Director, Talent Acquisition

About Adelphi: Adelphi builds AI/ML-enabled secure data access and sharing technology for the U.S. intelligence and defense communities. Our product creates a secure enclave where data stays where it lives and only governed answers travel out — closing the gap between fragmented systems and the speed AI and analysts need to act. Adelphi closed a $7M Seed round in August 2025 and serves customers across the Intelligence Community and the Department of War. We are a team of fewer than twenty, operating with urgency and in close proximity to the mission.

About the Role: Adelphi is hiring its first dedicated Talent Acquisition leader to build and scale our recruiting function from the ground up. This leader will drive overall talent strategy across all functions at Adelphi, with an immediate, central focus on standing up the company's capability to hire Forward Deployed AI Engineers who support mission-critical work across defense and intelligence agencies.

Forward Deployed AI Engineers work on-site with Government customers, translating complex requirements into working systems at the intersection of hard technical problems and large organizations. Mastering the pipeline for this specialized profile is the initial priority. As Adelphi scales, this leader will leverage that foundation to drive all technical, product, and operational hiring across the company.

Location: Washington DC Metro preferred; remote candidates will be considered with 10% travel expected. Eastern/Central time zones preferred.

Clearance Requirement: Candidates must be clearance eligible.

What You’ll Do:

• Full-Cycle Recruitment: Own end-to-end hiring across Adelphi, driving high-touch candidate experiences from initial outreach through pipeline management to offer negotiations alongside the CEO and COO.

• Targeted AI Sourcing Strategy: Design and execute specialized sourcing strategies to identify top-tier talent for customer-facing Forward Deployed AI Engineer and other technical roles supporting defense and intelligence missions.

• Structured Assessment: Conduct structured, scorecard-based interviews in close partnership with designated technical evaluators to ensure consistent evaluation standards.

• Talent Operations & Infrastructure: Build and document foundational recruiting infrastructure—including trackers, process guides, scorecard templates, and offer frameworks—to scale the function sustainably.

• Vendor & Tool Ecosystem: Manage external partner relationships, evaluate platform performance, and negotiate terms with recruiting agencies, staffing partners, and sourcing platforms.

Who You Are:

• Experienced Technical Talent Leader: An accomplished talent acquisition professional with a proven track record of standing up recruiting functions from scratch rather than solely executing individual searches.

• Proven AI/ML Sourcing Specialist: Deep hands-on experience recruiting, negotiating, and closing top-tier Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and technical engineering candidates against competing offers. (Required: Generalist technical recruiting without depth in AI/ML is not a fit).

• Defense & Intelligence Ecosystem Experience: Direct experience recruiting technical talent supporting government, defense, or intelligence agency customers—with an understanding of clearable or non-clearable candidate landscapes.

• Scale-Minded Practitioner: Proven success scaling pipelines for Forward Deployed Engineers (or comparable customer-facing technical roles) across multiple concurrent headcount, rather than one-off fills.

• Full-Cycle Hands-On Builder: Comfortable operating at both strategic and tactical levels—developing sourcing strategies, managing long-arc candidate engagement, negotiating executive-level compensation alongside C-suite leadership, and building recruiting infrastructure as you go.

• Clear & Direct Communicator: Exceptional stakeholder management with the ability to articulate expectations clearly to both candidates and internal executive leadership.

Why Adelphi?

• You will build the talent function from its foundation; every process, tracker, and guide you create becomes the standard the company operates on.

• Direct ownership of hiring outcomes at a seed-stage company with active government contracts and substantial hiring ahead.

• Mission-driven work: the engineers you hire go on to build the data and artificial intelligence infrastructure that the U.S. defense and intelligence communities depend on.

Benefits:

• Healthcare coverage: 100% employee premium and 50% dependents premium coverage of a platinum-level plan

• 401K with 2% company match

• $500 monthly Physical and Mental Health reimbursement program

• Unlimited time-off policy

• Competitive salary and equity compensation

• Opportunity to work on impactful projects in the national security sector

• Career growth and leadership opportunities in a dynamic, innovative environment