Talent Acquisition Manager

About the role

Lean, a financial infrastructure provider in the Middle East, is hiring a Talent Acquisition Manager to run a player-coach role: leading a small talent team while owning GTM and business hiring. You will manage and develop the team, drive hiring quality and speed, and act as a strategic partner to leadership.

Key responsibilities

• Run GTM and business hiring end to end: intake, sourcing, screening and closing; build outbound campaigns and close your own hires, including offers, equity conversations and compensation positioning.
• Lead and develop a small team: set priorities and targets, coach regularly, hold them accountable and support their growth.
• Work with the CEO, CFO, Head of People and functional leaders on headcount, sequencing and compensation trade-offs, surface hiring risks early and advise on capacity planning.
• Run request-to-hire end to end, including business case, sign-off and job description.
• Define quality standards with each hiring manager, embed Lean's values in interviews through scorecards, and coach hiring managers on structured interviewing and calibration.
• Build and maintain recruiting playbooks, own the TA stack (Ashby, Granola and an AI workflow layer), and own the internship programme, Emiratization compliance, the 2027 KSA Graduate Programme, the LeanX stablecoin hiring, the Cairo hub launch and the employer brand.
• Own the team's AI adoption roadmap and evaluate new tools against measurable process outcomes.

Required profile

• Talent experience at a VC firm at startup/scale-up stage, with at least 1 year in a people management capacity.
• Track record of closing senior GTM and leadership hires.
• Ability to manage up and advise leadership on org design and compensation.
• Prior experience hiring across UAE and/or KSA markets.
• Background in fintech preferred; Arabic speaking desirable.

Required skills

• Excellent process management and ATS proficiency (Ashby experience is a plus).
• Strong command of hiring metrics and reporting.
• Structured assessment habits: scorecards, calibrated loops, evidence over instinct.