Talent Partner in London

The way companies innovate is broken. The systems built to create and protect ideas can’t keep up with the pace of change. Today, 90% of S&P 500 company value is intangible (e.g., in intellectual property) - yet R&D and IP teams spend half their time buried in manual work, sifting through patents and paperwork instead of pushing the frontier forward. The tools of creating and protecting are stuck in the past. We’re here to fix that.

Ankar is building the R&D tools for the AI era and defining what applied research will look like in the next 20 years. We’re building infrastructure and product experiences our customers rely on every day. You’ll translate messy, ambiguous problems into clean, dependable software—and you’ll do it at the cutting-edge of AI.

We’re at an inflection point:

• We’ve raised >$24M to date from Tier-1 VCs like Atomico, Index Ventures, Norrsken, Daphni, and angels like the Founder of Hugging Face, CEO from Datadog, and Leaders from DeepMind and OpenAI.
• We’re already working with the world’s most innovative companies including Fortune 500 company L’Oréal and global law firm Vorys.
• Expanding our world-class team with alumni from Palantir, Amazon, and BCG to tackle the $1T+ innovation market.

What You’ll Do

• Talent Pipeline Building & Management (50%)
  • Build target candidate lists for immediate and strategic hires: identify top tier candidates in each critical talent pool (Engineering & Product OR GTM & Sales).
  • Test and iterate on sourcing approaches: traditional channels (LinkedIn Recruiter, AI sourcing tools, etc.) and non-traditional tactics (recruiting through events/webinars, leveraging customer networks, communities, etc.).
  • Conduct ongoing outreach to passive candidates who aren’t actively looking but would be an exceptional match for Ankar’s mission and culture - build relationships before roles open.
  • Create "talent communities" for hard-to-fill specialisations: stay top-of-mind through thoughtful touchpoints, relevant content sharing, and authentic relationship building.
  • Move strategic candidates through the pipeline: awareness > interest > readiness, so when roles open you have pre-qualified, warm talent ready to engage immediately.
• End-to-End Hiring Execution (50%)
  • Own the complete candidate journey for a few active searches simultaneously: multi-channel sourcing, screening, interview coordination, candidate prep, offer positioning, and close.
  • Design assessment frameworks that reliably predict cultural match: extreme ownership, zero-to-one mentality, comfort with productive tension, intellectual humility paired with deep expertise.
  • Create candidate experiences that reflect our contrarian, first-principles culture - candidates should leave interviews thinking "this company is different".
  • Embed with teams to understand nuanced requirements beyond what's written in JDs.

Requirements:

• 5+ years building hiring systems in high-growth environments (recruiting or talent operations delivery roles).
• Demonstrated ability to hire for technical, commercial, or specialised roles where you had to learn the domain from scratch.
• Track record of hiring in ambiguous, zero-to-one contexts (early-stage startups, new market expansions, or building new functions within larger companies).

Culture at Ankar:

Culture at Ankar is how we think, build, and operate. We’re building a generational company that redefines how the world’s best R&D teams create and protect ideas.

• Contrarian - we think from first principles: We think deeply, question assumptions, and build from first principles. The best ideas come from clarity and rigour.
• Creative - we build with taste: We’re building the R&D tools for the AI era and shaping what applied research looks like over the next 20 years. We care about precision, quality, and systems that last.
• Competitive - we play to win: We move with urgency and set a very high bar for ourselves and each other. Every win raises the bar. Every challenge sharpens us.

This role is not for you if...

• You need a highly structured environment, a predefined playbook, regular working hours, or a schedule that never requires travel. We operate with high autonomy and ownership, expect our team to go above and beyond, be obsessed with our mission and thrive in ambiguity rather than wait for direction.
• You prefer long planning cycles and certainty before acting. We move quickly, ship often, and adapt based on customer feedback and new information.
• You want to manage the work rather than do the work. We’re builders first, and everyone is expected to contribute directly to creating exceptional products.
• You take it personally when ideas are challenged, priorities shift, or work gets redirected. We care more about finding the right answer than defending a particular one.

What we put behind our people:

Building at the frontier takes exceptional people. We invest accordingly.

• Health Insurance: Full private health & dental coverage for you and your dependents.
• Pension: Flexible pension scheme with up to 5% employer matching on qualifying earnings.
• Food on us: Team lunches twice a week, plus dinner when working late in the office.
• Cycle to work: Green Commute initiative scheme (up to £3k) to help you get a new bike tax-free.
• Way we work: We combine deep, in-person collaboration (3 days/week in our Shoreditch office) with flexibility and trust. What matters is ownership, impact, and results, not where you work from.