Head of Talent

Equity is where most wealth in tech is created, and it’s notoriously hard to navigate. The best financial advice and products have always been reserved for the ultra-wealthy, and even good advisors have a blind spot for private markets, with no access to liquidity. For most people working in tech, their stock options are a black box.

And the stakes are huge. Startup employees give years of their lives to the companies they help build. Then the exit comes and they get burned: more tax than they needed to pay, shares sold at the wrong price, millions left on the table on the biggest financial decision of their lives.

Secfi is changing that. We’re the private wealth stack for the people who build tech, and own a piece of it.

Our financing and wealth products give them liquidity and expert management. Maeve, our agentic financial planner, brings it all together: a plan built on their real financial data and our own calculation engines, that gets smarter the more it knows.

It's working. Revenue is doubling year on year, assets under management are growing at over 200%, and we're trusted by employees at Canva, Stripe, SpaceX, Databricks and Anthropic . We're indirectly invested in more than half the IPOs of the biggest tech brands you know.

With a team of around 35 across New York and Amsterdam, and we're growing the New York office across business, investments and marketing. It's early enough that the biggest problems are still unsolved, and the people who join now are the ones who'll solve them.

About the role

You'll be Secfi's dedicated talent hire in the US. You own who joins us in New York, and you build the systems that help our managers develop the people already here.

The split is roughly 75/25. Most of your time you're a top recruiter: building pipelines, running searches and closing top candidates across business, investments, marketing, wealth and operations roles. The rest goes into the people systems our managers use: onboarding, feedback, promotions and performance.

This is a hands-on role with no team. You source, screen and close yourself, and you use and build AI tooling heavily to do the work of a larger team. If exploring AI in your day-to-day work doesn't interest you, this isn't the role for you.

You own how we hire, not just who. For specialist or high-volume searches, you decide when to bring in search firms or consultants, and you manage them. The rest of your time goes into building our people systems.

We believe in quality over quantity. This means we don’t hire in volume and every hire matters. A lean company, executing at pace has no room for a mediocre hire.

What you'll do: recruiting (75%)

Own the US hiring plan

• Work with the CEO, COO and the heads of each business line to define which roles we hire, when, and what great looks like for each.
• Write role descriptions, scorecards and interview plans that make the bar explicit before a search starts.
• Report pipeline, time-to-hire and offer acceptance to the management team every month.

Build pipelines before we need them

• Map the talent pools we hire from: investment banking, private equity and venture capital, asset management, RIAs and wealth management, growth-stage fintech, consulting, and marketing across brand, content, growth and performance.
• Run always-on sourcing, so when a role opens we start with a shortlist, not a blank page.
• Build relationships with candidates, referrers and the small number of search firms we use for senior roles, and manage them on fees and quality.

Run searches end to end

• Source, screen and qualify candidates yourself.
• Design and run structured interview loops, train interviewers, and run debriefs that end in a clear decision.
• Own the candidate experience from first contact to start date: fast responses, honest feedback, no one left waiting.

Close

• Drive the process, and tell us what it takes to close. We need you leading the process, not waiting on our input.
• Build and present offers with the leadership team, covering base, bonus and stock options, and answer candidates' questions on equity and company performance accurately.
• Negotiate to win the people we want.

Build the employer brand

• Make Secfi known as a place where strong people from finance and tech come to build something great, through our website, LinkedIn, referrals and our team's networks.
• Be creative about reaching talent: roundtables, events, community, whatever works.
• Use AI for sourcing, screening, scheduling and outreach, so one person can run a function that would otherwise need three.

What you'll do: people systems (25%)

You build and run the systems. Managers own the outcomes for their people. Simple and practical beats perfect.

Onboarding

• Build a repeatable onboarding framework: the same structure, materials and 30/60/90-day checkpoints for every hire, tailored by function.
• Set up a sponsor model, so every senior hire has a named sponsor on the management team from day one.

Development

• Give managers a simple framework to identify the two or three skills that would most raise each person's output, and help them put a plan against them.
• Find and set up high impact training programs for specific employees, groups or situations.
• Run a regular talent review with the management team to spot high-potential people early and plan their path to bigger roles.

Performance and pay

• Run the goal-setting and performance review cycle with the leadership team, so everyone has clear goals and direct feedback.
• Build a fair, consistent framework for promotions and bonuses.
• Coach managers through hard conversations early, and flag to leadership wherever underperformance is being tolerated.

Retention and culture

• Run exit interviews, give managers a framework for regular stay conversations, and feed what you learn back into how we hire and manage.
• Keep our people handbook up to date.
• Protect the culture that works as we grow: high ownership, direct communication, small teams and no politics.

Who you are

Must haves

• Around7 years in recruitment, at a senior level.
• Experience as the first or only recruiter at a growth-stage company, or in an early recruiting team where you owned the full cycle yourself. A top performer from a search firm who has owned searches end to end and wants to move to an internal role is also a fit.
• Experience hiring for complex, high-impact roles, such as engineering, leadership or finance. Not high-volume or entry-level hiring.
• A track record of closing senior, sought-after candidates against competition from larger, better-known firms. You can point to specific hires you made that others couldn't.
• A genuine interest in finance. You don't need to have hired in it, but you need to want to learn our world fast.
• Judgement on people. You can tell a strong CV from a strong candidate, and you back your view in a debrief.
• AI-forward. Hands-on with LinkedIn Recruiter, an ATS and AI tools for sourcing, screening and outreach, and you're comfortable building your own agentic workflows. You experiment without being asked.
• A direct communicator, in writing and in person, with the standing to push back on leadership and hiring managers when the bar slips.
• Based in New York and in the office at least four days a week.

Nice to haves

• Experience hiring for finance or investment roles: banking, private equity, venture capital, asset management, wealth management or fintech.
• Knowledge of venture, pre-IPO equity or fund management, so you can talk credibly about what Secfi does.
• Experience building people systems (performance, compensation benchmarking or learning and development) at a company under 100 people.
• Experience building an employer brand from scratch: taking a company few candidates had heard of and making it a name your target talent knows and wants to work for. You can walk us through exactly how you did it.

What we offer

• Base salary of $180,000 to $215,000 , depending on experience.
• Annual bonus starting at 20% of base. It's tied to your personal goals (mostly recruiting, some people systems), with a company multiplier that applies to everyone.
• Stock options , with a four-year vest and a one-year cliff.
• 401(k) with a 5% company contribution.
• Unlimited holiday on a fair-use basis, and we expect you to actually take it.
• Flexibility : four days a week in the New York office, with the fifth day of your choosing. We're open to the odd remote week when it makes sense.
• Travel to Amsterdam when needed, and a function that's yours to build.
• A company that expects you to use AI aggressively , with the tools and budget to do it.

Location New York, NY, USA

Work Mode On-site

Seniority Director

Function People & HR

Salary USD 180k-215k / year

Company Size 11-50 employees

Skills Employer Branding Machine Learning Onboarding Performance Management Recruitment Advertising

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