Director, Talent Acquisition
Dispatch Bio · San Francisco · $190,000–$275,000 (stated in the posting)
About us:
Our purpose at Dispatch is to help create a world where all cancer patients can be cured. We’re humbled by the opportunity to work together as a team on some of the most pressing medical challenges of our time.
To achieve our purpose, we are dedicated to engineering a universal treatment across solid tumors. We’re committed to the development of novel therapies, leveraging first-in-class technologies in viral vectors, universal targets, and novel cytokine biology. Our therapeutic approach has the potential to enable us to treat significant numbers of cancer patients and make a real and lasting impact on the world.
Our company was founded on pioneering work carried out in the laboratories of Dr. Carl June (University of Pennsylvania), Dr. Kole Roybal (University of California, San Francisco), Dr. Christopher Garcia (Stanford University) and Dr. Andy Minn (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center).
At our company, you would become one of our early team members— not only playing a role in meeting our ambitious mission but also building our thriving culture. We are determined to deliver with urgency to discover new solutions and we always stay dedicated to scientific rigor; we have an ownership mindset because each and every one of us is integral to our success. Collaboration is core for us because we believe that by bringing people together with diverse perspectives, we make a stronger whole. And, we show we care about our work and each other by sharing feedback - ultimately in service of our vision to empower people to continue forward with their lives – cancer free.
The role:
Dispatch is seeking a Director, Talent Acquisition to lead how we attract, assess, and hire outstanding people who will help Dispatch to pursue our purpose. As we enter an important period of growth, you will be accountable for the entire hiring process — from how candidates first experience our brand through offer acceptance — and for building upon our existing recruiting function that will scale with us, while staying true to our culture.
Reporting to the Chief People & Culture Officer, you will serve as a trusted advisor to our leadership team and hiring managers across research, development, technical operations, and corporate functions. You will lead a small recruiting team, including part-time/contract recruiting resources, and establish and manage relationships with external partners including search firms, immigration counsel, LinkedIn Recruiter, Greenhouse, and our branding partner.
This is a hands-on leadership role. You will set the strategy and build the processes, tools, and training that make great hiring repeatable, and you will also carry your own searches, especially for senior and hard-to-fill roles.
Key responsibilities:
- End-to-end hiring: Own the full hiring process from application through offer acceptance, ensuring it is efficient, rigorous, and consistent, with a smooth handoff to People & Culture Operations for preboarding and onboarding.
- Hiring manager partnership: Serve as a trusted advisor to hiring managers on role definition, sourcing strategy, interview design, candidate evaluation, and hiring decisions, bringing market insight and constructive feedback to help them make great choices.
- Assessment & selection: Develop the processes, tools, and training — such as structured interview guides, scorecards, and interviewer training — that help us assess both capability and alignment with our values, and make fair, well-informed decisions.
- Candidate experience: Create a thoughtful, timely, and respectful candidate experience that reflects who we are, ensuring every candidate, whether hired or not, walks away with a positive impression of Dispatch.
- AI-enabled recruiting: Find and adopt AI tools that make our hiring process faster and more effective, from sourcing and outreach to scheduling, interview preparation, and reporting, while keeping human judgment at the center of every hiring decision. Help your team and hiring managers learn to use these tools well and responsibly.
- Talent strategy & workforce planning: Proactively identify talent for critical scientific, clinical and technical roles including pinpointing relevant companies, adjacent talent pools, emerging leaders and developing workforce plans aligned with evolving business priorities.
- Employer brand: Lead our employer brand strategy in partnership with our creative and branding partner, bringing our purpose, values, and culture to life across our careers page, LinkedIn, job postings, and other channels.
- Offers & compensation: Apply a strong understanding of compensation — including base, bonus, and equity — to develop competitive offers within our pay ranges, advise hiring managers and candidates, and close top talent. Partner with People & Culture Operations on market data and pay ranges, and share recruiting market insights that inform our compensation approach.
- Partners & vendors: Select and manage relationships with search firms, immigration counsel, LinkedIn, Greenhouse, and our creative and branding partner, holding them accountable for quality, responsiveness, and cost.
- Hiring budget: Develop and manage the annual talent acquisition budget, including agency fees, job advertising, tools, and branding, and make smart decisions about when to use external partners versus in-house resources.
- Recruiting systems & metrics: Own our applicant tracking system (Greenhouse), including the vendor relationship, configuration, and recruiting workflows, partnering with People & Culture Operations on its integration with our HRIS (Rippling). Define and report on hiring metrics (such as time to fill, pipeline health, offer acceptance rate, and source effectiveness) to drive continuous improvement and keep leadership informed.
- Diverse talent & compliance: Build sourcing strategies that reach broad and diverse talent pools, and ensure hiring practices comply with applicable employment laws, including pay transparency and fair hiring requirements in Pennsylvania and California.
Required experience & skills:
- Bachelor's degree
- Minimum of 10 years of recruiting experience, with significant in-house talent acquisition experience in biotech, pharmaceutical, or life sciences companies
- Demonstrated success recruiting across scientific, clinical, technical operations, and corporate functions, including senior and executive-level searches
- Experience building or scaling a talent acquisition function in a startup or high-growth environment, including designing hiring processes, tools, and interviewer training
- Strong understanding of compensation, including base, bonus, and equity, with experience building and negotiating competitive offers
- Experience selecting and managing external partners such as search firms and recruiting technology vendors, and developing and managing a recruiting budget
- Hands-on experience with applicant tracking systems and LinkedIn Recruiter, and comfort using data to measure and improve hiring outcomes
- Ability to travel (if you are located in the Philadelphia area, then travel will be quarterly or less to our San Francisco office; if you are located in the Bay Area, the travel may be a bit more frequent to the Philadelphia office)
- Collaborative nature, geared toward cross-functional teamwork, with the credibility and influence to advise senior leaders and hiring managers
- Excellent organizational, problem-solving, and time management skills, with the ability to manage many searches and priorities at once
- Positive attitude, dedicated work ethic, and flexible orientation for operating in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with a talent for telling our story in a way that resonates with candidates
- Demonstrated leadership skills, including the ability to communicate, coach, mentor, and develop employees, and to give and receive feedback with clarity and kindness
Preferred experience & skills:
- Experience hiring for a clinical-stage company, including clinical development and clinical operations roles
- Experience recruiting for cell or gene therapy, immuno-oncology, or other novel therapeutic modalities
- Hands-on experience using AI tools to improve recruiting efficiency and quality (such as sourcing, candidate outreach, interview design, or recruiting analytics), and curiosity about how new technology can keep improving how we hire
- Experience recruiting across multiple sites, particularly in the Philadelphia and San Francisco Bay Area talent markets
- Experience leading employer brand initiatives with an external creative or branding partner
- Experience managing employment-based immigration for candidates in partnership with outside counsel
- Experience with Greenhouse
#LI-DNI
Base Salary Range: $190-275K
Our values:
Our values guide everything we do. While capabilities and skills are vital, understanding how a potential new colleague would embody our values is central to our hiring decisions.
Determined to deliver:
By working with focus and passion, we can provide patients with the solutions they need.
Own every outcome:
We can reach new heights when we stay centered on our shared success.
Collaboration at the core:
When we band together, our work is better.
Feedback is fundamental:
Constructive and authentic positive feedback may be difficult to master but it is vital to our success.
Working here:
- We offer a highly competitive compensation package with meaningful ownership through equity
- Excellent coverage for medical, vision, and dental
- 401(k) with generous contribution
- Life insurance
- Flexible PTO policy
- Additional substantial benefits
We are an equal opportunity employer.
We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, national origin, or any characteristic protected under applicable law.
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