Talent Lead

White Circle; New York, Northern (NY, KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Flexible Time Off

Language lessons

Learning and development support

All the hardware, subscriptions, tools

Team off-sites

Job summary

White Circle, based in New York, is seeking a hands-on Talent Lead to own and build our hiring function. You will personally drive sourcing, screening, interviews, and closing, and you’ll build scalable recruiting processes to support rapid growth across GTM, Ops, Research, Product, and Engineering.

You’ll partner with the Head of People and hiring managers, lead international hiring across US and Europe, and develop metrics to improve time-to-hire and candidate experience.

Qualifications

• Several years of hands-on hiring experience at a startup.
• Experience hiring across multiple functions (GTM, Ops, Research, Product, Engineering).
• Proven ability to build recruiting processes and ops.
• Fluent English (C1+).

Responsibilities

• Own and run the end-to-end hiring process from sourcing to closing.
• Source and hire across the company in a hands-on role.
• Create interview loops, scorecards, pipelines, and candidate tracking.
• Define roles and hiring priorities with hiring managers.
• Develop hiring metrics and reporting to improve speed and quality.
• Maintain strong sourcing channels across geographies.

Skills

End-to-end Hiring

Sourcing

Hiring Metrics

International Hiring

Stakeholder Management

Candidate Experience

Job description

TL;DR: We’re looking for a hands‑on Talent Lead to own and build our hiring function. You’ll personally drive hiring across the company, build scalable recruiting processes, track hiring performance, and work closely with the Head of People and hiring managers across GTM, Ops, Research, and Product.

About us

White Circle is an AI Safety company building the safety, reliability, and optimization layer for AI systems. At the core of our platform are policies – simple natural-language rules that define what an AI model should and shouldn’t do. We automatically test, enforce, and continuously improve these policies at scale.

• We’ve recently raised our Series A funding round, taking our total funding to $70M. Our investors include top funds, founders, and senior leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, HuggingFace, Mistral, DeepMind, Datadog, Sentry, and others

• We process over one hundred million API calls every month

• We fine‑tune and train our own LLMs so they run faster and cheaper than any open or proprietary model

We’re a small, highly focused team. If you want to work deeply on hard problems, see your work ship to production quickly, and influence how AI safety is actually built – you’re the one we need.

You will

• Own and run the hiring process end-to-end (sourcing, screening, interviews, and closing)

• Personally source and hire candidates across the company (this is a hands‑on recruiting role)

• Build our hiring processes and infrastructure from scratch, including interview loops, scorecards, pipelines, and candidate tracking

• Work closely with hiring managers to define roles, hiring priorities, and candidate profiles

• Drive hiring across a wide range of functions, including GTM, Ops, Research, Product, and Engineering

• Lead international hiring across the US, EU, UK, and other markets as we expand

• Build and maintain hiring metrics and reporting, including pipeline conversion, time to hire, source performance, and offer acceptance

• Use hiring data to identify bottlenecks and continuously improve the recruiting process

• Build and maintain strong sourcing channels across different functions and geographies

• Develop a strong candidate experience and represent White Circle throughout the hiring process

• Help define and improve our approach to hiring, including how we assess candidates and make hiring decisions

• Partner with leadership on long‑term talent planning and hiring strategy

You’ll fit right in if you

• Have several years of experience running hiring at a startup, ideally in an early‑stage or high‑growth environment

• Have personally hired a meaningful number of people and are comfortable owning the full recruiting process yourself

• Have built hiring processes and recruiting operations

• Have experience hiring across multiple functions, including GTM, Operations, Research, Product, and Engineering

• Have experience with international hiring across multiple countries and markets

• Are comfortable working directly with leadership and senior hiring managers

• Are highly data‑driven and comfortable tracking and analysing recruiting metrics

• Are an excellent sourcer and know how to find strong candidates beyond simply posting jobs

• Communicate clearly and build strong relationships with both candidates and hiring managers

• Are comfortable operating independently in an environment where processes are still being built

• Speak and write fluent English (C1+)

A big plus

• Experience hiring for AI, ML, and Research roles

• Experience building a recruiting function as the first or one of the first talent hires

• Experience hiring in the US, EU, and UK

• Experience with employer branding and building a strong talent pipeline

• Experience using AI tools to improve sourcing, screening, research, or recruiting ops

Compensation & benefits

• Competitive compensation package, including equity

• Flexible Time Off

• Language lessons to help you improve your English or French

• Learning and development support for courses, conferences, and opportunities to grow your skills

• All the hardware, subscriptions, tools, and services you need

• Team off‑sites twice a year: we’ve recently been to the Alps, Saint‑Tropez, and Marbella

Process

1. Intro call with Head of People (25 min)

2. Case study with Head of People (60 min)

3. Final conversation with CEO & Head of Design (50min)