About the role

About Niantic Spatial At Niantic Spatial, we're building the future of physical AI. Powered by a proprietary database of over 30 billion posed images, our groundbreaking mapping technology unlocks a new dimension of interaction and spatial intelligence that helps both humans and machines better understand, represent, navigate, and engage with the real environment. Our reconstruction technology captures environments with geometric accuracy and extreme detail from any standard camera, and our Visual Positioning System delivers precise positioning almost anywhere in the world. We serve customers across robotics, the public sector, and energy and industrial markets - building for the 80% of economic activity that takes place beyond our screens. About the Role We're looking for a hands-on Head of Talent Acquisition to lead and personally execute our recruiting function. Reporting to the Chief People Officer, you'll be the strategic talent advisor to our executive team while carrying a meaningful portfolio of critical searches yourself. You'll own full life cycle recruiting, recruiting operations, workforce planning, reporting, tools, external partners, and candidate experience. You'll manage our contract recruiting resources and, as we grow, design and build the Talent Acquisition organization that comes next. This role rewards moving quickly without trading away quality. You'll help hiring teams name the few capabilities that actually matter and reach confident decisions in deep-tech markets where the best candidates have options. If you like building the foundation while still delivering results today, this is that job. What You'll Do - Full Life Cycle Recruiting - Personally run a portfolio of searches across engineering, AI/ML, research, product, go-to-market, operations, and corporate functions, including executive and highly specialized roles. Own every stage from intake and market mapping through sourcing, assessment, offer, close, and onboarding handoff. - Direct Sourcing - Build creative sourcing strategies to find and engage exceptional passive talent in competitive markets. Learn our technology, strategy, and customers well enough to represent the company credibly to people who are not looking. - Executive Talent Advisory - Advise executives and hiring managers on role design, candidate profiles, talent availability, market dynamics, and hiring strategy. Lead intake and search-strategy discussions that settle requirements, assessment criteria, ownership, and timelines, and help leaders separate essential capabilities from preferences. - Hiring Process & Assessment - Design hiring processes that balance speed, rigor, inclusion, and candidate experience. Build structured interviews that produce real evidence, coach interviewers, keep momentum by driving timely feedback and resolving delays, and partner with Compensation on offers that are competitive and internally consistent. - Recruiting Team & Partners - Manage contract recruiters, sourcers, search firms, and agencies: set priorities and performance standards, allocate requisitions by business priority, judge partners on hiring outcomes and pipeline quality, and decide when contract, agency, or full-time support is the right answer. - Build the Function - Define the future structure, capabilities, and operating model of Talent Acquisition, then recruit, onboard, and develop the team as we grow. Build a recruiting culture that is accountable and focused on speed, quality, and business impact. - Recruiting Operations & AI - Own and improve recruiting processes, workflows, documentation, and service standards. Adopt AI-enabled tools where they responsibly strengthen sourcing, assessment, engagement, and reporting. Hold a high bar for ATS data discipline, and partner with People Operations and Legal so our practices meet employment law, internal policy, and data privacy requirements. - Reporting, Insights & Talent Brand - Build dashboards and upda