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Orbital is an AI platform for real estate legal work, trusted by 5,000+ professionals across UK Magic Circle and US Am Law 100 firms, as well as major corporates like M&S. The company has raised $75m to date, including a recent $60m Series B led by Brighton Park Capital. Orbital's next phase is US-led, with New York becoming the center of go-to-market activity.
You will own the talent function across both UK and US markets as Head of Talent, reporting to the CEO, COO, and CRO. This is a precision hiring role, not volume-driven—every hire is expected to raise the bar, and you will be measured on calibre of hires, not quantity.
Key responsibilities:
• Strategy: Build and own the company-wide hiring plan aligned with growth targets from leadership. Define how the plan gets delivered with full autonomy over team, tools, and operations.
• Team Leadership: Coach and develop an experienced precision talent team across US and UK time zones into a high-impact function. Set and maintain quality standards as the team grows.
• Direct Hiring Method: Lead a search-led recruiting approach where your team maps markets, builds target lists, and pursues named candidates rather than working inbound. Personally run searches for senior or high-impact roles.
• Executive Search Craft: Design and execute targeted headhunt processes end-to-end for passive candidates—market mapping, target lists, multi-touch engagement, assessment, and close.
• Operational Excellence: Ensure forecasts hold, pipeline reviews happen consistently, ATS data remains accurate, and stakeholders always know search status.
• Executive Peer: Operate as a strategic peer to leadership, holding your own on commercial strategy with the CRO, technical org design with the CTO, planning with the COO, and talent narrative with the CEO.
Requirements:
• Proven scale-up track record: Built or materially scaled a talent function inside a VC-backed technology company through a comparable arc (roughly 100–300 people).
• Precision hiring expertise: Demonstrated low-volume, high-calibre hiring with specific examples of hires that changed company trajectory. Ability to explain exactly how you found, engaged, and closed them.
• GTM and Engineering depth: Personally owned both GTM and Engineering hiring in your career with knowledge of UK and US markets.
• Executive search craft: Designed and run targeted headhunt processes end-to-end for passive candidates. Can walk through the process, not just outcomes.
• Distributed team experience: Run recruiting teams across US and UK time zones with a single operating rhythm, one quality bar, and clear accountability in both markets.
• Team development: Track record of raising a team's level through clear expectations, honest feedback, visible performance data, and real coaching on craft.
• AI literacy in practice: Already build AI into your function's workflow and can demonstrate what it changed about team output.
• Operational rigour: Detail-oriented by instinct; forecasts, pipeline reviews, and follow-up do not slip.
Not a fit if: You measure success primarily on requisitions filled or time-to-fill; you want to manage agency panels and vendor budgets (Orbital hires direct); you want to step back from hands-on work; you avoid performance conversations; or AI is something you talk about rather than use in your workflow.
