Senior Talent Acquisition Manager
FocusedAbout Focused Energy
Focused Energy is a fusion energy startup with the goal of generating unlimited clean energy to responsibly meet future global demand. The founders include two highly renowned scientists and a long-time entrepreneur and founder of several successful startups. With the use and commercialization of laser-induced inertial fusion, a clean and highly efficient power generation technology is coming within reach, suitable to ensure a secure and scalable future energy supply.
We are hiring an experienced Senior Talent Acquisition Manager to build and scale our global hiring operations across Germany, the United States, and future locations. In this role, you will be fully embedded in day-to-day recruiting, leading a small, high-performing team and creating the systems, insights, and routines that make great hiring happen at scale. You will partner closely with leaders and hiring managers to strengthen decision making, ensure consistent candidate experiences, and use data to continuously improve how we attract, assess, and hire exceptional talent. This is a hands-on role that combines strategic thinking with operational excellence, building a recruiting engine that is fast, fair, and built to last.
What You’ll Do
Team Leadership & Strategy
Lead, coach, and inspire a small, high-performing recruiting team to deliver excellence and partnership at every stage of the hiring process.
Define clear goals and KPIs, establish transparent reporting, and use data and insights to guide priorities, track progress, and continuously improve outcomes.
Partner with People, Finance, and leadership to align hiring priorities with headcount planning, capability building, and long-term business strategy.
Enable and educate hiring managers and interviewers on structured, evidence-based hiring practices that improve decision quality and consistency across the organization.
Process Improvement & Optimization
Continuously refine and mature recruiting processes using data to identify trends, remove bottlenecks, and balance speed with quality.
Design systems and workflows that are both scalable and candidate-centered, ensuring smooth collaboration across global teams.
Maintain data integrity across tools and dashboards to enable clear visibility into pipeline health, conversion rates, and time-to-hire.
Build structured feedback loops to turn metrics into action and insights into lasting improvements.
Full-Cycle Recruiting
Own full-cycle recruitment for high-impact, senior, or confidential roles, ensuring a strong candidate and stakeholder experience from first contact to close.
Support sourcing and engagement for critical or high-volume roles, using data to prioritize efforts and improve pipeline efficiency.
Ensure consistent quality and calibration across interview teams and regions through structured assessment and transparent feedback.
Stakeholder Partnership
Act as a trusted partner to hiring managers, advising on role design, market insights, compensation benchmarking, and data-informed hiring decisions.
Influence leaders to balance urgency with evidence, making hiring choices that strengthen both performance and culture.
Calibrate expectations, challenge assumptions with empathy, and build alignment through transparency and clarity.
Employer Branding & Talent Pipeline
Bring Focused Energy’s mission and culture to life through authentic employer branding and storytelling.
Partner with Marketing to expand brand visibility across channels, events, and communities.
Ensure job postings and outreach reflect our values, ambition, and the impact of building a career in deep tech.
Build diverse, sustainable pipelines that anticipate future skills and ensure recruiting decisions are guided by both data and conviction.
Who You Are
7–10+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, including 2–3+ years managing recruiters.
Proven success hiring technical / engineering roles (hardware, deep tech, scientific environments).
Experienced in process improvement / optimization and maturing recruiting operations in a scaling environment.
Comfortable operating in ambiguity — you bring clarity where process doesn’t yet exist.
Data-driven and process-minded; you track key metrics (time-to-fill, funnel conversion, quality of hire).
Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills across cultures and levels.
Fluent in English and German.
Preferred
Experience in a startup or fast-growth environment.
Experience leading remote / distributed teams.
Experience recruiting internationally across Europe and the U.S.
Interest in energy, engineering, cleantech, or scientific innovation.
Why work with us?
Innovative Technology & Mission: Be part of a cutting-edge company working on groundbreaking research in clean energy and scientific discovery.
Career Development: We invest in our people. This is an opportunity to join an early, growing company at the forefront of new technology, where you’ll have the opportunity to develop and grow your career.
Collaborative Culture: Work with great people in a dynamic, international environment with top-tier scientists, engineers, and professionals passionate about solving global challenges.
Ownership: Take ownership from day 1 and drive impact by making decisions, solving challenges, and shaping the future of our company.
Your Success is our Success: We offer a competitive salary and company ownership in the form of stock options, giving you a direct stake in our success and ownership in what we build together.
Vacation Days: We support your work-life balance by granting you 30 days of vacation per year.
Flexibility: Work should fit around your life, not the other way around. We offer the ability to work from our office, but some flexibility to work from home as well.
Snacks and Drinks: Our office fridges are never empty. Enjoy our healthy snacks and drinks. Our Darmstadt office even offers a subsidized canteen with delicious lunch options daily.
Retirement Plan: If you decide on a private pension plan, we will finance 15% on top of your monthly contributions.
Events: We organize regular events to foster team bonding, encourage collaboration, and build a strong, supportive company culture. Connect with colleagues across departments, share ideas, and have fun together, both in and outside of the workplace.
Focused Energy is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive environment. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Focused Energy will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity, benefits.