Lead Recruiter

Job description

WHO WE ARE Proxima Fusion is Europe’s fastest-growing fusion company and the continent’s best-funded fusion player, as well as the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP). Backed by over €650M and powered by a growing team across Munich, Zurich, and Oxford, we are developing the hardware and infrastructure needed to deliver the world’s first commercial stellarator fusion power plant. Our concept advances the most mature fusion technology out there, the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, through two next-generation machines: Alpha and Stellaris. Our work combines stellarator optimization, advanced computation, machine learning, and high-temperature superconducting magnets to unlock higher-performance designs that were previously out of reach. Turning these designs into a functioning fusion power plant requires excellence and ownership across every discipline, from physics and engineering to software, manufacturing, law, and business functions. WHY JOIN PROXIMA FUSION - Work on a civilisation-scale problem - Clean, baseload fusion energy is one of the few genuinely world-changing challenges, and every hire in Finance, People, or Legal directly accelerates the path to a working stellarator. - Grow as fast as the company does - With headcount set to roughly 5x in a few years and major technical milestones ahead on the path to our demo machine and first power plant, your role grows under you; today's hire is tomorrow's function lead. - Tackle problems that don't exist elsewhere - Fusion sits at a rare intersection of deep-tech R&D, industrial procurement, government relations, and venture financing, so non-tech functions face challenges no other workplace can offer. YOUR IMPACT As our Recruiter Lead, you will lead Proxima Fusion's TA function through one of the most demanding phases of the company's growth: the transition from a lean deep-tech engineering start-up into a company that also has to hire and scale a manufacturing workforce, build out our facilities. You will own the strategy, the team, and the outcomes — building the muscle that lets us hire world-class talent across physics, engineering, software, manufacturing, and operations, at a pace and quality bar that most companies never have to reconcile at the same time. This is a build-and-lead role. You will personally close some of our most critical and hardest-to-fill roles, while also standing up the systems, team, and employer brand that let TA scale sustainably as headcount grows several times over in the coming years. WHAT YOU WILL DO - Own the Talent Acquisition strategy end-to-end, translating our hiring plan — spanning R&D, engineering, and manufacturing — into a concrete, resourced recruiting operation. - Build, lead, and develop a team of recruiters; decide where to hire in-house vs. deploy agencies or RPO support, especially for high-volume manufacturing and shop-floor hiring. - Design and run hiring approaches for two very different worlds at once: high-touch, highly technical recruiting for scientists and engineers, and higher-velocity, structured recruiting for manufacturing technicians, operators, and production roles. - Partner directly with the leadership team and hiring managers across engineering, science, and manufacturing to forecast headcount, define role profiles, and build hiring plans tied to facility ramp-up and program milestones. - Own full-cycle recruitment for the most senior, niche, or business-critical roles yourself, modeling the bar and craft you expect from the team. - Drive top-of-funnel strategy beyond LinkedIn: build sourcing pipelines, talent communities, and employer brand presence in fusion, deep tech, and advanced manufacturing talent pools across Germany and internationally. - Together with the team, set up and manage manufacturing-specific hiring channels (technical schools, apprenticeship pipelines, local labor markets around our facilities,) as we build out production capability. - Own TA metrics and reporting — hire vs headcount ratio, time-to-hire/time-to-fill, pipeline health, quality-of-hire, — and use them to continuously improve how we hire. - Champion an outstanding candidate experience at every touchpoint, from a production technician's first interview to a senior physicist's final panel. - Own strategic TA projects end-to-end — treating each as a leadership deliverable with clear scope, timeline, and success metrics. - Lead and develop the TA team, setting individual and team goals, coaching recruiters on outside-of-the-box sourcing strategies and stakeholder management, and creating a culture of ownership where each person runs their own reqs and projects with real autonomy. WHO YOU ARE Must have - You have led and scaled a Talent Acquisition function, ideally building or growing a TA team from a very early stage to an industrial build-up. - You have direct experience recruiting in both deep-tech or highly technical environments. You have hired in hardware-intensive, engineering-led scale-ups (aerospace, energy, robotics, automotive, semiconductors, or similar), ideally through a phase of significant headcount growth. - You are comfortable building recruiting processes for high-volume, structured hiring (manufacturing, production, technicians) as well as highly bespoke, senior technical searches. - You are hands-on: you're as comfortable running a search yourself as you are managing a team and building a strategy. - You are data-driven and use metrics to diagnose bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement in hiring. - You’re comfortable operating in a scale-up with some level of uncertainty and moving goalposts. Nice to have - You’ve hired and built teams in manufacturing or industrial operations. - You have worked and led TA teams internationally, with some focus on Germany. - German at C1 and above. INTERVIEW PROCESS - Recruiter Interview (30–45 min) - Panel Interviews (3 rounds, 60 min each) - CEO Call (30 min) *This role sits at L3 of our framework, please inquire during the recruitment process for further information. At Proxima Fusion, our mission is bold: making limitless clean energy a reality. To get there, we need a high-performing, diverse team that brings different perspectives, challenges assumptions, and builds together with purpose. We know that diversity of thought and experience leads to better ideas, stronger execution, and a more resilient team. We don’t look at how you identify, what you look like, who you choose to worship or what ethnicity you are. We care about what you can bring to the table.