Founding Talent Acquisition Partner (m/f/d)

about us

Every 10 minutes, 18 million conversations happen between businesses and consumers around the world.

For decades, the consumer side of those conversations sucked: long queues, robotic menus, repeated explanations, and advice that is often unhelpful. Most people today still cannot simply say what their problem is in natural language when communicating with businesses.

AI changes that. For the first time, companies can have natural conversations with customers at massive scale. Every B2C company - from energy providers to telcos to insurers - will use AI agents to talk to their customers. The number of conversations businesses will handle is going to explode in the coming years.

At telli, we are solving the challenges that come with that shift. Today, leading B2C companies like Sky are already using telli to deploy thousands of voice agents to provide their customers with a new experience. But building a first voice agent is easy, getting it to drive real outcomes for customers and businesses is the hard part. telli helps companies build, deploy, and improve consumer-facing AI voice agents at scale. This will become one of the most important software categories of the next decade, and we intend to win it.

We are a small, AI-pilled team that likes to solve hard problems. Be it engineering, product, or GTM - we build, experiment, and move fast, while heavily leveraging the capabilities of AI models. All of us like to challenge ourselves and take real ownership over what we do, all while still staying humble and keeping a low-ego culture.

Check out our principles to see how we work.

about the role

This is a high-ownership role for our first dedicated TA. You won't just fill open roles, you will build telli's hiring function from the ground up and own our ability to get A-players through the door across every team.

The team we've built so far is exceptional, and we hire to a very high bar. This role is about scaling the team fast without dropping the bar. You partner directly with the founding team and hiring managers to set the strategy, build the process and playbook, and fill our open roles at the same time. You partner directly with the founding team and hiring managers.

what you'll do

build the hiring function from scratch: partner closely with leaders to define hiring strategy, workflows, sourcing playbooks

own hiring end-to-end: source, screen, run debriefs, and drive the process toward the close

build a steady top-of-funnel of A-players across roles through outbound, referrals, founder-network activation, communities, and events, all running in parallel

keep a high offer-accept rate and a short, predictable time-to-offer without dropping the bar

build real depth in technical hiring: calibrate with our engineering leads, screen credibly on technical signal, and pre-qualify before hiring managers see candidates

own the external agency and recruiter channel actively: set a sharp brief, review candidate quality closely, give fast feedback, and cut what isn't working

represent telli externally: for most candidates, you are their first impression of the company. treat every interaction as an opportunity and make the experience something they rave about

your profile

3+ years TA experience in a fast-moving startup or scale-up

you've built a function from zero

a track record hiring strong candidates in competitive markets across engineering and commercial roles

an active, warm network across the Berlin and EU startup and VC ecosystem that you can activate immediately

hands-on with a modern ATS (Ashby a plus) and AI sourcing tools

high agency: you move fast, take ownership, and spot role gaps before anyone asks

high craft in communication: every candidate touchpoint reads like a founder wrote it

data-driven: you track the funnel and use the data to fix what leaks

a bar-raiser who has internalized "we only hire A-players, no exception"

you may not make a good fit if…

you are more excited about managing a large TA team than building the function from the ground up

you prefer a remote-first environment

you like to work on your own with minimum collaboration

you want to work 9-5

perks

competitive pay & equity

access to any (AI) tool that makes you more productive

gym / urban sports subscription

relocation support if you don't live in Berlin

Interested? If you want to help us build the future of AI voice technology, we’d love to hear from you!

Reach out to Marco Ohde: Reach out to Marco Ohde: marco.ohde.ext@telli.com

Compensation Range: €75K - €95K