Head of Talent
NewsBreak · Mountain View · $165,000–$250,000 (stated in the posting)
About NewsBreak
Local life runs on local information. What happened down the street? Who can fix this? Where should we go tonight? NewsBreak started in 2015 to answer these questions, and today more than 40 million people a month rely on us to follow what’s going on in their zip code.
Three platforms with one vision: powering local life. Led by founder and CEO Jeff Zheng, NewsBreak is our local life and news platform; Nearby AI connects people with local businesses; and NDot AI helps publishers and creators grow and earn.
Building for the long term. A $115 million Series C made us a unicorn in 2021, and we keep investing in our people. We’re Great Place to Work® certified and named to Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators (2025) and Fortune’s Best Workplaces in the Bay Area™ (2026).
Everyone makes an impact. Whether you write code, shape products, tell our story, or run the business, we want people who own projects end to end, stay curious, and speak up. Join us.
Learn more at: NewsBreak, Nearby AI, NDot AI
About the Role
NewsBreak is looking for a Head of Talent to own and scale our talent acquisition function end-to-end. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who has both built recruiting teams from the ground up and can operate as a strategic partner to the CEO and executive team on hiring, workforce planning, and org design.
You'll run point on our most critical and senior searches yourself, and be the architect of how NewsBreak attracts, evaluates, and closes top talent across engineering, AI/ML, product, and business functions — all while operating with the speed and rigor of a high-growth, AI-native company.
What You'll Do
Talent Strategy & Leadership
- Own NewsBreak's end-to-end talent acquisition strategy, translating company growth and headcount plans into a clear hiring roadmap across engineering, AI/ML, product, and G&A functions.
- Build, lead, and mentor the talent acquisition team — hiring, coaching, and developing Talent Partners, recruiters, sourcers, and coordinators as the team scales.
- Act as a trusted advisor to the CEO and executive team on org design, workforce planning, leveling, and succession planning, bringing market insight and data to the table.
Executive & Critical Hiring
- Personally own full-cycle search for the company's most senior and confidential roles (VP+ and other business-critical hires), from sourcing through close.
- Partner closely with hiring managers and executives to define role scope, ideal candidate profiles, and interview processes for hard-to-fill and leadership positions.
Employer Brand & Candidate Experience
- Build and protect NewsBreak's employer brand to compete for top talent in a crowded Silicon Valley market.
- Design a candidate experience that reflects NewsBreak's speed, technical bar, and culture from first touch to offer.
Recruiting Operations & Systems
- Build scalable recruiting infrastructure — ATS, sourcing tools, interview processes, and AI-powered workflow automation — to support rapid, high-quality hiring.
- Define and report hiring metrics and OKRs (time-to-fill, pipeline health, offer-accept rate, quality of hire) to leadership, using data to continuously improve the funnel.
- Partner with People/HR and Finance on compensation benchmarking, leveling frameworks, and offer strategy.
Cross-Border & Specialized Talent
- Lead sourcing strategy for frontier AI/ML talent, including specialized and cross-border pipelines (U.S. and Mandarin-speaking talent markets).
- Manage relationships with external agencies, RPOs, job boards, and assessment vendors as needed.
What We're Looking For
Minimum Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience in talent acquisition/recruiting, including 4+ years leading and scaling a recruiting team, ideally at a high-growth technology company in Silicon Valley.
- Demonstrated success recruiting for technical organizations (engineering, AI/ML, or product) at scale.
- Track record operating as a strategic partner to founders/C-suite executives, with strong executive presence and stakeholder management skills.
- Experience building or significantly scaling a recruiting function, including process, tooling, and team structure.
- Data-driven approach to recruiting, comfortable using metrics and AI-powered recruiting tools to drive decisions.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience recruiting for AI/frontier AI or LLM-focused teams.
- Experience in media, content, news-tech, or consumer internet companies.
- Experience with cross-border or U.S.–China talent pipelines.
- Mandarin/English bilingual proficiency.