evaluate and build scalable recruiting operations to support our hypergrowth, leveraging Exa's internal AI tools
• Build a culture of speed, ownership, and high bar across the recruiting team
• Shape how Exa is experienced by candidates and build a reputation that attracts elite talent

Who You Are

• 5+ years experience leading a talent acquisition function and managing/growing a team of recruiters.
• A strong record of hiring highly technical talent in areas such as infrastructure, research, web crawling, retrieval. You can comfortably talk to engineers and understand what makes them great.
• Experience leading executive and senior leadership searches.
• Proven ability to operate as both strategist and closer
• Experience building or improving recruiting systems in a high-growth company.
• Comfort using data to evaluate recruiting performance and guide decisions.
• Ability to balance long-term planning with hands‑on execution for a global workforce.

Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related conditions, criminal histories consistent with applicable law, or any other basis protected by applicable law.