Head of Talent Management (New York City Metropolitan Area)

Kennedy Bond is growing – and we’re looking for someone exceptional to take ownership of one of the most important parts of our next chapter: our people.

We are hiring a Head of Talent to build and lead our internal talent function.

This isn't a role where you'll inherit a mature TA function, manage a large team or simply be handed vacancies to fill. You'll build it.

Working directly with our Founder & CEO, you'll have a genuine seat at the table and help determine who we hire, when we hire them and how we build the team required to deliver our ambitions.

Kennedy Bond was founded in 2024 with the ambition of becoming the most valued search partner in life sciences globally. Today, we're a team of specialists across New York, Tampa, San Diego and London, partnering with venture-backed biotechs, global pharmaceutical organizations and leading investors.

We've grown quickly and the next phase requires us to be even more deliberate about the people we bring into the business and how we enable them to succeed. That's where you come in.

What you'll own

Your number-one priority will be building an exceptional pipeline of people who could make Kennedy Bond better.

You'll map the market, identify the people we should know before we need to hire them, build genuine long-term relationships and create a talent pipeline that allows us to hire proactively rather than reactively. The role will own live recruitment from initial approach through assessment, interview and offer, while continually improving how we identify and assess talent. But the remit goes much further than recruitment.

You'll work with leadership to curate our hiring plan against our growth strategy and budget, challenging where and when we should invest in people. You'll own and continuously improve onboarding, helping every new hire understand what great looks like at Kennedy Bond from the outset. You'll play an active role in developing our existing team – coaching people, identifying capability gaps, improving pitch performance and helping translate feedback into measurable changes in performance. And you'll build the processes, scorecards, systems and reporting that give us a scalable talent infrastructure without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

Who we're looking for

We're deliberately open-minded about where this person comes from.

You could currently lead Talent Acquisition within a recruitment/search business. You might come from executive search yourself and want to move internally. Or you may already operate across Talent and People and be looking for the opportunity to build something from the ground up.

What's more important is that you're an outstanding judge of people.

You'll need to be commercially minded, credible with experienced recruiters, brilliant at engaging passive talent and comfortable challenging senior people – including our CEO.

You'll combine high standards with an ability to coach and develop others. You'll understand that great internal recruitment isn't about filling vacancies; it's about understanding what a business is trying to become and finding the people capable of getting it there.

We're looking for someone proactive, independent, curious and ambitious who wants ownership rather than a predefined playbook.

Why this role is different

You'll have the opportunity to build the talent function in your own image. You'll work directly with the Founder and leadership team. You'll influence our hiring strategy, not simply execute it. You'll have the autonomy to introduce new ideas, processes and technology. You'll help define the culture and standards of Kennedy Bond as we scale. And, importantly, there is somewhere for this role to go.

As Kennedy Bond grows, we see the remit naturally broadening beyond Talent Acquisition into our wider people strategy. For the right person, there is a genuine opportunity to evolve into a Head of People, taking increasing ownership across talent, development, performance, engagement and culture.

This could be one of the most important hires Kennedy Bond makes over the next 12-18 months. We want someone who feels the same way about building exceptional teams as we do about building exceptional search partnerships.

If the idea of joining an ambitious business early enough to genuinely influence what it becomes excites you, we'd love to hear from you.