Talent Acquisition Partner (GTM)

About Kernel

Agents are starting to sell, buy and operate on behalf of companies. But before an agent can close a deal, qualify an account, route a lead or assess risk, it has to answer a basic question: which company is this?

Today, that answer is messy, and no one answers it reliably. Business identity lives across CRMs, ERPs and third-party datasets full of duplicates, missing parent companies, stale addresses and incorrect enrichment. The cost shows up across the enterprise: sales teams miss revenue opportunities because they lack the right account context; operations teams take on avoidable exposure because risk signals are fragmented or wrong; and finance teams end up chasing, writing off, or defaulting on bad debt that should have been caught earlier.

Humans have worked around that mess for years. Agents cannot. They need a reliable business identity layer they can trust.

Kernel is building that layer: the business registry for agents. We issue a permanent KERN ID for every business, plus the context an agent needs to act on it. Ops, data and revenue teams at Gong, Legora, Mistral, Canva and Checkout already use Kernel on their own systems. Agents are next, and there will be far more of them.

We have raised $14M from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack and others, and we are growing 5x YoY.

The Role

Help build the team that takes Kernel to $100M+ ARR. We're hiring a GTM Recruiter to own hiring across Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, and Revenue Operations.

You'll work directly with our Head of Sales, founders, and leadership team. They'll expect you to challenge a brief, know where to look, and persuade the right people to join. You'll have the room to build the recruiting function and the responsibility for making it work.

The founders care about who we hire more than almost anything else. You'll be in those decisions from the start, with a GTM team that takes hiring as seriously as you do.

What You'll Do

• Run the show. End to end. Own each search from the hiring brief to the accepted offer. You'll set the strategy, screen candidates, coordinate interviews, chase feedback, and close.

• Find the people who are meant to work at Kernel. Including those who haven't heard of us yet. Search competitors and adjacent markets, get to know people who aren't looking, and give them a reason to join.

• Build a hiring playbook that outlives you. Develop scorecards, train interviewers, and use pipeline and offer data to improve how we hire. Build a process the team can keep using as Kernel grows.

• Never, ever compromise on candidate experience. Keep people informed and respect their time, whether we hire them or not. A decline done properly matters as much to us as an accepted offer.

• Roll up your sleeves. About 10% of your time will go toward whatever else the business needs that week. We're a small team, and nothing here is beneath anyone.

What We're Looking For

• Have 2–6 years of experience. You must have recruited before, including for GTM roles, and be ready to run your own searches. We don't offer training wheels. Your title matters less than what you've done.

• Know what makes GTM hiring different. You've hired AEs, SDRs, CSMs, and ideally GTM leaders. You can assess quota attainment in context, distinguish transactional from consultative selling, and judge seniority across individual contributor and leadership roles.

• You're AI pilled. You use AI in your recruiting work and look for ways to make it better. You're comfortable with tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter, Ashby, Metaview, and NoonAI, and know how to find candidates who aren't actively looking.

• Think in systems. You look at funnel conversion, time-to-hire, offer acceptance, and sourcing results to understand what's working. When something isn't, you change the process.

• Bring the intensity. Kernel is intense, and we want someone who brings that same commitment to recruiting. You'll keep digging on a difficult search and go the extra mile for the right hire, alongside a team that does the same.

⚠️ This role may not be for you if you

• Need lots of structure or a large team to delegate sourcing to

• Prefer large-company environments with slow hiring cycles

• Don't enjoy outbound sourcing

❌ This role is definitely not for you if you

• Want to work remotely. This role is in our London office at least four days a week; most of the team does five.

• Don't enjoy the pace and intensity of an early-stage startup

• Have side projects or want to manage a team immediately instead of doing the recruiting yourself

What We Offer

We will do our best to offer you a ride of a lifetime. It will not be easy, but it will be thrilling.

• 💰Salary: £60,000 – £85,000 base + equity

• 🗓️ 24 days holiday per year + bank holidays

• 🥕 £450 Monthly Office Dinner Allowance

• ✈️ 2 weeks work-from-anywhere

• 🍼 Generous parental leave policy

• 💼 Pension plan

• 💻 Top-spec equipment and central London office

• 🎉 Team events and dinners

• 🚀 Work directly with the founders to scale the systems that power enterprise AI

• 🏆 High-autonomy, high-trust environment with a small team shipping at pace

🎫 Visas and Relocation

You must already have the right to work in the UK.

Interview Process

• Stage 1: Introductory call with Arvin. Meet our Head of Finance & Operations to discuss Kernel, your approach to recruiting, and how you work.

• Stage 2: Case-based interview with Arvin and De-Vene (Talent Lead). Details to be confirmed.

• Stage 3: Interview with Jack and Dave. Meet our BDR Manager and Head of Sales to discuss how you work with commercial teams and assess GTM candidates.

• Final stage: Meet the founders. An interview with Anders and Marcus about cultural fit and values.