Talent Partner

The Mission

Innovation is broken. The systems built to create and protect ideas can't keep up with the pace of change. At Ankar, we're building the AI operating system for innovation - tools that don't exist yet, for people who invent things that don't exist yet.

Your role is equally pioneering: design and build the talent systems that will scale a category-defining company from Series A to market leader.

Talent Pipeline Building & Management (50%)

• Build target candidate lists for immediate and strategic hires: identify top tier candidates each critical talent pool (Engineering & Product OR GTM & Sales)

• Test and iterate on sourcing approaches: traditional channels (LinkedIn Recruiter, AI sourcing tools, etc) and non-traditional tactics (recruiting through events/webinar, leveraging customer networks, communities, etc)

• Conduct ongoing outreach to passive candidates who aren't actively looking but would be exceptional match for Ankar's mission and culture - build relationships before roles open

• Create "talent communities" for hard-to-fill specializations: stay top-of-mind through thoughtful touchpoints, relevant content sharing, and authentic relationship building

• Move strategic candidates through the pipeline: awareness → interest → readiness, so when roles open you have pre-qualified, warm talent ready to engage immediately

End-to-End Hiring Execution (50%)

• Own the complete candidate journey for a few active searches simultaneously: multi-channel sourcing, screening, interview coordination, candidate prep, offer positioning, and close

• Design assessment frameworks that reliably predict cultural match: extreme ownership, zero-to-one mentality, comfort with productive tension, intellectual humility paired with deep expertise

• Create candidate experiences that reflect our contrarian, first-principles culture - candidates should leave interviews thinking "this company is different"

• Embed with teams to understand nuanced requirements beyond what's written in JDs

• First-principles thinker: You question inherited wisdom and design solutions tailored to specific constraints

• Extreme ownership: You don't wait to be told what to do. If something's broken, you fix it

• Comfortable with productive tension: You can handle frequent changes and see them as opportunities, not obstacles

• Intellectually humble: You seek feedback, iterate quickly, and admit when your hypothesis was wrong

• High analytical rigor: You use data to make decisions but don't let perfect be the enemy of good

• 5+ years building hiring systems in high-growth environments (recruiting or talent operations delivery roles)

• Demonstrated ability to hire for technical, commercial, or specialized roles where you had to learn the domain from scratch

• Track record of hiring in ambiguous, zero-to-one contexts (early-stage startups, new market expansions, or building new functions within larger companies)