Director of Talent

Albert is building the fabric of the physical world. Everything physical around you started in a lab: The products in your vanity, the paint on your car, the adhesives in spacecrafts, the cleaners under your sink, the shampoo you used this morning: every day you touch something that was invented in Albert.

We are the chemistry native, AI operating system leading chemical and materials science companies run R&D on. We are building a new category to transform a $7 trillion market. Albert is a rare thing: a company with a genuine origin story, proven at enterprise scale, a head start, real revenue, top-tier backing, and a category still wide open in front of it.

Our headquarters are in the Bay Area. Beyond the Bay, we’re a global company operating across the US, Germany, Japan and India. We’ve raised $100M from Index Ventures, Coatue, J.P. Morgan, and TCV.

Role Overview

We are looking for a creative, determined and innovative Director of Talent who is excited to build their vision. Your main stakeholders will be Albert's founders and executive leadership. You will receive real exposure to board-level conversations about how Albert builds its team.

You'll be recruiting and closing some of the most in-demand roles on the market right now: AI engineers, product managers, enterprise sellers, forward deployed engineers/scientists, and technical leaders. You’ll design our talent strategy aligned to our business objectives, including how we position our pitch and story to candidates. We’ve come a long way in a short time and already have some great career acceleration stories to tell. As not every great candidate's motivators are the same - you’ll capture and deploy the right “Albert Invent career acceleration stories” to engage and excite the full variety of ambitious candidate profiles. You’ll be the face of Albert to our new talent.

What you'll do

Build

• Own Albert's talent acquisition function end to end: A tech-enabled function with the right tools and systems that make hiring fast and efficient. It’s an exciting time in the TA Tech space and you’ll keep us ahead of the competition by embracing this innovation.
• Build a robust V.1 of the function first, then hire a team who run it with you.
• Own the metrics reported to our executive leadership and the communication to show our success in our hiring - as well as data-driven lessons learned.
• Design the full candidate journey: outreach, interview process, offer experience, as a reflection of Albert's standards.

Source & Close

• Direct our agency relationships that drive sourcing today and build the team that eventually takes that in-house.
• Win the candidates everyone else is chasing. This is a job for someone who likes to compete for talent and come out on top.
• Own the most challenging roles yourself - even after the team is built out. The right leader for our Talent function will always be excited by hunting for rare talent.
• Build real relationships and networks in the AI and technical talent community.

Partner

• Partner directly with founders and executive leadership on hiring strategy. We’re not seeking an “order taker” in this role - be prepared to use your experience and insights to influence how your key stakeholders think about Talent in ways that help us win.
• Consult with hiring managers and department leads on role design, leveling, and interview process.
• Manage recruiter relationships globally, and build working market fluency across our four operating countries: the US, Germany, India, and Japan.

You will have

• 10+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, including building or substantially scaling a talent acquisition function from an early or immature state.
• Time spent inside an AI-native company, ideally in its early stages, Series A through C.
• A track record recruiting and closing AI engineers, software architects, or product managers.
• Experience working directly with founders, C-suite, or board-level stakeholders.
• Global recruiting exposure, with strong depth in the US market.
• Hands-on fluency with modern recruiting tools and AI-driven sourcing methods.
• Experience building a talent function, not just maintaining one.

Key Competencies

• Autonomy: Does not wait to be asked. Creates their own path, follows up without prompting, takes full ownership of their work, and holds themselves accountable when things do not go as planned.

• Builder mindset: Has worked in environments without a playbook and made something from nothing. Energized by ambiguity, not paralyzed by it.

• AI fluency: Thinks critically about what belongs to a system and what belongs to a human. Uses AItools practically, not performatively.

• Candidate empathy: Designs recruiting experiences the waya great productdesigner thinks about users - with care, intentionality, and a genuine interest in how people feel.

• Strategic partnership: Earnstrust with executives and hiring managers by bringing informed points of view, not just executing requests.

• Creativity: Thinks beyond job boards and standard outreach. Brings original ideas to how Albert attracts talent - how we tell our story, where we show up, and what makes a candidate choose us over a better-known name.

• Grit: Persistent, resilient, and genuinely invested in outcomes. Does not mistake movement for progress.

Why Albert?

We have a huge impact. Albert is a growing team with a global reach. We're building toward a future where discovery feels like exploration, not administration. Where chemists can pursue their most ambitious ideas without friction.

We love our global team. Albert's home-base is in the California Bay Area, but we have multiple offices and employees sprinkled around the globe: India, Germany and Japan. In fact, over 50% of our employees work outside of California! An international hybrid culture is in our DNA. We care about you. Albert works hard to create a positive environment for our employees, and we think your life outside of work is important too. We work hard and we play hard. We value diversity. Growing and maintaining our inclusive and diverse team matters to us. We are committed to being a company where our employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work and have the ability to be successful - every day. We're always looking for humble, sharp, and creative folks to join the Albert team. If you think you might be a fit, please apply!