Senior Director of Talent Acquisition

Who you are

• You’ve built a talent acquisition function, not just run one. You drive an organizational workforce plan and you’ve taken a recruiting function to a strategic partnership level inside a high-growth B2B company. You can show the before and after: faster hiring, a higher bar, and leaders who plan around your data instead of around their gut
• You’re a leader and a craftsperson. You coach your team, and you can still pick up a hard search yourself, whether that’s a VP or a mechanical engineer with a rare skill set. You can sit with a CEO and explain what the talent market will and won’t give them, and when a hiring plan doesn’t match reality, you say so, bring the numbers, and help reset it
• You think like a first-team leader. You’d give up a win for your own function if it was the right call for the company, and you build the same mindset in your team
• You’re energized by building: structured assessments, scorecards, playbooks, tooling, and a clear view of when to use agencies and when not to. You’re comfortable with ambiguity and with a function that’s still taking shape
• This probably isn’t the role for you if you want a fully built team and tech stack on day one, a role that’s purely strategic with no hands-on work, or an environment where hiring decisions are made without you
• [10-12+] years in recruiting, with [5+] years leading TA teams and [3+] years at Director level or above
• Experience scaling hiring at a high-growth B2B technology company (ideally Series D-F)
• Proven results hiring across technical, GTM, and executive roles
• Strong operator: builds process, data, and tooling, and can show before-and-after outcomes
• Experience managing recruiting budgets, agency partners, and offer/comp strategy
• Data fluency, with metrics used to make decisions, not just to report
• Executive presence and business acumen; you can hold your own with C Suite, SVP’s and VP’s and advise them on the talent market
• Experience managing complex offers, including equity and multi-stakeholder negotiations
• Recruiting experience in industrial software, PLM, CAD/CAE, manufacturing tech, or deep-tech hardware
• Experience recruiting in Globally, including cross-border hiring considerations
• Experience building or rebuilding TA from an early-stage function
• International hiring experience
• Hiring for industrial, engineering software, or hardware-adjacent companies
• Hands-on experience with Greenhouse, LinkedIn Recruiter, and AI sourcing tools
• Remote or distributed team leadership
• Frequently cited statistics show that people who identify with historically marginalized groups are likely to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications
• We encourage you to help us break that statistic and apply even if you don’t meet every single qualification—your potential is what matters most to us

What the job involves

• This is a plan, build-and-lead role
• You’ll set the strategy for how CoLab finds, assesses, and wins the people who will take us from where we are to where we’re going
• You won’t be an order-taker
• You’ll sit with our executive team and hiring managers as a trusted advisor on the talent market
• When a wish list doesn’t match reality, you’ll say so, bring the data, and help reset it
• You’ll help decide which roles get priority, where we invest our sourcing energy, and when it’s worth paying for outside support
• You’ll also build the system
• That means a rigorous, consistent assessment process aligned to our “Hell Yes” hiring criteria: scorecards, structured interviews, and work samples
• It means a tech stack and reporting that leaders trust, with clear visibility into pipeline health, time-to-fill, pass-through rates, offer acceptance, and quality of hire
• And it means playbooks that make us repeatable across engineering, go-to-market, and executive hiring
• Set the Talent Acquisition strategy and multi-year hiring plan, tied to company growth targets and workforce planning
• Lead, coach, and grow the Talent Acquisition team
• Decide how work is split between in-house, agency, and executive search partners, and manage those vendors and budgets
• Advise the executive team and hiring managers on the talent market, compensation positioning, and hiring trade-offs, and push back with data when expectations don’t match reality
• Run hiring prioritization (for example, tiering roles to focus sourcing and agency support where it matters most)
• Join the People Team and Leadership Team as a first-team member, putting company outcomes ahead of functional ones
• Own a consistent, structured assessment process aligned to CoLab’s “Hell Yes” criteria: scorecards, structured interviews, and work samples etc
• Own the Talent Acquisitions tech stack (ATS, sourcing tools, AI-assisted workflows) and drive adoption
• Build scalable playbooks for high-volume, GTM, technical, and executive hiring
• Report on search health: pipeline, time-to-fill, pass-through rates, offer acceptance, quality of hire, cost per hire, and diversity metrics
• Shape the employer brand and candidate experience, including the CoLab story for senior and passive talent
• Build talent pipelines for anticipated roles, including engineers, GTM, and leadership
• Develop an approach to hiring internationally and across Canada, the USA, including the local talent market
• Personally support critical searches and close key candidates, especially in the early phase of the function

Benefits

• Health and dental insurance (covered at 100% for the employee)
• Unlimited PTO
• Remote/Hybrid Work: Our main office location is in St. John's, NL where we offer hybrid and remote opportunities