Head of Talent Acquisition

Job description

ABOUT LILT AI is changing how the world communicates — and LILT is leading that transformation. We're on a mission to make the world's information accessible to everyone, regardless of the language they speak. We use cutting-edge AI, machine translation, and human-in-the-loop expertise to translate content faster, more accurately, and more cost-effectively without compromising on brand, voice, or quality. At LILT, we empower our teammates with leading tools, global collaboration, and growth opportunities to do their best work. Our company virtues—Work together, win together; Find a way or make one; Quicker than they expect; Quality is Job 1—guide everything we do. We are trusted by Intel Corporation https://www.linkedin.com/company/intel-corporation/, Canva https://www.linkedin.com/company/canva/, the United States Department of Defense https://www.linkedin.com/company/deptofdefense/, the United States Air Force https://www.linkedin.com/company/united-states-air-force/, ASICS https://www.linkedin.com/company/asics/, and hundreds of global Enterprises. Backed by Sequoia, Intel Capital, and Redpoint, we’re building a category-defining company in a $50B+ global translation market being redefined by AI. ROLE OVERVIEW LILT is hiring a Head of Talent Acquisition & Recruiting to own full-cycle recruiting across the company. This is a builder-coach role, not a traditionally managerial seat. It is an AI native position, meaning that you will work with our team: you will personally run searches for our highest-priority roles while coaching a small team of recruiters, and you will be the architect of an AI-agent-driven talent engine that sources and screens candidates so that human interview time is spent almost entirely on candidates who have already cleared a rigorous, AI-run bar. You'll report to the VP of People and partner closely with hiring managers across Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Operations. This role exists because of how LILT works today. We believe the best talent leaders don't just manage headcount — they are builders. Just as our product uses agentic AI to automate translation workflows and reserve expert human review for what actually needs it, our recruiting function should use AI agents to source and screen talent, reserving scarce hiring-manager and executive time for final-round conversations with candidates who are already qualified. WHAT YOU'LL DO Builder-Coach Recruiting - Personally own full-cycle recruiting — sourcing, screening, interview loop design, and closing — for LILT's highest-priority roles across EPRD and GTM. - Build a team of AI agents, and coach and manage a small team of recruiters and sourcers, for direct sourcing, candidate assessment, and closing technique. - In the arena: every recruiter on the team should see how you personally run a search and hold themselves to that bar. Build and Run the AI-Native Talent Engine - Deploy and manage AI agents as LILT's first-line sourcers and screeners — identifying candidates, conducting structured initial screens, and scoring them against role-specific scorecards before any human ever engages. - Continuously tune the AI screening bar using outcome data, so false positives and false negatives both shrink over time. - Redesign the human interview loop around this shift: fewer, higher-signal human conversations, focused on candidates the AI layer has already validated. Special focus on the software engineering interview cycle. - Build on our existing recruiting tools (Ashby + Noon AI). Process, Metrics, and Rigor - Own recruiting metrics end-to-end: time-to-fill, pipeline conversion by stage (including AI-screen pass-through rate), quality-of-hire, and hiring-manager and candidate satisfaction. - Bring the same rigor to recruiting operations that LILT brings to its own AI products — instrument the funnel, find where it breaks, and fix it quickly. Partnership and Employer Brand - Partner directly with hiring managers and the VP of People to translate headcount plans into targeted sourcing strategies and realistic SLAs. - Coach hiring managers on interviewing and candidate evaluation, especially on how to make the most of the finalist conversations the AI layer surfaces. - Build LILT's employer brand as proof that AI amplifies great recruiters rather than replacing them. ABOUT YOU Experience - 4+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, ideally spanning both technical and go-to-market hiring in a high-growth or AI-centric company. - Direct, hands-on experience with AI-powered sourcing or screening tools, or a demonstrated ability to design and operate agentic recruiting workflows from scratch. - Experience coaching, mentoring, or informally leading other recruiters — a title isn't required, but you should