Location: Remote, India
Engagement Type: Contract / Consultant
Department: People / Talent
Working Model: Flexible, with availability for alignment with leadership and hiring managers as needed

Position Overview

We are looking for a senior contract HR/talent acquisition professional to help us strengthen and scale our hiring function as we grow.

This is not a routine recruiter role. We need someone who can operate strategically and hands‑on: define the right sourcing approach, build high‑quality talent pipelines, improve hiring processes, advise leadership on hiring decisions, and help us attract strong candidates across technical and business functions.

You will work closely with founders and internal stakeholders to shape a practical, scalable hiring engine for a remote‑first company. The ideal person understands how to hire for modern software teams and can balance speed, quality, candidate experience, and business needs.

This role is best suited for someone who has helped grow tech‑driven organisations hire across engineering, design, product, data, and operations roles, and who is comfortable working independently with strong ownership.

Key Responsibilities

Assess our current hiring approach, identify gaps, and recommend a practical talent acquisition strategy aligned with business growth plans.
Build and refine sourcing strategies for critical roles across software engineering, UI/UX, AI/data, product, operations, and support functions.
Create structured talent pipelines and talent pools for recurring and hard‑to‑fill roles.
Partner with leadership and hiring managers to understand role requirements, define ideal candidate profiles, and improve role calibration.
Advise on job description quality, candidate messaging, sourcing channels, employer positioning, and interview design.
Drive proactive sourcing efforts across platforms, communities, referrals, agencies, and outbound channels where relevant.
Improve hiring workflows from intake to offer, including screening, interview stages, evaluation consistency, feedback loops, and stakeholder accountability.
Introduce structure to hiring decisions through scorecards, competency mapping, and better assessment criteria.
Help prioritise hiring needs based on business impact, urgency, budget, and team capacity.
Support senior or difficult‑to‑close roles directly when needed, including candidate outreach, screening, and process management.
Track and report hiring metrics such as pipeline health, source effectiveness, time‑to‑shortlist, conversion rates, and hiring bottlenecks.
Recommend improvements to candidate experience, employer brand communication, and recruiter / hiring manager coordination.
Bring market insight on talent availability, compensation trends, seniority calibration, and hiring feasibility for target roles.

Required Skills and Qualifications

8+ years of experience in talent acquisition, recruitment, or HR, with substantial experience in strategic hiring for technology roles.
Proven track record of building sourcing strategies and hiring pipelines for software and digital teams.
Strong experience hiring for roles such as full‑stack engineers, front‑end engineers, back‑end engineers, mobile developers, QA, designers, product roles, data/AI roles, and business operations roles.
Demonstrated ability to work as a senior individual contributor or advisor with minimal supervision.
Strong sourcing capability, including outbound talent mapping, passive candidate engagement, and multi‑channel pipeline development.
Experience partnering with founders, senior leaders, or hiring managers to improve hiring quality and process rigour.
Strong understanding of hiring operations, interview process design, evaluation frameworks, and recruiting metrics.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders and represent the company well to candidates.
Strong judgment in evaluating profiles, identifying hiring risks, and recommending practical next steps.
Ability to work in a fast‑moving environment with evolving priorities and multiple open roles.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience working with remote‑first companies or distributed teams.
Experience hiring for software services, product engineering, AI, cloud, or digital transformation environments.
Prior exposure to hiring for global client‑facing delivery teams.
Experience supporting growth‑stage companies where hiring processes are still being formalised.
Familiarity with hiring across different seniority levels, from mid‑level contributors to senior specialists or leadership roles.
Experience advising on compensation benchmarking, notice period realities, and offer‑close strategy in the Indian talent market.
Exposure to healthcare, enterprise software, or compliance‑sensitive hiring environments is a plus.

What We Value Most

Strong ownership and the ability to independently drive outcomes.
Practical thinking over unnecessary process.
High standards for candidate quality and hiring discipline.
Clear communication and stakeholder management.
Strong sourcing instincts and market awareness.
A builder mindset: someone who can create structure, not just follow it.
Good judgment, discretion, and professionalism.

What Success Looks Like

In this engagement, success would include:

A clearer and more scalable hiring strategy.
Better‑defined sourcing channels and talent pool plans for key roles.
Strongest shortlists for priority openings.
Improved alignment between hiring managers and recruitment efforts.
Better interview structure and evaluation consistency.
Clear hiring dashboards and visibility into bottlenecks.
Faster progress on critical roles without compromising candidate quality.

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Thinkgrid Labs