Lead Talent Acquisition Partner - Tech in City of London

We power people’s progress. At Preply, we’re all about creating life-changing learning experiences. We help people discover the magic of the perfect tutor, craft a personalised learning journey, and stay motivated to keep growing. Our approach is human-led, tech-enabled - and it’s creating real impact. We’ve just reached unicorn status with a $150M Series D, accelerating our vision to transform education through human-led, AI-enhanced learning. Today, 100,000+ tutors teach 90+ languages to learners in 180 countries - and we’re only getting started. As a category-defining company, we’re shaping what the future of learning looks like at global scale. Every Preply lesson sparks change, fuels ambition, and drives progress that matters. Joining Preply means helping define the future of education at global scale, and building something that truly matters for millions of people, every day.

About the team: Talent Acquisition at Preply is a high-performing, ambitious team that’s deeply embedded in the business. We are very intentional with raising the bar, continuously iterating, innovating, and learning together to achieve excellence. We’re technology-driven, data-informed, and focused on hiring based on business priorities and outcomes. But just as important, we’re team-first: collaborative, supportive, and committed to building something meaningful together. Building a legendary company should be fun!

About this role: As Preply continues to scale, engineering remains at the core of our product and our growth. We’re on a unique journey of expanding technical hiring across multiple, complex domains and global tech hubs. To help shape this next chapter in a truly exceptional way, we’re hiring a Lead Talent Acquisition Partner – Tech to continually raise the bar for how we build our engineering organisation. This role is designed for someone operating at the highest level of recruiting excellence. You’ll not only own and deliver on complex engineering searches yourself, but also take end-to-end ownership of how we scale technical hiring. That means continuously improving our hiring processes, building a scalable and high-quality engineering hiring system, effectively leveraging data and insights, and partnering closely on workforce planning. As a trusted advisor to senior leaders, you’ll work alongside TA leadership and a strong team of experienced TA Partners across Engineering - leading through expertise, influence, and example to raise the bar for hiring quality as we grow.

What you’ll be doing:

• Own and drive engineering hiring end-to-end, taking accountability for scaling outcomes across technical domains and hubs, while personally delivering on complex and high-impact roles.
• Act as a strategic talent partner to TA Leadership and senior leaders in the business, helping to shape long-term talent strategy, align on hiring plans, role prioritization, and long-term capability building.
• Act as a craft lead within the TA team, mentoring and coaching other TA Partners (including dotted-line management where needed), sharing best practices, and elevating recruiting standards, data literacy, and business understanding across the team.
• Partner closely with other TA Partners working on engineering roles, providing alignment, direction, and support to ensure effective collaboration and scalable execution.
• Contribute to TA, People, and Organizational wide initiatives and improvements, to refine processes, tools, and ways to innovate, leading by influence and hands-on contribution.
• Champion structured, bias-aware, evidence-based hiring, acting as a role model for high-quality, consistent interview processes and sound decision-making, particularly for senior hires.
• Coach and influence stakeholders, helping them become stronger hiring managers and interviewers; confidently challenging assumptions to ensure long-term hiring quality.
• Bring strong market, competitive, and industry insights into hiring discussions, proactively sharing trends and data to influence decisions across the business.

What you’ll need to succeed:

• Significant experience hiring hard-to-fill and complex technical talent in a fast-paced, product-led tech environment.
• Proven ability to support and deliver engineering hiring at scale, including improving and scaling processes, coordinating across stakeholders or locations, and contributing to large-scale hiring or growth initiatives.
• Strong in-house recruiting background, with demonstrated success operating as a trusted advisor to senior and executive stakeholders.
• Expert-level recruiting craft: you run strategic searches end-to-end, deeply care about candidate experience, and consistently deliver strong outcomes on complex roles.
• Experience leading, mentoring and coaching TA Partners, either through a direct management role or strong mentorship capability.
• Data fluency and with ability to drive decisions through data, create measurable outcomes, and raise TA effectiveness.
• A team-first, low-ego approach: collaborative, generous with knowledge, and motivated by raising the bar for engineering hiring and the TA function overall.
• Fluency in English and readiness to work from Barcelona, London, or Kyiv, or openness to relocating to join us in Barcelona.

Why you’ll love it at Preply:

• An open, collaborative, dynamic and diverse culture;
• A generous monthly allowance for lessons on Preply.com, Learning & Development budget and time off for your self-development;
• A competitive financial package with equity, leave allowance and health insurance;
• Access to free mental health support platforms;
• Access to Gympass-partnered wellness and gym centers throughout London to promote and support well-being and physical health;
• The opportunity to shape the lives of learners and tutors through language learning and teaching in 175 countries (and counting!).

Our Principles:

• Care to change the world - We are passionate about our work and care deeply about its impact to be life changing.
• Keep perfecting - To create an outstanding customer experience, we focus on simplicity, smoothness, and enjoyment, continually perfecting it as every detail matters.
• Now is the time - In a fast-paced world, it matters how quickly we act. Now is the time to make great things happen.
• Disciplined execution - What makes us disciplined is the excellence in our execution. We set clear goals, focus on what matters, and utilize our resources efficiently.
• Dive deep - We leverage business acumen and curiosity to investigate disparities between numbers and stories, unlocking meaningful insights to guide our decisions.
• Growth mindset - We proactively seek growth opportunities and believe today's best performance becomes tomorrow's starting point. We humbly embrace feedback and learn from setbacks.
• Raise the bar - We raise our performance standards continuously, alongside each new hire and promotion. We build diverse and high-performing teams that can make a real difference.
• Challenge, disagree and commit - We value open and candid communication, even when we don’t fully agree. We speak our minds, challenge when necessary, and fully commit to decisions once made.
• One Preply - We prioritize collaboration, inclusion, and the success of our team over personal ambitions. Together, we support and celebrate each other's progress.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Preply.com is committed to creating an inclusive environment where people of diverse backgrounds can thrive. We believe that the presence of different opinions and viewpoints is a key ingredient for our success as a multicultural Ed-Tech company. That means that Preply will consider all applications for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or veteran status.