have already made someone else better at this job. - A track record of personally closing hard-to-fill roles, not just managing others who do. - (highly preferred) Experience with integrating small teams / acquihires. Skills - Structured, rigorous evaluator of talent — you can build a scorecard, run a calibrated interview, and tell the difference between a good story and a good hire. - Comfortable with ambiguity and building process from scratch — there is no existing AI-recruiting playbook to follow here; you'll write it. - Data-fluent: you can build and read your own funnel metrics without waiting on an analyst. - Clear, direct communicator with hiring managers and candidates alike. Qualities (LILT Virtues) - Find a way or make one: you own outcomes and don't wait for someone else to hand you a hiring plan or a playbook. - Quicker than they expect: you have a bias for action and treat candidate and hiring-manager experience with urgency. - Quality is Job 1: you'd rather make one great hire slowly than three mediocre hires quickly. - Work together, win together: you build trust with hiring managers, candidates, and your own recruiting team, and you optimize for the team's impact — not just your own req list. Nice-to-Have - Hands-on experience with Ashby ATS or a comparable modern recruiting platform. - Prior recruiting experience in AI, machine learning, or localization/translation technology. - Experience building or piloting AI agents or automation for any part of a business workflow, recruiting or otherwise. OUR STORY Our founders, Spence and John met at Google working on Google Translate. As researchers at Stanford and Berkeley, they both worked on language technology to make information accessible to everyone. While together at Google, they were amazed to learn that Google Translate wasn’t used for enterprise products and services inside the company.The quality just wasn’t there. So they set out to build something better. LILT was born. LILT has been a machine learning company since its founding in 2015. At the time, machine translation didn’t meet the quality standard for enterprise translations, so LILT assembled a cutting-edge research team tasked with closing that gap. While meeting customer demand for translation services, LILT has prioritized investments in Large Language Models, human-in-the-loop systems, and now agentic AI. With AI innovation accelerating and enterprise demand growing, the next phase of LILT’s journey is just beginning. OUR TECH What sets our platform apart: - Brand-aware AI that learns your voice, tone, and terminology to ensure every translation is accurate and consistent - Agentic AI workflows that automate the entire translation process from content ingestion to quality review to publishing - 100+ native integrations with systems like Adobe Experience Manager, Webflow, Salesforce, GitHub, and Google Drive to simplify content translation - Human-in-the-loop reviews via our global network of professional linguists, for high-impact content that requires expert review LILT IN THE NEWS - Featured in The Software Report’s https://www.thesoftwarereport.com/the-top-100-software-companies-of-2024/ Top 100 Software Companies! - LILT makes it onto the Inc. 5000 List https://labs.lilt.com/lilt-listed-on-the-2024-inc-5000. - LILT’s continues to be an intellectual powerhouse, holding numerous patents https://patents.justia.com/inventor/john-sturdy-denero that help power the most efficient and sophisticated AI and language models in the industry. - Check out all our news on our website https://lilt.com/news. Information collected and processed as part of your application process, including any job applications you choose to submit, is subject to LILT's Privacy Policy at https://lilt.com/legal/privacy. At LILT, we are committed to a fair, inclusive, and transparent hiring process. As part of our recruitment efforts, we may use artificial intelligence (AI) and automated tools to assist in the evaluation of applications, including résumé screening, assessment scoring, and interview analysis. These tools are designed to support human decision-making and help us identify qualified candidates efficiently and objectively. All final hiring decisions are made by people. If you have any concerns, require accommodations, or would like to opt-out of the use of AI in our hiring process, please let us know at recruiting@lilt.com. LILT is an equal opportunity employer. We extend equal opportunity to all individuals without regard to an individual’s race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic characteristics, veteran or marital status, pregnancy, or any other classification protected by applicable local, state or federal laws. We are committed to the principles of fair employment and the elimination of all discriminatory practices.