Head of Talent

About Poseidon Aerospace

Poseidon Aerospace builds and operates unmanned planes for commercial logistics and defense missions. Our two full-size fixed-wing platforms – Heron, a seaplane, and Egret, a STOL aircraft – can carry two tons of payload over a thousand nautical miles. We are headquartered in San Francisco with satellite offices in Washington, DC and Maine.

About the Role

Poseidon is hiring its first dedicated Head of Talent. Poseidon currently has an active talent function run by the operations team, and this hire will inherit a working system rather than building from zero.

The Head of Talent will own recruiting end‑to‑end and report directly to the CEO. The role covers talent and people strategy, sourcing, closing, systems, and the candidate‑side experience across every search the company runs. As headcount grows, the role will expand into broader people‑ops and org design to make sure that Poseidon is able to retain its top talent, though the first year is about volume, quality, and closing speed.

The right person treats recruiting as a craft and is highly opinionated as to what a good talent function looks like.

What You'll Do

• Own full-cycle recruiting across every function: composites engineering and manufacturing, avionics and software, BD and capture, GTM, federal‑facing roles, and senior leadership hires.
• Run the peer‑to‑peer sourcing model that drives most Poseidon hires today. Make it easy for engineers and operators to surface and engage candidates from their own networks at scale.
• Source proactively for hard‑to‑fill roles. Our best hires and top targets are not on job boards. Outbound craft matters more than volume.
• Partner with the CEO, CTO, and hiring managers to define roles, calibrate scorecards, and shape org design as the company grows past 50.
• Lead offer strategy and closing for senior and hard‑to‑hire technical talent. Read what candidates actually want, navigate competing offers, and get to yes.
• Set the bar for candidate experience. Every loop should be fast and reflect the culture of the company.
• Build and run programs that feed the talent pipeline for young and established talent.
• Act as a trusted advisor to leadership on workforce planning, comp benchmarking, and people‑related risk.
• Over time, expand the function to cover performance management, comp structure, and broader people operations.

About You

Strong candidates will have built or run recruiting at a company where hiring the best people possible was existential. They will have personally closed hard roles in hard markets and built the infrastructure that lets a mature enterprise team continue doing it as they scale. Background is open: in‑house recruiters at hard‑tech or defense startups, agency or executive search people moving in-house, and operators who fell into recruiting have all done this work well. Familiarity with technical aspects of recruiting and ability to communicate with engineers on technical concepts is highly desirable.

What matters is the ability to run many concurrent searches across very different functions without dropping quality, sourcing instincts that go beyond templated outbound, and the judgment to evaluate candidates for unusual roles in an unusual industry.

The creativity and ability to vibecode internal tooling that helps our recruiting process run even smoother is a huge plus.

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of recruiting experience, with meaningful time spent hiring technical roles at a fast‑growing startup or technically demanding organization.
• Track record of personally sourcing and closing hard‑to‑fill roles, including senior engineering or executive hires.
• Experience operating as the first or early recruiting hire, building structure where none existed. You will inherit structure here, but we want someone who’s gone from 0 to 1.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple concurrent searches across different functions without compromising quality.
• Strong technical fluency. The ability to engage engineers credibly, understand what they actually do, and earn their trust.
• Experience with modern ATS infrastructure (Ashby preferred) and the systems that surround it: scorecards, structured interviews, reference processes, and reporting.
• Excellent communication and judgment, with the ability to influence founders, hiring managers, and senior candidates.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience recruiting in defense, aerospace, or federal‑adjacent environments.
• Familiarity with the talent markets Poseidon hires from: composites, avionics, UAS, certification, and commercial and federal growth.
• Prior experience supporting hardware or manufacturing organizations.
• Comfort with multi‑site hiring across the US, including security‑cleared roles.
• Experience building broader people‑ops functions (comp, performance, compliance) as a company scales past 50.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and meaningful early‑stage equity
• Relocation bonus if applicable
• Health insurance and 401(k) matching
• Unlimited PTO
• Free lunches, snacks, and a stocked fridge at our San Francisco HQ and DC office
• Covered access to AI tools and subscriptions

No recruiting agencies.