Talent Acquisition Lead

Develop Health; Menlo Park (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Develop Health Inc. is seeking an experienced Talent Acquisition lead to serve as Founding Recruiter and build out our TA function. You will lead daily recruiting, shape our talent brand, and partner with leadership to attract top-tier engineering, product, and design talent.

The role scales with the company from Series A toward a larger organization. You will own hands-on recruiting (80%) and TA strategy (20%), collaborating with the CTO, Head of People, and hiring managers.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of recruiting experience in a senior, rare, technical talent context.
• 2+ years of talent acquisition strategy experience, including mapping or branding.
• Proficiency with modern recruiting tools (Ashby, Juicebox, LinkedIn, Dripify) and AI-enabled workflows.
• Comfort with leveraging AI to automate tasks and improve efficiency.
• Collaborative partner to leadership, with strong culture and process instincts.

Responsibilities

• Own the recruiting lifecycle from design to high-touch candidate experience.
• Partner with leadership to define roles, write compelling job descriptions, and craft interview plans.
• Source, screen, and engage senior and specialized talent in Engineering, Product, and Design.
• Lead offers benchmarking with CTO and leadership to secure top talent.
• Develop and evangelize talent brand and employer value proposition.

Skills

Recruiting experience

Talent acquisition strategy

Leadership collaboration

Onsite coordination

Tools

Ashby

Juicebox

LinkedIn

Dripify

Claude workflows

Job description

Develop Health is on a mission to use AI to radically accelerate access to life-saving medications. By automating complex, manual healthcare processes - like benefit verification and prior authorization - we’ve been growing rapidly and over the past couple of years have helped over 3.6 million patients!

We’re partnering with some of the largest pharmacy benefit managers and payers in the nation, revolutionizing how healthcare interactions occur by eliminating human delays and inefficiencies. Our small, elite team of founders and engineers have previously launched and exited successful healthcare startups including Rupa Health and Canvas Medical. We are now scaling rapidly following a major funding round.

About The Role

We are looking for an experienced Talent Acquisition lead who will initially serve as our Founding Recruiter, while building‑out our approach to Talent Acquisition. Over time you will grow a team. You will be the driving force behind our daily recruiting efforts while also managing our talent brand, messaging, events and setting our talent acquisition strategy. You'll partner directly with our leadership team to attract exceptional talent and cultivate a high‑performing culture. This is a unique opportunity to make a significant impact by building our team as we go from Series A to scaled company.

What You’ll Do

This role is a blend of talent acquisition strategy and hands‑on recruiting. You will be the first full‑time recruiting hire, and will wear many hats, while collaborating closely with our CTO, Fractional Head of People, contract sourcers and recruiters, and hiring managers.

You have the benefit of a year of build‑out by fractional recruiters, so Ashby is tight, hiring managers are trained and move with velocity, and there is process and workflows to build upon. But no one has owned TA as a strategic function, and we know this is essential to hiring well, particularly at scale.

Hands‑On Recruiting (80%)

• Own the Recruiting Lifecycle: Design and execute a seamless, high‑touch recruiting experience from start to finish.
• Partner with Leadership: Collaborate closely with hiring managers to define roles, create compelling job descriptions, and build effective interview plans.
• Source & Engage Talent: Proactively source, screen, and engage top‑tier candidates, with a focus on senior and specialized roles in Engineering, Product and Design, and senior Go To Market talent.
• Champion the Candidate Experience: Guide candidates through our process, ensuring every interaction is positive, professional, and reflects our company values, and we have a high close rate on candidates to whom we make an offer.
• Manage Offers: Support the CTO and leadership team in benchmarking and extending competitive offers to secure the best talent.

Talent Acquisition Strategy (20%)

• Design and Evangelize our Talent Brand. Our mission is to transform lives by unlocking access to medications and care previously blocked by a broken prior authorization process. You’ll tell patient and customer stories in a way that makes candidates want to make Develop Health’s mission, their mission. We have an impact that we know engineers to SDRs would be proud to tell their loved one about, and it’s your job to get the word out.
• Shape our Employer Value Proposition. Provide constant market feedback to the fractional Head of People and Founders, helping us to maintain a compelling total rewards package and value proposition to candidates in the most competitive talent market in the world in San Francisco.
• Talent Map and Nurture. You’ll map talent within SF and beyond. You’ll set a strategy to network with the talent sought by top companies, and compel them to want to learn more about Develop Health, and keep‑in‑touch with candidates who can’t explore now, but where we want to build a relationship for the future
• Curate the Candidate Experience. You will evolve how we hire, to create an experience that genuinely feels like what it’s like to work at Develop Health. It’s rigorous and fast‑paced, but also playful and fun. It’s flexible and meets folks where they are at - speeding up, slowing down, or inserting the conversation that helps them unlock why this is the job for them - but also high‑signal, reliable, and data‑driven like the high‑standards health tech company we are.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of recruiting experience, with at least 2 years managing high‑touch recruiting processes for senior, rare, and technical talent within a Tier 1, VC‑backed company.
• 2+ years of experience with Talent Acquisition strategy. This might mean you owned talent mapping and building talent pools, university strategy, talent brand, or events strategy. It’s okay if you didn’t personally own TA as primary leader, but you saw it done with excellence, owned at least a piece, and know what it takes to step into the leadership role, while maintaining velocity on your owned reqs.
• Tech‑Savvy: Proficiency with modern recruiting tools. We use Ashby, Juicebox, LinkedIn, Dripify, and others, and have built a number of custom workflows in Claude. Our company runs AI-native, and that includes the People and Talent function.
• AI Enthusiast: Comfort and excitement about leveraging AI to supercharge your workflow, build automations, and create more efficient processes.
• Collaborative Partner: A strong willingness to support a COO with clear convictions about culture and working norms, and the drive and organization to bring that vision to life.
• Love of IRL Work: You'll work onsite at least 2x per week, and you’ll take particular ownership of the candidate onsite experience alongside our office manager. You’ll get at least 3 days/week for focused sourcing and screening blocks at home, but when you’re in‑office, you maximize the time with hiring managers and candidates.