Talent Acquisition Leader, Engineering APJ

About the role

Shield AI, a venture-backed defense-tech company, is looking for a strategic, hands-on Talent Acquisition leader to build the engineering teams behind its mission. The role sets and delivers an end-to-end approach to attracting and hiring exceptional engineering talent across APJ, working with engineering leaders and partners to meet fast-evolving hiring needs.

Key responsibilities

• Translate evolving business priorities into a focused hiring strategy, partnering with engineering leaders and partners to understand growing hiring needs and set priorities.
• Own a portfolio of complex senior engineering searches, from market mapping and outreach through assessment, offer and close.
• Partner with internal TA CoEs and stakeholders, and define the strategic partner model for vendors and RPO providers, managing their capacity and accountability.
• Hire, coach and lead an in-house TA team, building a high-performance, data-driven collaborative culture.
• Anticipate obstacles, resolve competing priorities and give hiring leaders clear recommendations so hiring keeps pace with the business.
• Build technical talent pipelines by connecting with specialist engineering communities in autonomy, robotics, vision, perception, simulation, machine learning and infrastructure.
• Help hiring managers define what good looks like, run focused interview processes and drive a strong candidate experience.
• Track pipeline health, hiring outcomes, capacity and spend, and use the data to make practical hiring decisions.
• Incorporate confidentiality, security and role-specific eligibility requirements into hiring plans and candidate processes.

Required profile

• Proven ability to act independently as the regional face of Talent Acquisition, building trusted relationships with local leaders while keeping alignment with global priorities.
• 15+ years of experience building and leading technical recruiting teams at scale in high-growth aerospace, defence, robotics or autonomous systems organisations.
• Technical fluency to partner with senior engineering leaders on autonomy stacks, robotics systems, embedded software, distributed systems, simulation environments and machine learning.
• Experience managing RPO providers and holding partners accountable for delivery and candidate quality.
• Experience leading change management, process redesign, stakeholder adoption and operational enablement for Talent Acquisition transformation.
• Ability to navigate complex engineering talent landscapes and competitive compensation structures while meeting ambitious headcount targets.
• Experience in high-growth, transformation and ambiguous environments.

Required skills

• ATS systems, sourcing platforms and recruiting analytics tools
• Data storytelling and negotiation skills
• Communication skills