Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist

The role

You will own our most senior internal searches end to end, from first conversation with the candidate through to offer. The people you'll be hiring are directors and C-level, so you are the first impression this company makes on them. You'll run intake directly with our founders and department heads, which includes telling them when the brief they've given you will not produce the hire they want.

This is not a coordination role. It is not suited to someone who needs the search strategy decided before they start.

Who we are

AI Acquisition is a multi-8-figure business helping founders and operators scale with AI. Thousands of clients, hundreds of mastermind participants, with the US as our primary market. We're bootstrapped with no outside capital, so we set our own timelines and hire people who can operate without a script.

Our Talent function was built from zero in the last fifteen months: ATS, AI screening gates, tiered assessment frameworks, and a hiring bar the founders now use. A delivery team handles high-volume pipeline operations. You'll take whatever needs judgement, at any level, and you'll pick up the rest when the load demands it.

Requirements

Engagement and hours

This is an independent contractor engagement, not employment. You invoice monthly and handle your own tax and statutory obligations in your country of residence.

Expect a 50 to 60 hour week. Our team spans the UAE, the UK and the US, and this role holds the middle of that span. Your day starts on UAE business hours and runs into the US East Coast morning, with senior candidate calls landing outside conventional hours.

We say this plainly because the people who do well here choose it. If you need fixed hours, this is not the right role and we would rather you know before you apply.

What you'll own

• The full range of searches, end to end, several at once. A C-level hire and a junior specialist role in the same week, and both get done properly
• Pipeline building ahead of the requisition. Talent mapped, warmed and ready before the role opens, not scrambled when it does
• Candidate engagement over months, not days. Keeping strong people warm when there is nothing live for them, and giving them a reason to take your call the next time
• Employer brand in practice. Being able to answer "why would I leave what I have for AIA" with something specific and true, and building the narrative that makes senior people want the conversation
• Strategic advisory to hiring managers. Market reality, realistic timelines, what the role needs to pay, and when the brief they've written will not produce the hire they want
• Intake and calibration with founders and department heads, including the disagreement
• First contact with director and C-level candidates, and being the reason they stay in process instead of going quiet
• Direct sourcing where no pipeline exists and inbound is useless
• Written candidate evaluations a founder can decide on without a follow-up call
• Quality oversight on shortlists coming through the delivery team
  Testing what works. Running A/B on titles, post copy and channels, and making the call on what to keep based on quality of applicant rather than volume
• Assessment design and execution. Building and running structured evaluations, scorecards and one-way assessments against a defined hiring bar, not judging on gut

What you need

• 6+ years in talent acquisition, at least 3 of them in-house, embedded or RPO. Agency-only will not clear the bar
• Senior or leadership search experience. Volume-only backgrounds are not a fit for this seat
• Demonstrable hiring into the US or UK market, representing an employer to candidates in that market
• Near-native spoken and written English. You will improvise on camera with senior people, not read from notes
• Evidence of managing senior stakeholders, including disagreeing with them productively
• Direct sourcing that works, with response rates you can point to
• Comfortable operating as an independent contractor, invoicing monthly and managing your own tax position
• Real schedule flexibility across UAE, UK and US East Coast hours. Calls outside standard business hours are routine, not occasional
• Evidence of building talent pipelines ahead of demand, not only filling open roles reactively
• You have kept candidates engaged over months and converted them later. You can name one
• You can articulate an employer value proposition and adapt it by audience, rather than repeating the careers page
• Experience designing or running structured candidate assessments. Scorecards, structured interviews, work samples, psychometric or cognitive tools
• You have tested and iterated on your own job posts and can tell us what changed and what it produced
• An active, credible LinkedIn presence. You post, you engage, and people in your market know who you are. Passive profiles will not clear this bar

What stands out

• Multi-country or multi-entity hiring
• You've built process, not only run someone else's
• You've been the only recruiter in the room and it was fine
• You've overseen or coached junior recruiters
• You've run A/B tests on titles, posts or channels and have the data to show for it
• AI-assisted sourcing and outreach stack. Clay, HeyReach, n8n, Exa, or equivalent. Name what you've built with it, not what you've heard of
• You've built a talent pipeline that produced a hire months after the first conversation
• You've worked somewhere with no employer brand and had to create the reason people said yes

Benefits

What you get

Up to $80K/Annually, as an independent contractor, based on experience

Direct access to founders. You will sit in calibration with the people who make the decisions. No layers between you and the call

A real AI stack, used daily. Clay, HeyReach, n8n, Exa, LLM screening built into the workflow. You will use agents as part of the job, not as a side experiment, and you will have room to build your own

A seat that rewards building. The function was built from zero in fifteen months. What you build here stays and gets used. If you want to inherit a finished process and maintain it, this is the wrong seat. If you want to put your own frameworks into a company that will actually run them, this is a rare one

How we hire

Application, one-way video, short written exercise, structured interview with our Global Head of People & Talent, working session with a founder. You'll know where you stand at every stage.