Talent Acquisition Team Lead

Description:

Papaya Global is a rapidly growing, award-winning B2B tech unicorn with an ambitious mission to revolutionize the payroll & payments industry. With over $400M raised from leading investors, our innovative technology provides a comprehensive solution for managing global workforces, from hiring and onboarding to managing and paying employees in over 160 countries.

As Papaya continues to scale globally, we are looking for a Talent Acquisition Team Lead to join our team. In this role, you will lead and develop the global Talent Acquisition function while remaining highly hands-on in strategic and leadership hiring. You will play a key role in shaping recruitment methodologies, scaling hiring operations, optimizing recruitment technologies, and driving innovation through AI and advanced sourcing practices.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about talent acquisition, energized by the challenge of building world-class teams, and excited to elevate recruitment into a true strategic business function.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a global recruitment team, fostering a high-performance, collaborative, and growth-oriented environment.
• Own and drive end-to-end recruitment processes across a wide range of functions and seniority levels, ensuring consistency, quality, and an exceptional candidate experience.
• Personally lead and manage hiring for senior leadership and other strategic business-critical roles.
• Partner closely with hiring managers and business leaders to define hiring strategies, organizational needs, and effective talent acquisition plans.
• Build, implement, and continuously improve scalable global recruitment methodologies, workflows, and best practices to support rapid company growth.
• Own and optimize the recruitment tech stack and ATS workflows to improve efficiency, visibility, reporting capabilities, and hiring quality.
• Drive innovation across Talent Acquisition by leveraging AI tools, automation, and advanced sourcing technologies to accelerate and elevate recruitment capabilities.
• Develop creative sourcing and market-mapping strategies to attract top talent in highly competitive global markets.
• Use data, analytics, and recruitment KPIs to identify trends, improve funnel performance, and support data-driven decision-making.
• Continuously identify opportunities to improve operational excellence, recruiter productivity, and hiring effectiveness across the organization.
• Ensure a positive, professional, and consistent candidate experience throughout the entire hiring lifecycle.

• 5+ years of experience in recruitment within a fast-paced, global environment.
• 2+ years of experience leading and developing recruitment teams.
• Strong hands-on experience managing full-cycle recruitment across diverse functions and seniority levels, including leadership hiring.
• Proven experience building and scaling recruitment processes, methodologies, and operational best practices.
• Deep understanding of sourcing strategies, talent market mapping, and global hiring dynamics.
• Experience optimizing ATS platforms, recruitment workflows, and talent acquisition technologies.
• Strong familiarity with AI-based recruitment tools and a genuine passion for leveraging technology to improve recruitment performance and scalability.
• Data-driven mindset with the ability to analyze recruitment metrics and translate insights into action.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence and partner effectively across all organizational levels.
• Hands-on, proactive, execution-oriented, and solution-driven approach.
• Passionate about Talent Acquisition, with a genuine drive to build, innovate, and continuously elevate the recruitment function.
• Fluent in English.